Pocahontas 1995

[8.0/10] I don’t know what to do with movies like Birth of a Nation or Triumph of the Will, films that represented important advances in cinema technique and whose influence is still being felt today, but whose subject matter and messages were utterly abhorrent. Pocahontas is nowhere near as morally repugnant as these films glamorizing the Klan or Hitler, but it still forces us to reconcile an amazing technical achievement with an unfortunate flattening and distortion of history.

The 1995 Disney release tells the story of John Smith and the Virginia Company reaching “the New World.” Little do they realize (or, more accurately, care) that there is a tribe of indigienous people living there, most notably Pocahontas, the headstrong, free spirited daughter of the local chieftain. She and Smith fall in love. She teaches him the beauty and connectedness of nature. And, of course, their love and bravery love help resolve the mutual prejudices of the British settlers and the Powhatan tribe (save for the unctuous Governor Radcliffe).

The problem is this is a massively bowdlerized version of the real story. That’s nothing especially new for Disney. Much of Pocahontas’s story feels of a piece with the studios other princess movies, most notably The Little Mermaid, where quick love stories rule the day and the hard edges have been sanded down.

But there’s something more pernicious about softening actual history than in adapting old fairy tales. The movie’s love story feels more than a little gross when you learn that Pocahontas was a preteen during the events depicted (and, not for nothing, the romance may thankfully never have happened at all). It glosses over other unpleasant and disturbing parts of her story in service of an easy tale of love bringing understanding between two peoples. (And hey, that’s before the uncomfortableness of watching a kids movie starring Mel Gibson these ways, which is its own satchel of hummingbirds.)

Even if you can forgive that as standard Disney sap, there’s something far worse about how the film transforms the real history of colonization, a brutal affair that’s left scars on indigenous communities to this day, and all but sweeps it under the rug. That brutality is turned into a “both sides have their prejudices” late-movie tune, and a “we’ve learned that we’re not so different and can live in peace” ending that ignores the harsh realities of what followed. The standard Disney “happily ever after” lands much harder when real people are still healing from the awful truth centuries later.

Despite that, Pocahontas, while provincial, has its heart in the right place. Sure, there’s some bland nineties corporate inclusivity at play, but the thrust of the movie’s showpiece “Colors of the Wind” number is that the settlers, despite their pretensions to civilization and superiority, are the ones who are naive and ought to be taught. The film’s antagonist is a representation of the idea that greedy, social-climbing capitalists will harness and stoke prejudices to paper over their naked cash grabs and veiled efforts to bilk the workers, to whom they think themselves just as superior, something more than a little radical for Disney.
Hell, there’s even some decent comic satire of colonial arrogance when Governor Radcliffe rhetorically inquires why the Powhatans attacked them, and his valet responds, “Because we invaded their land and cut down their trees and dug up their earth?” The film does indulge in some reductive “noble savage” tropes, and its “both sides”-ism feels particularly quaint from the vantage point of 2020, but the movie is raising these issues, even if it can’t satisfactorily grapple with them in the confines of a cuddly kids film.

And yet, if you can set aside the bundle of thorns that is the movie’s historical revisionism, mixed-bag messaging, and prejudice-spouting star, you will be treated to one of Disney’s most gorgeous, euphonious musical films ever.

Pocahontas is awash in a stunning palette of sunset hues. Glowing blues, pinks, and purples sufuse the film, adding to the spiritual tenor of the piece in places, but also just showing off the brilliant paintings that Disney’s animators and design team could create. It’s more revisionism, but the movie manages to make the fetid swamp that is Jamestown look like a series of impossibly scenic vistas, each more inviting and idyllic than the last. True to the movie’s themes, the setting and the land come alive in almost every scene.

That’s to say nothing of the film’s wonderful effects and elemental work. The movie is draped in fog and vapor, with the two lovers seeing each other through the mists and the warring peoples’ anger and hatred represented in a collision of smoke. Water is an essential visual motif in the picture, and its flows and splashes and settles on the screen with all the unpredictable fluidity its real life counterpart.

Time and again, the movie returns to characters’ reflections (Hello Mulan fans!), using funhouse mirror distortions or natural shifts in perception to reflect the same in our heroes or villains. And the wind is just as much a thematic landmark for Pocahontas, conveyed beautifully in the swirl of leaves through secluded setting, or just the waves of the title character’s tresses in the mountainside gusts. If you watched this film on mute, you would still be in for a treat based on the film’s aesthetics alone.

But if you did that, you would miss Pocahontas’s wonderful songs. Composer Alan Menken returns after his triumphs in The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, and has not, if you’ll pardon the expression, missed a beat. Menken knows how to create the soaring rush of a major moment with his score, but also finds creative rhythms and stacking melodies in the film’s choruses. He prepares a sonic feast here, with melodies that suit the movie’s needs and stick in your brain.

By the same token, the lyrics of Disney newcomer Stephen Schwartz (who would go on to write Wicked), are pithy and often clever. At times, his words lack subtlety. (“They’re different from us, which means they can’t be trusted,” may be the most thudding lyric in Disney history.) But particularly when he’s writing for Radcliffe, Schwartz finds a comic edge and drops some sharp lines. Purely as a musical, Pocahontas is unimpeachable.
Lest it otherwise be forgotten, Pocahontas is not just a love story or a musical or an attempt at history -- it’s also a cartoon! The movie remembers this in scenes featuring Meeko the racoon and Percy the pug. The pair’s lighthearted Tom and Jerry routine doesn't fulfill Disney's legally mandated animal sidekick requirements, but allows the animation team to craft all kinds of amusing, slapstick sequences to keep the kiddies smiling and show off the funny animal bona fides that helped give animation a foot in the door.

That comic relief is a welcome tonic to a solid, if unspectacular plot. Make no mistake, separate and apart from the social and moral issues surrounding the film, this is a fairly standard Disney princess story (albeit one in service of a woman of color), with all the shopworn trappings that come with that. Pocahontas is independent and doesn't want to listen to her father. She and her beau fall in love at first sight. They bridge their differences and help avert the final conflict. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And yet, the script is supremely solid and functional. Every character’s major motivation and personality is established and built to intersect. Secondary characters like Pocahontas’s fiance or the young colonist who admires John Smith are given good reason to act and intervene. The essential themes of the movie are baked into even the smallest interactions. Even Radcliffe is a delight of a villain -- officious, small-minded, greedy, and insecure -- making him a memorable baddie. The narrative here is no great shakes apart from the broader problems it invokes, but it works as a structure on which to build the film’s visual and musical glory.

It’s just hard to separate that glory from all of those problems. Pocahontas is a great movie despite those undeniable issues that hover around the film. It’s virtuoso visuals, exceptional soundtrack, and dazzling animation should earn it a place of pride in the grand Disney pantheon. Nevertheless, those wonderful features are inseparable from the difficult truths the movie either whitewashes or rewrites for popular consumption.

It’s still a film that any animation buff should watch, and whose beauty and melodies are worth being shared with the younger members of the audience. But any screening for the kiddos should be followed by a long chat, about what really happened and about how tricky it can be to appreciate art that dazzles the eye and pleases the ear, while remaking or ignoring so many real life scars.