POCAHONTAS
A film review by Jeffrey Graebner
Copyright 1995 Jeffrey Graebner
In order to avoid the crowds of young children, I have long had a policy of seeing Disney's new animated features at the latest possible opening-night showing. Since these showings are well past bedtime for most children, the audience is primarily made up of adults. Attending these showings has helped to underscore a recent, general change in the audience for these films. When I saw BEAUTY AND THE BEAST at the late showing, there were fewer than ten people in the theater. For POCAHONTAS, the show was nearly sold-out.
While Disney's animated features have always been well-suited for children, each of their recent efforts (primarily going back to THE LITTLE MERMAID) have increasingly been directed at a much wider audience. Each new film has had a greater maturity and an increased willingness to introduce serious themes that will be best appreciated by the adults in the audience. POCAHONTAS is by far Disney's most serious and dramatic animated feature to date. It is also one of their best.
Prior to the release of POCAHONTAS (and even after it, to an extent) there has been a great deal of controversy surrounding the fact that this is Disney's first animated portrayal of an event from American history. Historians questioned whether or not Disney would treat the subject with respect. They didn't need to worry. The film features some of the most vividly believable human characters ever portrayed through animation and a powerfully dramatic and well-balanced storyline. The movie does not make the Indians into unrealistic saints or the British into unredeemable villains. Instead, it portrays them all as human beings and explores their very real prejudices and fear of the unknown.
Admittedly, the film certainly isn't a very accurate portrayal of history, but it is a bit hard to tell what *is* true with the story of Pocahontas. About the only thing that historians agree on about the Pocahontas story is that nobody knows what really happened. On one hand, many historians argue that Pocahontas probably was much younger when she met John Smith than she is portrayed in the film. On the other hand, many other historians cite evidence that suggest that the two may never have met *at all*. In the long run, the story has become more legend than reality (and Disney has always used the word "legend" when discussing this film). Disney was probably correct to simply do whatever worked best dramatically. Most importantly, the film remains very true to the *spirit* of the story.
While the characters are very human, they clearly are living in the same fantasy universe where all Disney animated features take place. It is a world where magic really exists and where animals have real personalities (wisely, though, the animal characters do not talk in this film). This doesn't seem to be an inappropriate setting for telling the legend of POCAHONTAS. The fantasy elements of the film are clearly derived from the spirituality and deep love for the natural world that are very much a part of American Indian culture.
Even though they are animated, it is obvious from the very first scenes of this film that the human characters are not just cartoons. We first meet the British sailors as they are saying farewell to their loved ones before embarking on the journey to America. In these few brief shots, we are able to immediately see them as real people with lives that go beyond the story being told in the film.
Disney's system of assigning teams of animators to specific characters really paid off here. By having small groups of animators concentrate all of their effort on just one character, they are able to create very distinctive personalities. In particular, the characters in this film feature very natural and *consistent* facial expressions and body language. The audience can read a great deal of emotion simply by watching the faces, much as you can with talented live-action actors. The American Indian characters are animated with a somewhat angular style that may take a little getting used to for viewers more familiar with the traditionally more rounded look of Disney's human characters. This style helps to make the characters very distinctive and to provide an appropriate ethnicity.
The voice actors are also all very well matched to the characters' personalities. The animators take advantage of the expressiveness of the actors' voices and appropriately match it with body language. American Indian actors provide the speaking voices for all of the American Indian characters, lending a certain authenticity. Irene Bedard as Pocahontas and Russell Means as Powhatan are particularly good. As John Smith, Mel Gibson's voice is recognizable but not distracting. The animators obviously studied Gibson as he is occasionally recognizable in Smith's facial expressions. Among the other British characters, David Ogden Stiers is particularly notable in that he plays *two* characters providing both with very distinctive voices.
While all of the human characters in the film are well-realized, Pocahontas and John Smith provide the core of the story. Both are among the finest characters that Disney has ever created. The first thing that is noticed about Pocahontas is how strikingly beautiful she is, but soon her imagination, intelligence and inner strength capture the majority of our attention. The character shares the sense of wonder and vivid imagination of other Disney heroines, but there is an overall complexity to the character that they have rarely achieved before.
Smith is also quite complex. He is the character that grows and changes the most over the course of the film, but it isn't a radical or unnatural change. His reputation as an expert "savage hunter" is presented from the beginning, but it doesn't take long to learn that there is much more to him than this. He has the spirit of an explorer with an active passion for discovery. Smith and Pocahontas really do seem to connect in the film. It seems a bit odd to talk about chemistry between two drawn characters, but the word does apply.
