"What voice is this that speaks within me, guides me towards the best?"
"We shall build a true commonwealth [where] men shall not make each other their spoil"

— and the film somewhat achieves it, that vision, by poetic means. It's still the old idealism of the colonial venture of America, but it's neutral, contained.

Notice how the European POV is always framed, enclosed or shot through apertures and windows, doors. The naturals are shot in the open, with clear horizons, and addressing that openness.

There's a measure of obscenity when the unnamed P is hoisted into European dress-shoes and habit (and, ironically, soap)… how corny and hypocritical the Christian guff sounds compared with native openness to nature — I guess this is one of the few heavy-handed oppositions of the film.

Note the funereal abstraction of the English gardens; the simultaneous hiding from the child in the maze (in death) and absolution by way of recognising nature everywhere (in or by way of the heart? — again, this is a loose-time edit under Wagner). One thinks of Lawrence and his acutely religious experience of nature and reconciliation with death… of approaching death or suggesting it artistically through indirect perspicacity and open narrative time, like the slight phasing of consciousness in the moment… The film as moment about that moment, stretched wide.

But in all, the detail, the pacing is rich and softly suggestive… that more is revealed every time, with underlying consistency. For instance, the only humanitarian acts are done by natives,.

My one regret is not seeing it on the wide screen.

* From the Wikipedia:
Das Rheingold begins with a 136-bar unmodulating prelude based on the chord of E flat major that is meant to represent the eternal unchanging motions of the River Rhine. It is considered the best known drone piece in the concert repertory, lasting approximately four minutes.