Terrence Malick’s Thanksgiving Masterpiece: The New World

Titus Techera (Law & Liberty), Terrence Malick’s Thanksgiving Masterpiece:

Thanksgiving could be understood in one of two ways. In the ordinary sense, we give thanks for good things received. Generosity and gratitude are somehow the foundational aspects of justice, each giving and getting what he deserves. As a virtue, thanksgiving is a moral affirmation of humanity in helping one another—but crucially not one we can establish as a law. This is part of Thanksgiving, but it’s not the core, because it is only a conclusion. Only after receiving a benefit do we become grateful.

The extraordinary sense of thanksgiving is emphatically religious because it is about hope, our thankfulness before we receive that for which we hope, what it is that we most strongly feel we need. It concerns divine providence, grace without which our families and communities would be uncertain of their future or their ground. Unsurprisingly, this is very difficult to talk about publicly, both because the subject is difficult and because in a secularizing society, we’re only dimly aware of the wellsprings of our way of life. It may be easier to turn to an artistic reconstruction of our history, our origins, because that places outside ourselves, in view of everyone, an interpretation of our secret beliefs.

The Problem of Freedom
Terrence Malick attempted such a tale of America as seen in its beginnings in The New World, which was intended for a Thanksgiving 2005 release, but, due to difficulties in editing, came out in December of that year. The movie’s remarkable beauty was immediately noticed and, accordingly, Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography was nominated for the Oscar.

The New World is the story of the princess Pocahontas as well as the English settling of North America at Jamestown, in Virginia. …

Malick set himself the task of reconciling conservative defenders of America with liberal critics of the evils of the past well before the age of “land acknowledgments,” “settler colonialism,” and the rest of the academic accusations that have now become too familiar from our culture wars. Unlike the fashionable leftwing attacks on American history in the 80s or 90s, such as Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States or Noam Chomsky’s Year 501: The Conquest Continues, Malick defends old-fashioned patriotism and, unlike many conservatives, insists that the character of the American freedom established by the English in North America depends on their religious faith, on their awareness of the need for grace. The reconciliation he offers is revealed through the tragic conflict between Indians and English, which requires Americans, who are somehow the children of that conflict, to understand how much suffering there was at the origins—to remember their origins so that they understand they still need faith.

There are three visions of freedom in The New World which demonstrate the mysterious origins of the American way of life. First comes the Powhatan princess herself, Pocahontas. … The second vision of freedom is that of Captain John Smith. … The third vision of freedom, however, is the core of The New World—the vision of the Puritan John Rolfe (played by Christian Bale in a tense, restrained manner that complements his famous turn as Batman in Nolan’s Batman Begins the same year). …

Rolfe’s character is how Malick makes perhaps his most old-fashioned or unpopular suggestion. The English brought a lot of suffering to the new world—but they also brought the Gospel. The beauty of Heaven surpasses the beauty of even the terrestrial paradise that is America, because it includes a way to understand and deal with suffering and death. It would be perhaps easy to disagree with him if we did not stop to look at ourselves: What is more beautiful than California, yet is not that place of natural beauty full of human misery? …

[I]n turning to Terrence Malick to celebrate Thanksgiving, we’re turning to a vision of America that has room for delicacy of sentiment and in a way for an elevation of longing, something akin to those emotions we cannot quite describe but which come over us unbidden and which we associate with patriotic occasions. I cannot think of a movie more concerned with evoking that mood—Malick is gentle in his exploration of what moves the American heart, but he’s decided, and he wants his audience to ponder why we are tempted to cry when we experience joy.