Terrence Malick is a freaking genius. And yes, that’s how I’m going to start this article. I’m not going to provide any historical background or explanation for the title. I’m simply going to say that Terrence Malick is a freaking genius and then I’m going to spend the rest of this article explaining why.

I first heard of the film The New World when my local movie theater put up a poster for it, months before it actually came out. The poster featured a Native American man looking out towards the sea, where a large ship was headed his way. My immediate reaction was, “Awesomeness!” and I waited anxiously for the movie to come out. When I finally did see a trailer for it, I was profoundly disappointed. It was just another damn Pocahontas movie.

Of all the stories that could be told of the European settlement of North America, of all the experiences that could be captured, of all the points of view that could be expressed, somehow the story of Pocahontas keeps coming up again and again. What is the draw? Why are people so interested in this one person in that era that they ignore all others?

In my recent article, Princess Snowbird and the Tinfoil Teepees, I discussed the “Indian princess” fixation in our culture. The most beloved native women in American lore—come to think of it, the only beloved native women in American lore—were ones who were submissive to the white men (and, in fact, married white men) and helped them conquer their own people. These women were Pocahontas and Sacagawea. There are “good Indians” and there are “bad Indians”; the good Indians invariably aid in their own destruction, and if they’re women, that aid tends to involve sex.

Pocahontas in particular seems right out of a fairy tale: the beautiful daughter of a powerful chief meets the bold European adventurer and falls in love with him. When her fierce savage brothers try to kill him for no reason other than his being courageous and incredibly handsome, she throws herself upon him to save him from the blow. It’s like something out of romantic fiction. The reason for that is, of course, that it is fictional; liberally embellished if not completely made up.

Legend and Disney portray a beautiful grown woman named Pocahontas. In reality, when the supposed rescue of John Smith occurred, she would have been about 11 years old. Her real name was Matoaka; Pocahontas was a childhood nickname, meaning something along the lines of “spoiled child,” “the naughty one,” or “little wanton.” The historical record shows us that, romantic legends aside, she was on friendly terms with the Jamestown colony and with John Smith. Whether or not she saved Smith’s life directly in the dramatic way he would later describe, she saved his life at least twice: once by bringing the colony food when they were starving, and again by warning some colonists invited to stay with the tribe that her father intended to kill them. But was she in love with him?

Chief Roy Crazy Horse of the Powhatan Nation says no. Stan Birchfield says yes. Disney says yes. Terrence Malick would appear to say yes… but is he really?

As I said before, Terrence Malick is a genius. I wasn’t expecting too much when I walked into the theater, but by the end of it, I was utterly blown away. The New World is a sprawling, poetic dream of a film. Each frame could stand alone as a painting; each scene is pregnant with meaning and metaphor that reveals more of itself with every viewing. It transported me to another place, inspired me, monopolized my attention in a way that almost no other movie has been able to do. Yeah, I’m a bit of a New World cultist. So shoot me.

It may seem like a strange devotion for someone so skeptical about the Pocahontas legend, but that’s where the genius of the movie really lies: The New World is a subtle critique of the noble savage. Much of the story is moved forward by John Smith’s monologues, almost all of them from his actual letters and books. (Much of his dialog is also from his letters. There is very little that John Smith says in the movie that the real John Smith didn’t say in real life.) In one particularly poignant scene, Smith describes how the natives have no sense of possession or jealousy as Pocahontas’s boyfriend (presumably Kocoum, although his name, like Matoaka’s own, is never mentioned) ogles Smith’s gold and glares at him suspiciously. As a Boston Globe review puts it:

“They are gentle, loving, faithful,” the explorer says of the Algonquins, “lacking in all trickery; they have no jealousy, no sense of possession.” Startled to discover they’re human, he willfully overlooks the more brutal facts of their existence. Malick does not. He indulges himself here; Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is almost painfully lovely and the voice-overs flow in like waves on a lake. It’s such a lovely dream, and, yes, it comes to look fairly silly to an outsider—to Powhatan, to the other colonists, to the viewers in the audience.

As historically accurate as The New World is (the filmmakers took great pains to get Powhatan language and culture right), it still has the flavor of an epic legend, far away from any real history, set in its own imaginary time and place—it even begins with the Classical epic formula, as Matoaka invokes the muse (in this case, the spirit of the land itself) to help her tell the tale. Which is absolutely perfect. An HNN article (the History News Network) goes so far as to call the film a creation myth. And it absolutely is: it’s the myth of America’s creation. The Boston Globe review continues:

But a dream it is, and the use of Mozart’s 23d Piano Concerto on the soundtrack alerts us to the fact that it’s a European dream—John Smith’s dream. “The New World” dives deep into the utopian ideal that has coursed through the veins of this country, from the Puritans through Herman Melville and Walt Whitman all the way to the hippie dream of the 1960s: that noble, ruinous vision of a city on the hill and the reinvention of the self that can be found there. Smith believes that vision and is doomed to chase it forever. Terrence Malick may have believed it once—he’s a child of the ’60s, after all—but he doesn’t anymore, as much as he misses its certainty.

How can we not mythologize it? In searching for land and trade, Europeans found something much more valuable: a vision of the utopia they’d been aching for. And upon finding it, they immediately began the work of tearing it apart. We’d already killed the vast majority of people who once flourished on this continent before we began thinking of them as something more subtle and nuanced than “bad Indian/good Indian.” Similarly, John Smith has already fallen in love with Matoaka and broken her heart before he realizes that she’s a human being—not an ideal. He finally realizes this when she sees her in the European clothes she’s begun to wear since marrying John Rolfe (a.k.a. Batman).

[Pocahontas] is all that America promises to an adventurer—all the hopes of new beginning and noble savagery—and Smith never sees her for who she is until too late. That’s his tragedy; the movie’s point is that it’s probably ours as well.