The Return to Innocence Lost: Music, Greed, and the American Dream
By Adam Kaufman, with comments by Kim Weber and Eddie Strumfels
[1] Terrence Malick has made an effective point through his frequent use of almost unbearably strong background music, which often consists of one or two notes lingering for entire scenes, rising and falling in pitch and volume. However, this scene -- The Return (42:01) -- is unique in its utter lack of sound. If the film’s score can develop characteristics one would normally associate with an actor and evoke emotions from an audience, is it impossible to imagine sound (or even the lack of) as its own character? It would be as if Pocahontas suddenly walked out of the room -- the audience’s focus suddenly switches to objects normally unnoticed, minor details take on meaning. The audience needs to fill the void with something human, something to which they can relate. Sound evolves in order to personify the now missing actors, and once the association is fused, the audience will continue to make it throughout the film.
[2] The previous scene ends with Pocahontas wandering through fields, dreamily reliving her affair with Smith, playing it over and over again in her head. She stands before a vast sky, pledging her undying love while Smith ponders what lies west. What was once thought to be a passage to the Indies turned into an endless stretch of land filled with great meadows, a “land which had no end.†The camera observes an eagle soaring through the sky, symbolic of the ultimate freedom experienced by the natives, one Smith longs to feel. He most likely recalls his previous aspirations to found a “true commonwealth, [making] hard work and self reliance our virtues.†Words alluding to lying, deceit, greed, envy, slander, and forgiveness will cease to exist.
[3] As this scene begins, the same music from the opening credits plays, causing the audience to reminisce over gigantic white sails and excited explorers, some ready for a new adventure, others a new beginning. The music continues as Smith exits the forest and approaches the English fort, passing natives frozen in their stance. The guards open the doors, and all sounds, natural or inserted, fade out, conjuring up images of Jim Morrison bellowing “When the Music’s Over.†Smith is pulled out of his dream and forced to face facts -- Jamestown is dying.
[4] As Smith wanders through the bleak and grey settlement, the audience imagines his heart shredded by the harshness of reality, his plans for a utopia now a distant, boyish fantasy not unlike his romance with Pocahontas. Malick portrayed the natives living in harmony with nature, and the English appear as an abomination in comparison. There is no green anywhere near this waste heap, and all their crops have produced is small mounds of brown that look more like feces than food. Scraggily dogs and street urchins infest Jamestown, and the men quarrel over trivialities such as the date. Despite managing to cross the Atlantic and organizing first contact in the present-day United States, the settlers cannot seem to accomplish simple tasks like well-digging or crop-growing, chores necessary for survival. The laziness of the invading Europeans is apparent in most colonization films; only The New World uses it to defame the American dream.
[5] Malick slaps the audience’s sense of good old-fashioned American labor in the face with images of starving colonists digging vainly for gold, chasing their own visions of grandeur, longing for an American dream in which no man should have to work. In their delusion they have mistaken the new world for Eden, the carrot dangling in front of their sweating noses, out of reach but maybe with just one more step. . . . If the natives wished to live in order to serve nature, the Europeans wished to watch her bleed. From this stark contrast stem the thorns that prevent any sort of coexistence between the two races. Greed reigns supreme over all other reasons for conquest, no matter what hand pushes the agenda, be it church, nation, or possible fortune. Unfortunately, the fears and deception of the old world followed John Smith and his crew to utopia, festering there until the colonies were strong enough to succeed and found their own nation. Jefferson declared all men are created equal, that man’s unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness could not be contested. Still, the materialistic ambitions of those early pioneers haunted the land. Their spirit remains in every American’s heart as the source of his or her aspirations, longing to ascend to greater heights. But as Icarus flew too close to the sun, we who descend from privileged victors experience the collective guilt -- the understanding our dream crushed the dreams of others and used them as mortar for our own.
