Set to the deep, rich horns and flurrying violins of Richard Wagner's "Vorspiel", the opening minutes of Terrence Malick's The New World are a majestic, breathtaking introduction full of wonder and a sense of discovery that is rarely found in cinema.  The tender, transcendent musings of Pocahontas juxtaposed with langourous images of the ocean and landscape feel so innocent and pure that it seems we are seeing them through the eyes of a child.  Malick's typically graceful camera greets the English as they first arrive and patiently allows them, and us, to behold the spectacular beauty of this nearly untouched land.  The first several encounters with the natives are appropriately awkward, as if two different species, unknown to each other, crossed paths in the wild, but while the natives are sufficiently welcoming, the English see only savages whose help they may later require.  When running short on food and supplies, Captain John Smith (Collin Farrell) is sent to seek that aid, but is quickly captured and ordered to leave with the rest of his countrymen.  After being unable to converse with their king, he is nearly executed until the young Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher) throws herself upon him, begging her father for mercy.  Seeing the opportunity for his daughter to learn about Smith's far away land, the king spares his life and the two are left free in the forest to discover one another.  In this freedom, the two develop an almost otherworldly love felt and expressed without language and outside of the boundaries of the social restrictions of either culture.

Smith's submersion into their world is perfectly captured by Emmanuel Lubezki's lush photography (shot using almost all natural light), creates such a vivid sense of nature that the rain, wind and grass take on a physical presence that emanates from the screen.  In his own distinct visual prose, Malick explores the deep bond between Smith and Pocahontas, strengthened by their closeness to earth and intense spiritual longings.  Their intrinsic connection is brought to fruition through an expressive use of close-ups and extended sequences free of dialogue, allowing the audience to bask in the wonder of these inexplicable, yet painfully beautiful feelings.  The freedom to love without consequence ends once Smith must return to his post, where he is greeted contemptuously by rotten souls and eventually accused of protecting Pocahontas for purely personal reasons.  While the English prevent Smith from returning to her, her father allows her to be sold away to them after discovering that she gave them not only meat and clothes with which to survive, but seeds to plant corn the following spring.  Living as a lone native in a burgeoning colony of Englishmen, Pocahontas is dressed in their garments are emersed in their culture.  The tragedy of her transformation from a free-spirited young beauty is compounded by Smith's abandoning her to continue on another mission to find the Indes and once told he had drowned, she is left crushed and alone amongst people who would not understand her.

Malick smoothly transitions into Pocahontas's second relationship, which begins when John Rolfe (Christian Bale), rather innocently, asks to spend the afternoon with her.  Distant at first, the two grow closer as they put their personal tragedies behind them, but when she agrees to marry him, she is reluctant because of her deep-seeded connection to Smith.  In this final act, Malick crafts a bittersweet and powerful tragedy, reviving all of the sweeping emotions and memories that came before.  Pocahontas and Rolfe, now living in England with their young child, are confronted with the reality that Smith still lives and only once the past is confronted can anyone move on.  The unfettered natural beauty where she and Smith fell in love is replaced by the man-built stone buildings and controlled, neatly-trimmed shrubbery and when the two find themselves face to face after all those years, it is as Smith says "as if speaking to you for the first time".  The realization that their love, once so free and pure, is now dead is matched by the intensity of her newfound devotion to her child and husband.  That Pocahontas is no longer the innocent child we met in the beginning and is now contained within the society responsible for destroying her people is a tough pill to swallow, but her core remains strong and untouched by the immense changes.  The furious montage at the film's finale, again accompanied by the Wagner piece, reminds us of her immense strength and inner beauty and functions as a melancholy revery of a time when nature provided a spiritual sustenance that could not be replaced by religious or social order.