FOUR EDITORS...and its some of the baddest editing ive seen in my life

Given that Billy Weber (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0916502/), who edited Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line and is working on The Tree of Life is given an "associate producer" credit on The New World, I'd say it's likely that at least five editors worked on the film.

baddest

Malick isn't much of a storyteller, but no doubt he works with a competent cinematographer.

Consider that before renting another one of his films.
Could save you hours of your life.

Don't watch his movies, you'll have little complain about.

From the International Cinematographers Guild article Once Upon A Time In America:

EDITING

Richard Chew, Saar Klein and Hank Corwin had to approach the editing of The New World with a completely different set of mental tools.

For one, they had to forget that Malick would be talking to the actors throughout the take. “He’s like the captain of a river boat—he guides the actors around obstacles and pushes them in directions they haven’t really experienced,” says Richard Chew. “Sometimes, it is to get them to go beyond the preconceptions they have for the characters. Other times, it is trying to catch a spontaneity and freshness.

“One of his favorite things was to throw an actor off by having him or her do dialogue from a different place in a new place. This constant change and his constant comments encouraged most of the actors to new heights—although, in a few cases, veterans tended to want to work in a different way.”

“It was strange,” admits Chew. “It created more technical problems, in that we would pick a piece that looked like what he wanted and have to ignore the overlap of Terry’s dialogue and the actors’. Looping dialogue was just part of what we knew we had to do.”

It wasn’t just Malick’s dialogue that the team had to ignore. They also had to separate themselves from the dialogue. For them, one of the most fascinating things was to listen to the wonderful period English mixed with Algonquin that Malick had written—and know that he was going to throw almost all of it out—for a bit that was much more emotional visually.

“Terry ‘green dots’ on the avid,” adds Klein. “It is a button that allows you to put a marker on things that you like. Terry chose green. Why green? Good question.” Whatever the answer, it was in Terry Malick’s head. And, on the film. A mark that all three editors would look for, then scratch their heads and try to understand “how” to make the shot work.

Another of Malick’s ‘dogma’ was “being very selective in the type of shots that he likes and those that he doesn’t,” adds Saar Klein. “If a shot didn’t have visual strength, it wasn’t in the film. “We needed to understand what he deemed to be a ‘strong shot’—or we’d be in for a lot of guess work.”

“He has a strong philosophical approach to shot selection, emotional content and the music of nature,” Hand Corwin agrees. “For Terry, having the sound of the right bird is as true as any shot. Our playing field had many dimensions.”

“We also had to understand that Terry likes the eccentric frame,” adds Chew. “Nothing can be right on. In editing, he was always telling us not to use too perfectly framed shots. He wanted to be on a shoulder or see part of the face or cut the face in half. Or he’d like being behind the person. One of his favorite angles is over the shoulder to relate distance and relationship between two characters.”

All three editors also had the words “deep focus” burned into their brains. Malick insisted on that style. They knew that “stuff” had to be going on in the foreground, middle ground and background. They were constantly looking for footage that showed life going on around the characters. That was what they would emphasize in the editing.

“We had incredibly beautiful images helped by the accuracy of the location, production design, costuming and the freedom the actors had because the film was shot without lights getting in the way,” says Chew. “Editing everything together was an exercise in learning what minute pieces in the massive amount of footage expressed Terry’s ideas. And, not feeling that we missed the mark, if we were batting 200, when it came to guessing what he had in mind.

“Yes, The New World was totally different from anything I’ve ever edited. And one of the most amazing projects I’ve ever worked on!”

The editing was a bit annoying, during conversations it seemed to be all over the place, the cuts seemed to be random and pointless. :S

The music drove me mad at the end! When she was running around the garden to the shots of America, it was so repetetive and loud it was a relief when it stopped.

I wasn't very impressed by the film and I hate the comment I've read that you have to be a real film person to love this and bascially those that don't are stupid and don't understand cinema. To me it was like a giant perfume advert with shots of them running and then looking back at each other with voice overs like "Who are you?" Have you seen a chanel advert recently? It didn't seem to be structured well and she dies so suddenly at the end it's weird. :\

I completely agree. One of the worse movies I have ever seen.

The girl CAN act,though.

the editing was radical, but it worked to great effect

oh man are you an editor?... a professional one that makes movies and get paid for it? Or a douchebag that likes to think he knows what he is talking about?