I remember once reading about a pundit who criticized William F. Buckley for writing his columns too quickly: “In twenty minutes, flat.”

“Too little time for serious contemplation of difficult subjects,” the writer contended. Buckley countered that drawing upon his knowledge, prejudice, priorities, instinct, etc., that short span left him more than enough time to arrive at correct conclusions on most any matter.

Buckley finished by observing of himself, “’Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?' I couldn’t think of anyone. And I devoted myself to the exercise—twenty minutes, flat.

I now think Buckley had a point. Sometimes too much contemplation of a subject—say, 25 years worth—simply serves to cloud it. Too much navel-gazing at a pet project tricks the mind into thinking every notion, however indulgent, represents some artistic insight waiting to be born.

This certainly seems to be the case with Terrence Malick’s third film in his 32-year career: The New World.

Like every story of Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher) previously told, the film centers on her relationship with John Smith (Colin Farrel), a sea captain employed to find gold in the Indies. Exploring for locals to trade with, Smith stumbles across the Powhatan tribe near what will become Jamestown. Not sure what to make of the white warrior, the Powhatan chief imprisons Smith and sentences him to death. But before the sentence can be carried out, the chief’s beloved youngest daughter throws herself on Smith’s neck and begs her father for his life.

The rest is history…or at least fantasy.

From there, Smith and Pocahontas gaze at each other in the woods, uttering interminably long and elegiac inner monologues. In between, the camera lingers on rushing streams, scarlet sunsets, waving grass and other sylvan images. A few are arresting in their beauty and placement. Most are about as exciting as a nature program with no narration and no wildlife.

At the risk of over-politicizing, this juxtaposition of nature along with the idealization of tribal existence, which is portrayed as a paradise peopled with noble savages, suggests a notion neither original nor insightful—namely, that there was no death or violence in the New World until the white man brought it there.

Smith describes the “Naturals,” as he calls them, as having no jealousy or sense of possession among them. “They know no slander, envy, or forgiveness,” observes Smith (one can’t help but notice the inclusion of forgiveness, suggesting that acknowledgment of human guilt before God is one cause of the West’s problems, our sense of “possessing things” being the other).

Contrast this to the Jamestown settlement in which, save Smith himself, the most appalling, insectile inhabitants dwell.

Children with rancid boils on their faces rattle on unintelligibly except when they’re uttering lines like “Someone et’ his ‘ands.” [Someone ate his hands.] Dirty, snaggle-toothed wretches wrangle, cheat and posture to usurp Smith’s title as leader. And not a single man, despite having managed to sail halfway across the world, has any notion of how to feed himself short of cannibalism.

Not surprisingly, Smith jumps when his employers present him a chance to explore other shores and other Indian maidens. Continued...