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The opening sequence of Terrence Malick's The New World—a dramatic re-visioning of the 17th century legend of John Smith and Pocahontas, opening January 20—is a stunning musical/visual overture of hope and birth, set to Wagner's swirling, slow-building Das Rheingold prologue. The deeply romantic music, accompanied by a cornucopia of images reflecting the initial landings of English ships in Virginia, captures in a 10-minute nutshell why Malick is one of the most distinctive, revered, and mysterious voices in cinema today.

The New World is just the fourth feature in Malick's 32-plus-year career, which only fuels the writer/director's cult mystique. The filmmaker made two classics in the 1970s, Badlands (1973) and Days of Heaven (1978)—but then dropped off of the industry map for two decades before returning with 1998's WWII epic, The Thin Red Line. The infrequency of Malick's filmmaking, combined with his hermit-like abstention from the media, has made him an icon of artistic mystery to the tune of, perhaps, a J.D. Salinger. But Malick is more than just an intriguing auteur. He is an example of how cinema as artistic form can express ineffable truths by poetically examining the way the world is.

'The New World' is only Malick's fourth film in more than three decades

What little we know of Malick's history helps in unlocking his mystery. Born in 1943, he grew up on a Texas farm, attended Harvard, was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, and studied cinema at the American Film Institute. He was a freelance journalist for Life, New Yorker and Newsweek. He has a great knowledge and love of American art and literature. But perhaps most illuminating is Malick's philosophical side—literally. He studied philosophy in college and went on to teach it at MIT, becoming something of an expert on the German existentialist Martin Heidegger, even translating some of Heidegger's shorter works into English.

Malick's affinity for Heidegger is a focal point for understanding his films, especially the aesthetic styles that are Malick trademarks. Heidegger and Malick share the idea that the world reveals itself to us through our moods and emotion, not cognition and rationalism. Thus, it is easier to understand Malick's de-emphasis of plot in favor of flowing imagery and "natural encounter" cinema—films not as interested in how the world is, but that it is. For many viewers, such an unconventional method is off-putting, but for those who are open to more experiential cinema, Malick's organic, spur-of-the-moment style is a beautiful trademark. The NewWorld producer Sarah Green echoes this: "Terry is not big on convention; he's big on what has an impact on him in the moment."

For Malick, like Heidegger, truth and beauty exist most fully in the unexplained and momentary experience of encounter—evidenced in Malick's visceral brand of filmmaking. Indeed, a Malick signature is the primacy and invasive "thereness" of nature, whether in close-ups of dying animals (Badlands), glistening vistas of blowing wheat fields (Days of Heaven), or shimmering sunlit rivers in a dark, unexplored land (The New World). But beyond the visual, Malick echoes Heidegger's claims in his refusal to morally judge or even attempt to explain the actions of his characters. There are no heroes or villains in Malick; just humans from all walks of life, on all sides of the central struggle of existence.

The New World brings this ambiguity to the forefront, tackling a sensitive topic without passing any blame. Malick sides neither with the indigenous "Naturals" (as they are called in the film) nor with the "civilized" Christian Europeans, but instead focuses on how they might coexist (however precariously) and forge a new, hybrid nationality. As the film makes so very clear, blame, vengeance and lamentation do little to move things forward. Instead, as Pocahontas (stunningly portrayed by newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher) shows us, we must try to be happy in spite of life's difficulties. 

This "living in spite of" theme is found in each of Malick's films. Badlands follows a Bonnie & Clyde pair of teenagers on the road, trying to live peacefully in spite of their murder spree and inevitable capture. Days of Heaven explores the dying pastoral myth in the face of jealousy, murder, and the onset of modernism. The Thin Red Line embodies the existential ponderings of soldiers confronting mortality. Each film exhibits the precarious balance of life—between being and non-being, light and dark, good and evil, etc.—a concept straight out of Heidegger's notion of "dwelling."

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