Directed by Terrence Malick (2005). Available on Netflix. Reviewed by Paul Sorrell

Now that it’s so easy to select films from streaming services such as Netflix, it’s interesting to consider the pathways that lead us to choose a particular movie. Stimulated by recent discussion of the Treaty of Waitangi, I’ve been reading about early contact between English settlers and the Indigenous peoples of North America. Nathaniel Philbrick’s book The Mayflower: A Voyage to War throws up many parallels between New Zealand and New England, some depressingly familiar, others hopeful.

Terrence Malick’s film about the first English settlers in Virginia raises the same issues — the Algonquian people are aware that their lands and way of life are already threatened — although his focus is on the unlikely love affair between Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) and the young “princess” Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher). In his voice-over, Smith conveys his hopes for a New World order characterised by honest labour, where all are equal and the poor are no longer exploited by a rapacious landlord class. He sees the Indians as guileless children of nature, their language lacking words for greed or deceit.

Yet The New World is not an issues-driven film, but lyrical, impressionistic, a celebration of what might have been and perhaps what might still be. Scenes are developed only to cut away to a black screen — the outcome left to our imaginations. Pocahontas is associated with beneficent nature, with images of warming sunlight and swirling water. A nature spirit in human form, she invokes the Mother goddess from whom she draws life. But if elemental, she is also childlike, playful and reticent; she hardly speaks, even as the language barrier falls away. Her dancelike movements as she mimes the words for sun and water to a wondering Smith are captivating.

The film ends, not in Virginia, but in the home counties of England, where Pocahontas creates a sensation as an “American princess” and meets King James himself with her new husband, John Rolfe, a decent and tender-hearted settler. Smith, whom she believed dead, had been pursuing his vocation as a restless explorer. Meeting him in England one last time, she asks: “Did you discover your Indies, John?” He replies: “I may have sailed past them.” Their world-spanning love was destined not to be, and certainly not to be domesticated. Smith and Pocahontas (now Rebecca) are twin forces of nature whose romantic relationship could never have flourished, whether in the wilds of Virginia or England’s tamer climes.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 289 February 2024: 28