[6] Worst of all the problems facing Smith upon his return is his own conscience, congruous with modern American moral discomfort. Amongst accusations of treason and desertion, the loudest voice is the one unspoken. He laments over his abandonment of Pocahontas and muses how he could have “let her love me,†but the ties to his countrymen remain stronger. Three small beggar children accost Smith as he enters, still dazed, but coherent enough to enquire who has been taking care of them. According to Malick Smith’s heart must have been gigantic in order to endure passion for his ideals, devotion for his compatriots, and infatuation with the native princess. He convinces himself it was a dream, and as frost begins to blanket the ground, so does it engulf and extinguish the flames of his lust. On top of this, he loves his country, or at least feels he must lead his men to safety like the good soldier he is. (see comment by Kim Weber)
[7] Like Smith, the new age American feels a general responsibility for his actions and those affected, epitomized by Smith’s silent exchange with a lone man standing outside his window. Perhaps hunger had made him delirious, or maybe he desired human contact, a smile. His plight remains unknown, and he is never mentioned again throughout the film. Smith, pacing back and forth, returns the stranger’s look with a blank stare. Any empathy he may feel only reminds him of his duty. In voiceover, he does not consider the man in the window, only his own desire -- to be free of the shackles that keep him to Jamestown, to love Pocahontas freely. With one voice he considers the possibilities the new land could offer, promising equity and integrity, and with another he renounces his ideals, realizing his own hesitancy to accept such freedom. Adam has bitten the apple but does not wish to acknowledge his experience’s full potential and shrugs it off as one would a bizarre fantasy. And with Smith’s abandoned dream, our collective conscience grows more infected with guilt -- guilt about the road not taken. The white man received enlightenment, failed to assimilate, and subsequently destroyed an entire civilization that promised us all the freedoms we desire from the titular American dream but fail to receive -- this is his true burden. (see comment by Eddie Strumfels)
Comments
As Smith entered Jamestown after leaving Pocahontas, I found myself wishing desperately that he would have some inkling of selfishness and return to his love. I try to imagine what was going through his mind as he entered the desperate situation he would be forced to lead. I disagree slightly with Kaufman, though, that a sense of duty forced him to side with his countrymen. It was certainly an obligatory sense of duty to some extent. However, I think it was also combined with guilt at the way he had been living which motivated him to stay. Smith had enough to eat and thoroughly enjoyed his time with the natives; meanwhile, the Europeans were starving and slowly dying. Initially, the men he was forced to lead didn’t even want him as his leader. Now, after he found someone he loves, he is thrust into a leadership position for a seemingly doomed colony, foregoing his love. It could not have been just duty that forced him to stay; he felt guilty because of the way he had been living. I think his love for Pocahontas outweighed his pure sense of duty to his countrymen.
Adam's concluding sentence is a prime example of some of my more major problems with The New World, especially in its depiction of Native Americans and Europeans. Adam writes that "The white man received enlightenment, failed to assimilate, and subsequently destroyed an entire civilization that promised us all the freedoms we desire from the titular American dream but fail to receive -- this is his true burden," and while I think this sentiment is problematic, the trouble comes from the film and not Adam's analysis. After all, what conclusion could one draw from a film that practically smashes you over the head with the idea that the Natives are good and the Europeans are bad. The problem here is that this depiction of Natives is just like perpetuating a "positive" stereotype (take, for example, the idea that all Asians are good at math). Just because your stereotype or caricature is "nice," like the natural utopia of the Native Americans, doesn't mean it's still not deeply problematic. Malick makes the native tribes into an abstraction of some idyllic civilization where "all the freedoms we desire from the titular American dream" can be realized -- but that's not real. That has as much to do with actual Native American culture as Frank Zappa's ode to the Eskimo, "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow." We're still dealing with Tonto here and not the actual historical portrait we have of Native American culture. This sort of thinking continues to simplify natives into an unrealistic image of unspoiled, innocent, and Edenic people, and while that makes them sound very pleasant, we're still not actually engaging in the culture they actually created before it was destroyed. When a film is so naked in its stereotypes, we stop actually examining the history of what happened and instead reduce very complicated things (like the state of Jamestown when John Smith returns -- though Adam characterizes the city's destitution as a result of European "laziness," the reality is more involved than the same old notion of "Europeans = bad" that we've been getting in this film) into simple, easy, but untrue things (like the Edenic life of the Native Americans). While it might be easy to pat ourselves on the back for no longer portraying natives as violent savages, we're still a long way from depicting them as they truly were.
