Highly Recommend!! 10 out of 10!

Rating: Null/10 (20 December 2005)

The New World is a gorgeously hypnotic trance, otherworldly, passionate, sublimely surreal. I HIGHLY recommend it. 10/10!!
(SPOILERS) Smith starts as the chained up loner shipmate looking up from below deck, a harassed moody figure who was reprimanded for mutinous back-talk, but we see him delighting in what little natural sun and rain reach in to touch his cold, dark, solitary, locked-in dungeon. He bears the humiliation of nearly being hanged as a warning against future insubordination, but he is set loose to work and to prove his loyalty to those who chained him. His duties include establishing profitable and peaceful contacts with the tribe's leaders. Smith's quick defense of an accused Indian against an English vigilante is tactful, ethical, and fiercely emotional, establishing him as a quick-thinking underdog leader.
The battle scenes are fantastically choreographed, each thrust and parry, duck and tackle forcefully convincing. There are gorgeous flashes of various stunningly painted faces, naked muscles in contrast with Smith's solid iron armor, a heavy medieval helmet with a hinged face plate clanking shut beneath a swirl of feathers and fur, and Smith's knight swords converging explosively in a dark swamp teaming with wildlife and warriors. The sheer excitement of Smith's capture blows me away.
The dream-quality scenes of the tribe are so realistic, spiritual, and authentic I cried, happy goosebumps & shivers of recognition with the way everyone came together and rebuilt their people, embodied their spirit to the nth degree. They bring Smith into their world, reborn, wide-eyed, breathless, after the climactic moments of a last-minute reconsideration and intervention from execution, even with the suspicion that more Englishmen are bound to come no matter what they do. The way that she is never named, even when there comes a time near the end that the English say "she does not have that name anymore, right now, she has no name...." ring so true and so profoundly intimate it's without a doubt Malick and his advisers know exactly what they were doing culturally. The tribal moments were better than I ever could have imagined, and the level of artistry and authenticity is absolutely unrivaled in any other Native film. This will set new high standards.
Malick's vision of Pocahontas & Smith's alliance, and then Pocahontas and Rolfe later, is deeply romantic, loving, and sensually daring, but never unlikely or impossible, especially in light of Smith's own written record about the many ways she risked her life for his.
South East Coast tribes, like my own, made women marriageable when they reached puberty, around age 12 or 13. Romance at this age was not unusual then, it was the norm. She carries herself as a newly curious grown woman ready for finding a spiritually connected soul mate, rather than as a little girl. This is a TRUE depiction of our customs, as well as our customs of women choosing to grant clemency to condemned prisoners of war and to marry men outside their own tribes in order to extend the entire tribe's trade networks and sphere of influence into new cultures and territories, for mutual benefit and lasting peace with neighbors.
There are extreme depths of tenderness, natural and humane connectedness, sensitivity and ENORMOUS emotional upheaval, spectacular beauty and raw passion shockingly contrasted with the harshest, bleakest, & most bitter kinds of lonely personal losses. The closeness between them is sudden and strong, and moments as simple as her touching his face and exposing his pretty earring, caressing him gently as he soon beams with love and wonder are irresistibly erotic, exotic, yet genuinely loving as if they've each found their destined soul-mate-- until each realizes in time that what they've found together so naturally is forbidden fruit in the worlds each comes from, endangering the life of the very one they love.
The film as a whole is raging with the heartbeat of life, pulsing and breathing with the life of the natural world, the culture of the "naturals", aka the indigenous Powhatan tribes, and the hopes and anxieties of the more rigid and suddenly desperate English newcomers. It seems as if every moment is symbolically addressing life and death, birth and rebirth as all things change form, grow, diminish, attract, repulse, ignite, scatter, and regroup. There's a scene of smoke rising, billowing steadily into a frosty sky as snow gently falls and leaves blow-- and that scene is strikingly rich with movement and detail. I had NO problem whatsoever with the Kodak moments of birds flying, trees growing, or water flowing-- they were outstanding images of exceptional natural beauty, and continually supported the foundation of elemental imagery. It is one of the most intensely gorgeous films I've ever seen, and yet in spots there was so much that was so deeply poignant and tender, with a wounded wild child feel that it can be weighty with a deep tragic sadness.
Tremendously intense, surreal, & sublime, I will see this many many many more times, and I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend it.
10/10!!