A. J. Goldmann at The New Criterion:
The opening of Terrence Malick’s The New World (2005) contains one of the most effective uses of music by Richard Wagner in film. A low, sonorous note seems to rise from the depth of the ocean. Soon it becomes clear that this sustained note is the deep, elemental E flat out of which the Ring cycle flowers. The camera then takes us above the waves to the three English ships sailing towards the coast of Virginia. Malick’s use of the prelude of Das Rheingold, the first part of Wagner’s epic cycle of creation and destruction, evokes the primordial state of nature while foreshadowing its irrevocable loss.
I found myself thinking about the opening of The New World during the new Rheingold at this year’s Salzburg Easter Festival. The centerpiece of the festival, the production treated the Ring’s “preliminary evening” as the origin story of humanity. The presumed setting was Africa, signaled by black-and-white video projections of a naked warrior with body paint running through a beautiful, desolate landscape and reinforced by ethnic garb and rituals enacted onstage. And yet, unlike in Malick’s film, this production’sattempts to conjure both a state of nature and the subsequent loss of innocence were unsubtle and, for all the emphasis on authenticity, often seemed culturally insensitive or just confused.
more here.
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