It is April. The year is 1607. Three ships carrying 103 men set sail from England to the new world of the Americas representing the royally chartered Virginia Company. Their captain, Christopher Newport (Christopher Plummer), does not know what adventures and mysteries await he and his crew. What he does know is that he will need every able-bodied seaman to ensure his company’s survival. That means he has to be forgiving. That means he has to prolong the life of the rebellious and insubordinate John Smith (Colin Farrell) recently scheduled for hanging.

Good thing, because not only is the popular and energetic Smith too talented a sailor to be lost to the captain, he also inadvertently holds the key to everyone’s survival. Why? America may be a new world to the colonists, but to Chief Powhatan (August Schellenberg) and his people it is a very old one, and the last thing they want is to see their land usurped by mysterious pale-faced visitors. But the conflict between new and old is avoided (for the most part) thanks to a romance, and this love affair will not only allow one culture to make contact with another, it will also go down in history as one of the most storied – and tragic – of all time.

Terrence Mallick, the reclusive genius behind “The Thin Red Line,” “Days of Heaven” and “Badlands,” returns with his fourth feature “The New World” and, like his previous epics, it is of an acquired taste. Those expecting much in the way of narrative, let alone dialogue, in this examination of the romance between European Smith and native princess Pocahontas (Q’Orianka Kilcher) will be severely disappointed. On the other hand, viewers looking to be challenged, searching for something deeper and richer, far more intimately layered, then the normal Hollywood swill will leave the theater with plenty worthwhile to discuss. Mallick is all about the things going on beneath the surface, the things occurring between the words and before the kiss, obsessed with the naturalistic events foretelling destruction.

The first ninety or so minutes here are certainly Mallick at his very best. From the trip across the Atlantic to the settler’s first moments setting foot upon a mysterious new land, there is a richness here that goes well beyond anything I’ve seen before. Mallick is maybe the only filmmaker working today who can bring across tragedy, heartbreak, passion, puzzlement and love purely through visuals. These moments recall the timeless sensitive beauty of the lonely wheat fields in “Days of Heaven,” the sun-drenched race against time in “Badlands” and the collective visceral surreality of warfare in “The Thin Red Line.” This long first section of the film is why so many adore Mallick, why they wholeheartedly embrace him as a genius even with only four features (including this one) sitting upon his resume.

Unsurprisingly, this isn’t exactly an actor’s showcase. The stunningly beautiful Kilcher (only 14 when this was shot) is an ethereally elegant presence and it is easy to see why an adventurer like Smith could fall for her. But that doesn’t mean she has a character to play. Pocahontas is an enigma, and as hard as the girl tries there really isn’t anyplace within Mallick’s cryptic screenplay for her to go.

As Smith, Farrell is physically perfect, I just wish the director had allowed the actor a bit more freedom to flesh out the iconic peacemaker. While he’s better here than he was in his last disastrous historical epic, Oliver Stone’s ill-conceived “Alexander,” it’s still hard to put a finger on just how much better he really is. Still, Farrell’s moments with Kilcher are tender and serene, so lovingly rendered my heart couldn’t help but move. Their affair is chaste and simple, Mallick allowing the lust and electricity of it to shimmer like sunshine rippling across a rambunctiously winding stream.

But “The New World” is not the director at his best. As things progress it becomes evident that, for maybe the very first time, he isn’t all that sure what it is exactly he is trying to say. Like all of his work, he’s shot enough footage for ten pictures, meticulously tinkering with the final edit right up until the movie’s release date. (In this case, after, Mallick trimming almost a half an hour from his cut that hit screens in New York and Los Angeles last December.) With how things ultimately turn out here, it is clear he probably should have kept tinkering, the picture’s final thirty minutes so out of left field and disconnected from the previous two hours they might as well be pieces of an entirely different picture.

This is where the great Christian Bale, portraying British entrepreneur John Rolfe, comes in. He is the man who would ultimately marry Pocahontas, take her back to London and, sadly, see her die thousands of miles away from her home. This subplot, admittedly historically accurate, comes out of nowhere, Farrell disappearing so swiftly and with such jarring suddenness any compassion I might have been feeling for his internal conflict vanishes as quickly as he does. This whole bit is an almost crushing turn of events, the movie’s focus and structure breaking apart into fragments so swiftly it took me out of Mallick’s dreamscape and left me sullen and upset at the brazenness of this shift in tone.

And yet, Mallick doesn’t completely lose his hold. “The New World” still manages to come back together and close with a bang, its final moments so eternal and majestic they literally stilled my breath as I watched them. At that moment, as flawed and disjointed as the film was, as angry and disappointed as I had become, the weight of cultures and their collisions hit home for me like a bullet shot from a gun aimed straight for my rapidly beating heart. These last scenes tore me up, bruised my innards and left me in genuine mourning for the colossal tragedy I had just bore witness to.

For this and this alone Mallick should be applauded. His epic of an old world giving up and a new one taking over isn’t a masterpiece. But it is different, daring to look at complex historical issues with intelligence and an unwaveringly piercing eye. The faults and follies of colonization, empire and nation building are concepts that have made this country, this world, what it is. Whether that is a good thing or not Mallick does not have any answers, only opinions lost in an ocean of time and yet, ironically, maybe playing themselves out all over again in sandy dunes half a world away.

Film Rating: êêê  (out of 4)