3. Q’orianka Kilcher Had No Idea Who Colin Farrell & Christian Bale Were
Casting for a Malick picture is never a straightforward process. Though producers labored in finding the ideal Pocahontas to stand up to John Smith and company, their eventual choice, Q’orianka Kilcher, proved to be a boon, as she projected both an earthy beauty and natural intelligence that made her character compellingly watchable.
“The great challenge of this movie was finding an actress to play Pocahontas,” confirms producer Sarah Green on the BluRay. “We searched for eight months starting in Virginia, moving throughout the United States and North America and eventually through the whole world. It was only in the last month that our casting director — who was also casting for a different project in a very different sort of role — noticed the headshot of Q’orianka Kilcher who had been living in Los Angeles this whole time. We happened to be doing a camera test so we said ‘Oh come, stand in front of this 35mm camera with no makeup and just [be] yourself, and see what happens.’ And I tell you, when we screened that footage, she just jumped off the screen at us.”
Some of that footage is on the extensive “Making Of” documentary on “The New World” BluRay, and it is definitely quite stirring; if Malick was searching for someone who would project the wide-eyed innocence the character needed, he couldn’t have done much better than Kilcher. For starters, she hadn’t seen any of his films (not surprising given her age), and didn’t really seek them out until after filming was over, telling Cinematical, “I watched ‘The Thin Red Line‘; I tried to track down [Malick’s] other movies (‘Days of Heaven‘ and ‘Badlands‘), but they didn’t have them at Blockbuster…I’m really looking forward to watching ‘Badlands.’”
Moreover, she didn’t get the fuss her friends were making about her hunky co-stars. “You know, I didn’t know who [Colin Farrell] was before. When I got on set of course everybody was like, ‘Oh my god, you’re working with Colin Farrell and Christian Bale!’ [Farrell] was really wonderful, a very giving actor and he was like my older brother in a way,” Kilcher told About. “He took me under his wing and he taught me so much in acting and [was] very supportive. And Christian Bale and Wes Studi and Augi Schellenberg, they were all so good at what they did and it was such an honor for me. I felt so lucky just to be on set being able to watch all these actors work.”
But when it came to the task at hand, Kilcher had just as much, if not more homework than her new colleagues saying, “I learned the entire script in a perfect British accent. Then, strip that away for the first 60 pages and learn Algonquin, and I actually made myself learn Algonquin because that’s her native language so I really would know what I was saying. And then strip half of the Algonquin away and then do different stages of Algonquin mixed with English. So that was definitely very challenging.”
4. Once Again, Malick’s Ever-Mercurial Shooting Process Was In Full Effect
Naturally, Malick did not make it easy on his charges and extras were warned beforehand it was going to be grueling shoot.
“It’s going to be particularly difficult out here because it’s going to be hot, it’s going be nasty, you’re going to be covered with mud,“ Vern Crofoot, the production’s Master Armorer advised the extras, as seen in footage from the BluRay. “The working conditions are not going to be pleasant, you’re gonna be working real hard and the temperature is going to be up there.”
However, Malick’s well-documented unconventional shooting approach was a pleasure for Christian Bale who enjoyed being able to roam freely on the sets. “It’s very funny at times because Terry liked Jack Fisk to create the houses and the locations so he could shoot three hundred and sixty degrees,” says Bale on the BluRay. “So the crew had to be ready for that as well, because unlike most movies where they absolutely know the camera is locked between these two positions and that’s it, with Terry you never knew. It could be there, and then suddenly he’s spinning around looking there. So you can’t have a bunch of gaffers or craft service set up [nearby].”
“And I couldn’t stop laughing on my very first day when he did do this thing to me, where he just suddenly turned the camera on me and said ‘Christian just do whatever you feel like doing,’” Bale continues. “And so I did start doing that, and I realized, there was a bunch of crew [nearby] so if I walked over there, what were they going to do? In my bloody-minded nature I was like, ‘I’m going to go take a look, see what they do.’ So I did, I started walking over and they were running, they were diving behind bushes to get out the way, because they knew that this was just part of the deal of working with Terry.”
5. “The New World” Had Three Different Cuts
Those seeking the total “The New World” experience found themselves with a challenge, including, not surprisingly, editor Richard Chew who is one of the four credited editors who had to wade through a million feet of film. “Terry shoots a lot because, I think, he’s really trying to get into the subconscious of the actors who inhabit these characters,” says Chew on the BluRay. “And he’s trying to find these unconscious kind of movements or postures, expressions that the actors can give.”
“The New World” was initially released in a 150-minute cut for Academy consideration, though later it would see wide release in an altered version that ran 16 minutes shorter and featured new scenes, but condensed others and severely truncated the narration to allow for a more straightforward reading. DVD allowed these theatrical presentations to exist in another medium, but most diehards would rally around the extended edition, which boasts a notable 172-minute runtime featuring the extensions of several key sequences. However, there was still much left on the cutting room floor and Kilcher detailed a surprising scene that she was bummed to see missing from the movie:
“….some of Pocahontas’ lowest points in life were taken out…You know the part where John Smith [Farrell] is chopping wood in the back and this is after Pocahontas is kidnapped and she’s brought back to the James Fort? She comes to Smith and he’s chopping the wood. Pocahontas actually… that day, I had a knife and I was going to stab him and that really showed that she was going to kill her heart,” the actress explained to About. “Because in the beginning, Powhatan tells his daughter, ‘You need to put your people before your own heart,’ and he’s referring to Smith. And so that really showed Pocahontas was about to kill her own heart. And then she gets really confused and then you see her gradually start to fix herself until Smith leaves. It was also missing some of the more, happier times. More of the Indian village. Like we were once dancing around this huge bonfire—everyone. It was so gorgeous. They told me that a lot of the scenes that I was missing were going to be on the DVD so I’m excited. It’s going to be somewhere.”
As for Bale, he told Hollywood.com that much of his contribution came in post-production as Malick tried to wrangle his film down to size. ” I think that was a product of Terry being required to bring the movie down to two and a half hours. A number of the dialogue scenes had to be taken out and many times it was almost like a silent movie, but we were accustomed to that on the set because many times he would say to us, ‘Here’s the scene. Here’s the dialogue.’ And we might change it at the last minute, or whatever, but he’d also say, ‘If you don’t like saying it, don’t say it.’ And he really meant it. He didn’t say it just say to say it,” Bale explained. “He really meant that we should do what felt right. ‘I don’t want you saying any of the lines that I’ve written if it doesn’t feel right.’ Then with the voiceover it was really quite fascinating. I mean, Terry would sometimes send me thirty pages of voiceover and it was fascinating. He’s a wonderful writer. I stole a number of the pages because I thought that they were just some wonderful comments on life and love and relationships and things.”