Review: Pocahontas

Directed by: Mike Gabriel & Eric Goldberg

Written by: Carl Binder, Susannah Grant, Philip LaZebnik

Starring: Joe Baker, Christian Bale, Irene Bedard, Billy Connollyl, James Apaumut Fall

Rating: [2.5/5]

Unlikely love stories continually gain the affection of many as individuals with different backgrounds find a way to come together because of a mutual connection that builds between them. A place where issues surrounding them do not matter as much as the feelings brewing between the pair, which Pocahontas seeks to display in one of the most misrepresented love stories ever told. Tack this on with one of the strangest utterances of both siding issues that should universally be seen as one-sided with blatant colonialism.

Landing in the Americas looking for gold, an English fleet that includes John Smith (Mel Gibson) looks to explore the Virginia land where they encounter the Powhatan indigenous tribe. Within them John meets the chief’s daughter Pocahontas (Irene Bedard) and after informing John about the lack of gold in the area, they begin to grow feelings for each other as their two sides prepare for battle. 

Always in a strange place amongst the Disney Princesses, Pocahontas has not received the same notoriety as the others, especially in the world of endless live-action remakes Disney insists on pumping out. This is the case for many reasons that we can delve into with the main one being basing this movie off real people where reality looks starkly different to what this little fantasy seeks to portray through its story. On the surface, the love story of Pocahontas and John Smith has this “Romeo and Juliet” allure to it as they try to meet in the middle as their two sides head into war with each other. A sweet idea, but when the truth reveals what actually transpired between this pair, it really takes the shine away from the whole experience. This mostly transpires with the good intentions of the film but its lackluster approach of painting both sides of these issues as equally bad.

This film presents the issue of the English and the Indigenous as equally aggressive in their endeavor to get rid of the other, which feels like a strange false equivalence. One side sought to protect themselves against a threat loudly making their way towards them. The English make it quite clear they are here for the gold and will stop at nothing to obtain it even if it comes at the expense of the individuals already living there. Therefore, as we have these songs prepping for this upcoming issue between these two painting the Indigenous and the colonizers under the same brush comes across as disingenuous. An effort made by Disney that makes sense given they did not want to ruffle some feathers but they could easily avoid that by going purely fictional with this story as opposed to real individuals who actually went through this particular struggle. 

However, we’re not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater here as this feature has elements to appreciate, which mostly appears in the songs. Much like many of Disney’s best animated films, they have memorable music that help explain and set the stage for these characters. From the song “Savages” and “Just Around the Riverbed,” they capture the emotion of their situation and how it plays into the mindset of these characters. This provides this timeless quality to the film that helps retain some magic. The music gets coupled well with the animation within the Disney Renaissance period of the 1990s that completely flipped the script on how these animated films sat in the public consciousness. Beautiful hand-drawn animation gives this feature a distinct aesthetic that we barely see anymore from this studio, which only further defines what made this a golden generation of this department. 

Years later and still relatively mixed on this experience, Pocahontas has its heart in the right place in presenting this love story in the midst of some troubling time. It does so by pairing Smith and our titular together as a way to broker peace between their people when in all reality there was one aggressor causing all the issues here. A misguided approach to utilizing real world situations to directly influence a magical animated tale leading to the issues we see continually compound but there still remains fragments of enjoyable elements that allow it to maintain some appreciation.