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I've been a Terrence Malick fan since Days of Heaven in 1978, and let's face it, it's all the same movie. The period settings, the gorgeous scenery, the tall grass rippling in the wind, the quiet interludes, the brooding voiceover ... you might as well splice them all together into one very slow eight-and-a-half-hour movie. I'd see it. No one else in film today achieves such lush lyricism, and and hardly anyone can tackle projects on the same scale as Malick's. This time out he rhapsodizes on European settlers' first encounters with North America and its people. The New World is built around the love story of Pocahontas and Captain John Smith, which at times weighs the film down with relationship banter that seems a bit too highly evolved for the early 17th century. Colin Farrell and most of the cast are only competent, though Q'Orianka Kilcher gives a fresh and surprising performance as Pocahontas. But the story is the only major weakness here. And though Malick's latest is more tied to the narrative than was his 1998 The Thin Red Line, ultimately the story is just a frame for what he does best: exploring big ideas through narration and pure cinema. This is a stunningly beautiful film, pairing a complex, soaring soundtrack with 65mm images of rivers, lakes, trees and wildlife. The glimpses into characters' interior thoughts are key this time. Smith sees an ideal future in the new land and thinks he's found an idyllic past surviving among Pocahontas's tribe. North America is the real star of The New World, so vast and rich that the settlers can't even comprehend it. We know they never found a passage to the Indies, and what became of their hopes for land free of poverty and bondage, as well as how the native Americans fared in the whole adventure. What we can't do without Malick's help is to see the continent as the natives and the first settlers must have seen it, and contemplate for at least a few hours both its glory and its subsequent degradation.