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Terrence Malick, director of The New World and a handful of other fine movies, isn't in it for the fame. He avoids interviews, keeps public appearances to a minimum, and doesn't like to have his picture taken.
But it's harder for a filmmaker to dodge publicity than it is for, say, a novelist like Thomas Pynchon, also famed for an aversion to cameras. About five clicks on the Internet brought me to a gallery of online Malick photos showing the shy celebrity as a teenager, then a fledgling movie director, and now an eminence grise of independent cinema.
One picture is labeled "the ubiquitous Malick photo." So much for the cloistered auteur as master of his own public image.
While it's interesting to look at these, I can't help sympathizing with Malick's wish for privacy. That ubiquitous photo - - snapped in 1998, when his World War II movie The Thin Red Line was in production -- is a standard-issue shot (big smile, casual clothes, earphones draped around neck), conveying no hint of what makes this director different from countless others who've obediently said "cheese" for studio photographers.
While there may be a whiff of aloofness in Malick's disdain for the publicity fray, it's possible that he just doesn't want to distract attention from his work. He also has an egalitarian streak, refusing interviews on the principle that "he's not different from anyone else," as a New Line Cinema executive put it.
New Line is releasing The New World, and the company would surely be happier if Malick were willing to promote it by glad-handing journalists the way less-reclusive directors do. Such marketing work is considered especially important when a film might have trouble "finding its audience" without some extra pushes. The New World is such a film.
The story itself is commercial enough, revolving around Colonial- era myths that have enthralled Americans for ages. The main characters are John Smith, the 17th-century English explorer, and Pocahontas, the American Indian adolescent who becomes his lover.
The movie chronicles their deepening intimacy in the context of Jamestown's gradual evolution from a frontier outpost to a burgeoning North American town. It also shows Smith's flight from Pocahontas when adventures beckon in other climes, her subsequent marriage...