Thanksgiving is unique among American holidays because it’s not simply political, like Independence Day, which belongs only to Americans, nor simply a religious celebration shared among all Christians, like Christmas or Easter. It’s a mix of the two, but it is also more emphatically than others a family celebration. It is legally established, part of our political institutions, but it points back before them to something more fundamental, which suggests theology.

　　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. The actress who played Pocahontas, Qorianka Kilcher, was also nominated for many prizes, reflecting media and critical sensitivity to stories about Native Americans at about the time the older American word, Indians, had begun to embarrass them. But the public ignored Malick’s attempt to add to the telling of American history—The New World was too moody and full of philosophical soliloquies for success at that time. After failing in theaters, though, it has slowly, over almost two decades, found its audience through digital media and is increasingly recognized for its humanity as much as its artistry.

　　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 Peoples 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. One is tempted to call her vision of freedom childish wonder, as though it did not include an awareness of suffering or strife. One sees in the beautiful scenes that tell her story something immediately recognizable—the paradise American parents still try to offer their children. But beyond our young, there is the matter of the youth of America and perhaps a perpetual youthfulness. There is a nobility about the Indians in The New World that reminds us of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. American literature from its infancy included this vision of freedom, of the frontier, a genre we have since come to call the Western. Its suggestion is that Americans are metaphorically part Indian, because they share in wonder at the possibilities and grandeur of the continent they discovered. The wilderness as much as the plenty America offered constitutes freedom from the restraints of the Old World.

　　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 feel joy.

　　The second vision of freedom is that of Captain John Smith (played by Colin Farrell, in one of the defining roles of his career). John Smith is an adventurer, to some extent at odds with his fellow Englishmen, and therefore the first among them to sense the freedom before them. By accident, he mingles with the Indians—the man who falls in love with Pocahontas, who finds herself falling in love with him as well. This is the Romantic aspect of the story—not just love, but the belief that through romantic love we come to self-knowledge, that we can define ourselves and finally achieve the completeness that always escapes us in our community, which must somehow sacrifice our claim to uniqueness.

　　This may look like juvenile, teenaged love, yet it, too, immediately reminds us of ourselves—of the clueless but irrepressible passion that ran away with our popular culture after the sophisticated big band era but before the coarsening of hip hop. Malick presents romance as something at once selfish and innocent, neglectful of the world but also eager to somehow share with everyone this overpowering joy. The love of Pocahontas and John Smith proves that there are limits to our ways of life and there is something beyond them, that being human is not the same thing as being English; but it is doomed love—he’s bound to other adventures, he cares above all about his political ambitions and a vision of a future perhaps comparable with Francis Drake or at least Walter Raleigh. Although he wanders farthest among the Indians, he is also bound the tightest to England, so he breaks the girl’s heart.

　　The Puritan Origins of America

　　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 offers Pocahontas something resembling grace—he saves her in her despair and in a way helps her to become an adult, if adulthood involves living with a broken heart. There is something as remarkable in the strength of her passion, which may prove deadly, as in his self-control, which may find its explanation or its meaning in his faith. Theirs is the love that leads to marriage and family, and which therefore requires religion, because it requires a promise for the future and a strength that human beings, subject to change, naturally lack.

　　Captain John Smith was a potential ruler—for a while he was governor of Jamestown—and he could have given America his more aristocratic character. It is perhaps only fickleness that stops him. John Rolfe is comparatively un-romantic, without ardor or martial prowess. He reminds us of the responsible citizens of our middle-class society. But the portrait is complicated by the faith that defines him. There is a secret strength in his weakness, his ability to endure; and though he gives himself over to passion more slowly, he abandons himself without reserve when he does.

　　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?

　　Malick’s cinema, although it is built on beautiful imagery, famously employing as many natural settings and lighting as possible, requires something like the interpretation I have offered, with stages of argument or development of a concept—he’s after all, our only director to have come out of the study of existentialist philosophy, especially Heidegger. Not coincidentally, he is the only director one could call a master to have focused on American stories with a view to religion, to a concern for authenticity or reflection on and deepening of experience that points in the direction of soul rather than our fashionable soullessness.

　　So let me close by wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving. I have to the best of my ability avoided spoiling the plot of the movie, the fate of these characters, so that surprise may charm you. But in 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.