Beyond the two leads, the film manages to remain focused on a small, easily managed group of characters. Of the Englishman, we primarily become acquainted with two supporting characters. Governor Ratcliffe is the leader of the expedition and the film's main human villain. Thomas is a young sailor who is torn between loyalty to Smith and his duty to Ratcliffe. Of the Indians, there are three main supporting characters. Powhatan is the chief of the tribe and Pocahontas' father. Kocoum is a powerful warrior who is Powhatan's choice for Pocahontas to marry and who represents a possible "safe" path for Pocahontas' life to take. Finally, Nakoma is Pocahontas' best friend and confidant.
None of these supporting characters are allowed to overwhelm the central story of Pocahontas and John Smith, but instead they are truly allowed to *support* that story. The central theme of this film is the dangers of ignorance and prejudice and each of these characters help to provide characters that demonstrate those emotions. Late in the film, the prejudices and concerns of these characters spark a powerful incident that leads to the film's climax. The final twenty minutes or so of the film are among the most serious and intense events ever portrayed in a Disney film.
Some may complain that Ratcliffe is a relatively weak villain for a Disney film, where the villains are often the most interesting characters. In truth, Ratcliffe is *not* the main villain in this film. The real villains are the much more abstract concepts mentioned above. Ratcliffe simply serves as a personification of ignorance. In addition, Ratcliffe's overwhelming greed (a desire to find gold consistently remains his main motivation) prevents him from ever opening his eyes to the reality of the situation. Still, even the more sympathetic characters, including, at first, both Pocahontas and John Smith, are required to overcome their ignorance.
One of the most unusual devices used in this film is to give Pocahontas a spirit mentor who takes the form of a talking tree, voiced by Linda Hunt with a great deal of wit. Grandmother Willow serves as a conscience and guide for Pocahontas and eventually for John Smith as well. She is also used as an ingenious way to dispense with the language gap between the two main characters. This is a device that really can only work in animation, where suspension of disbelief comes somewhat more easily. Unfortunately, the film does drop the ball a bit when the *other* Indian and British characters try to interact. It is not entirely clear who can understand whom.
The general story and themes of this film are quite serious and the tone of the film reflects that. That doesn't mean that the movie does not contain some very welcome comic relief. The vast majority of the comedy is provided by the animal characters. Pocahontas is given a raccoon named Meeko and a hummingbird named Flit as her constant companions. The animals do not speak, but they are given very distinctive personalities. A third animal, Ratcliffe's spoiled pet dog Percy, eventually becomes mixed up with Meeko and Flit as well. While these animals frequently bring visual humor to the film, they also are an active part of the story. Writers Carl Binder, Susannah Grant and Phillip LaZebnik manage to use the relationship between Meeko and Percy to draw a parallel to the conflict between the British and the Indians.
Like the vast majority of Disney's animated features, POCAHONTAS is a musical. The songs by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Stephen Schwartz are exceptionally well integrated into the film. Often, the segue to the songs is so smooth that they actually seem to be a part of the dialog. Among Disney's animated musicals, only BEAUTY AND THE BEAST came close to integrating the music so completely into the story. This level of integration may prevent the songs from seeming as "memorable" since they lose a lot of their meaning taken out of the context of the film. It is really most important for the music to serve the film, though, and this music does that *very* well.
Several months before the film was released, Disney used the entire performance of the song "Colors of the Wind" in a trailer. As a result, many people had already seen this sequence before the film came out. On its own, it was impressive (and probably helped to sell the film), but it is a bit of a shame that most viewers will not get to experience it for the first time in its proper context. In the film, this song is the point where John Smith's point-of-view truly begins to change and it is quite powerful despite its familiarity.
Menken and Schwartz provide a surprisingly hard-hitting song called "Savages" that leads up to the film's emotional climax. This is a very gritty and angry song that is not likely to ever be featured on Disney's child-oriented "sing along" collections. Menken and Schwartz deserve a great deal of credit for being willing to push the envelope with this song. Unfortunately, Disney did decide to tone the lyrics down a bit just prior to the film's release (the original lyrics are still included on the original pressing of the soundtrack CD). It is a shame that Disney was unwilling to let Schwartz's lyrics maintain their full impact.
As good as POCAHONTAS is, it still suffers from a problem common to Disney's recent features. While they have been willing to deal with more serious and adult themes in their films, they still refuse to drop their limits on the running time. POCAHONTAS is actually only 80 minutes long and it definitely would have benefited from a little additional time. The recent Disney films have all rushed the middle act a bit and that is once again the problem here. The romance between Pocahontas and John Smith is not given quite as much attention as it deserves.
It has been widely reported that a romantic duet between the two characters was deleted late in the production (the music from the song is still incorporated into Menken's background score and a pop version plays over the end-credits). It is fairly obvious where the song *should* have gone and it may have been a mistake to remove it. The scene in question is one of the film's more dramatic moments, but it did leave me feeling that it needed something a bit more.
POCAHONTAS is yet another triumph from Disney's animation department and is sure to be on my list of the best films of 1995. It tells a powerful story that truly touched me emotionally.
-- Jeffrey P. Graebner Columbus, Ohio
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