The New World Review

Emmanuel Lubezki shot this almost entirely in available light on wide lenses, and the result looks photographed by someone standing in the grass rather than working behind a camera. Reeds, water, smoke, the low winter sun coming through the Virginia woods: Malick cuts between these and the human story with equal weight, which is either the point or the problem depending on your patience.

Q'orianka Kilcher was fourteen when she played Pocahontas and she is astonishing, all curiosity and physical freedom early on, then slowly compressed into corsets and stillness by the time she reaches England. Colin Farrell is the weak link. The voiceover gives John Smith a tormented inner life the performance never shows, and whole stretches of the first hour circle the same few thoughts about paradise and betrayal.

Christian Bale arrives late as John Rolfe and does something quietly difficult, playing a decent man who knows he is the second choice and never says so out loud. The Wagner prelude over the arriving ships, the mud and hunger inside the fort that winter, the last scenes in a clipped English garden: those stay with you long after the narration has blurred.