The New World

If you've not seen it, I highly recommend it. Gorgeously photographed, it's a slow, meditative look at the first encounters between the colonists at Jamestown and the "Naturals" as they were called by the English settlers. The story is character driven and is not the common "1492 and the Conquest of Paradise" fare where all Europeans are earth raping thugs and all Natives are noble eco-gods living in harmony with Mother Earth. Terence Malick takes some remarkable chances by showing a Native (his heroine, Pocahontas) embracing Christianity in a way that does not crush her own spirituality but completes it. I can't do justice to a film as rich and complex as this one in the space of a blog entry (I've gotta get going and write some stuff today) but I wanted to recommend this fine film.