The New World
I went to see it tonight and I loved it. I read a review that said that you can love it or hate it but nothing in between. And I definitely realize how someone might die of boredom during the millionth silent walk in the woods. What touched me, though, was the romance. Terrence Malick has a way of capturing the subtle glances between two people just as well as he exposes the captivating beauty of unaltered nature. I started to get a leaden weight in my chest at all scenes of silence in the forest: I miss New Hampshire so much. And I was so jealous of the characters running around the pine trees. That something, so primative, has been missing from my life for a while. It almost feels like a spiritual absence. Even before we moved to New England, I was enchanted with having some sort of natural freedom. I made my mom drive me to an overgrown lot in Rochester, New York, so I could pick wildflowers, while wearing a flowing skirt, and put them in a wicker basket (I was quite a precocious 6-year-old). Even 13 years later, I still feel that longing for a quiet forest. I'm such a city girl now, I'm not sure I would make it, even just to visit nature today. I'd probably run into some Minnesota-specific natural danger, like hidden thin ice, or some bizarre indigenous animal. Anyway, The New World was a beautiful movie; it was almost more like a PBS history special than a narrative story. I loved it, though. Anyone who wants to drive to the woods with me sometime and run around:), please let me know.

The traditional romance in the movie was serene, too, but also extremely lustful. Words sometimes ruin everything, don't they? It's much better when you can't understand each other and might as well not talk. (Cynical laughing...) I very much miss romance. I won't actually say how long it's been since I was really romanced, but he had an accent, and that's much too long ago.

So, and my friends agreed, an evening watching Colin Farrell and Christian Bale run around the woods was very nice, but no substitute for being in the woods myself.