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

I though I might be alone with the same view - I totally agree, a wonderful opportunity to tell a great story wasted with bad cutting & editing. Because of that only rate film 4/10 when could have been a 7 or 8

What the hell? Since when was the quality of editing measured in how much a film confroms to standard conventions? Any TV editor can match on action; that's just a technical skill. Jump cuts are artistic choices. Did you really think they were there because non of five editors didn't know how to get around them? Clearly you're incapable of appreciating any film outside the mainstream Hollywood canon if you think any non-conformist attempt at filmmaking is doomed from the start. It's like you're approaching a sonnett expecting a novel; complaining about lack of continuity editing in an art film is like complaining about lack of punctuation in a haikku.

The New World might not have been made with the casual cinemagoer in mind, but that's not to say that it's not good; I would personally argue that it's one of the best ten films of the decade!

I think the opposite of everything you've written. Litteraly the opposite of every single thing...

This movie is a masterpiece in every aspect of it.

THIS is Filmmaking. Truly beautiful, original and inspired filmmaking. That is Cinema.

Well, when you're working with more than a million feet of film.

You're going to need more than one editor to help assemble everything that a director needs.

That can take a long time. After all, it took Malick and editor Billy Weber two years to edit Days of Heaven because Terry wanted create something that was far more different than his original script.

If you see the Criterion DVD special features for Days of Heaven. Both Richard Gere and Sam Shepherd will tell you about Malick's approach to filmmaking. You have to be open to what he says. You have to be your own person and you can't be spoiled. Gere stated if he had known what kind of film he had made at the time, he wished he had saved more brain cells.

I just saw the 172-minute version of The New World and there's not much of a difference between that and the 135-minute theatrical cut. Yet, all are paced in the same kind of speed and the story is much broader. You have to understand that during the 17th Century, time moved much slower than what it is now.

To have four editors to try and figure out how to move a scene and how to transition something as if it's a poem is not an easy thing to do. Plus, Terry cuts his films to the last minute. He's often trying to figure how to present this sequence and that one because if anything, he's not very good at making decisions. That's what everyone who is a friend of Terry or has worked with him will say but not in a negative way.

The films of Terrence Malick are not easy to watch and you have to open your mind when watching them. You might not get them the first time around but after repeated viewings. You can understand of what he's trying to say.

"If you thought the film was boring, say that. Don't blame the editing. The editing is amazing. Do you know how hard editing is? Do you know how dificult it must have been to edit this movie?"

Um...most filmmakers do just fine with editing, so that's a really poor excuse. The film was terribly edited. It's not just that it was "unconventional", it's that there was no artistic merit to the jump edits and random imagery in the middle of a scene. It did nothing for the story, or to create a surreal effect. It truly seemed random and just took the viewer out of the story.

But it was boring, too.

The editing and directing is some of the worst I've ever seen. Just pathetic. I could honestly do much better given the same oppurtunities. This was not beautiful or poetic, it was garbage.

For something like this, you either love it or hate it... theres really not much to discuss.

I think the editing was good, and I didnt mind the length or style--I loved it.

Others, though, hated it. I can see where a more cohesive play-by-play narrative might have been better for some people, but I think the way this was done just makes it more surreal--which I think is one of the elements they were going for. I suppose it really just comes down to simple opinion.

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