I wrote the script for this back in May and June, and filmed for almost two weeks straight in July.
A lot of people have asked me about the plot. The truth is that while individual events aren't vague (for example, the natives are my imagining of the North American mound culture), the entire film isn't really supposed to have a definite "truth" to it, let alone have a meaning or message. It certainly isn't religious, though I think I wanted it to have a certain mystical quality to it.
There were a lot of different influences for this; I think some of the strongest were Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, Werner Herzog's Aguirre, The Wrath of God, and Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man.