BEFORE: It's raining today in NYC, which would only be a problem if it were a big travel day or something. I'm fortunate that I still live within driving distance of my parents, relatively speaking, so we don't have to drive anywhere until tomorrow morning. I spent about a decade meeting up with my parents on Thanksgiving at my aunt and uncle's house in Rockland County, and I feel that all those years of holiday travel have given me something of a pass - now for Thanksgiving I can choose where I want to go, or to choose nowhere if I want. But after another three years of driving out to Long Island to spend the day with my wife's brother's in-laws, this time we're going to drive up to New Haven, which had the foresight to position itself roughly halfway between NYC and Boston, and meet up with my parents for lunch tomorrow. One of New Haven's finer restaurants (I hope) will be providing the food, my mother and I can always cook a turkey together for Christmas.
I had the foresight about 6 months ago to buy two pairs of sneakers instead of one, which came in quite handy when the weather forced me to admit that I've worn some considerable holes in the first pair. It's like I bought myself a gift on layaway. Speaking of gifts, I've got to get moving on Christmas stuff. This Friday simply MUST be the day where I pick the tracks for my Christmas mix CD, and then comes the dubbing and the labelling and the mailing of cards and CDs. Then I've got to make lists (I love lists...) of gifts and where to look for them, and then there will be a flurry of internet ordering - you won't catch me at the mall on Black Friday, I assure you. But after one more film I've got to put movies on hold to catch up on holiday preparations.
Linking from "The New World", two actors carry over - Christian Bale and Irene Bedard, which is kind of amazing considering that both movies cover almost exactly the same material.
THE PLOT: An English soldier and the daughter of an Algonquin chief share a romance when English colonists invade seventeenth-century Virginia.
AFTER: Once again, DisneyCorp. has seen fit to whitewash history. Of course, with any life portrayed on screen, there are decisions to be made about what to leave in and what to take out, so no biopic can ever be considered complete, unless the running time matches the person's natural lifetime. But with the story of Pocahontas it's pretty telling what was depicted, and what wasn't.
First off, even though it was the first Disney animated feature to be based on a real person, being the chief's daughter made her technically a princess, so you just know that's why DisneyCorp. was eager to tell her story. Nothing like holding up another princess for little girls to aspire becoming someday... OK, so she's not Caucasian, which makes it seem like a step forward, but is it really? She is depicted as a woman who is unable to define herself other than through her future husband, so to me that's a big red flag, and a sign that we haven't really progressed as fast and as far as one might think. Some stories maintained that she had a husband in the tribe before she fell in with John Smith, but of course they're going to just sweep that under the rug for a kid's story. Additionally, history estimates her age as 12 or 13, not as an older teen as depicted here - we can't show cradle-robbing, now can we? (also, she probably would have walked around topless, but I understand some concessions must be made for a kiddie film...)
Similarly, this story only covers the period that includes Pocahontas meeting Smith, their romance and tours through the animated Virginia countryside, and then their parting after Smith is injured and forced to return to England. Man, that's a hell of a long ambulance ride. At least in this version Smith doesn't feed her the "I couldn't call you, I was dead" line. But there's no mention of the love triangle that includes John Rolfe - because god forbid that a kid's film suggest that relationships are at all complicated. Nope, you meet your true love, and if you screw it up, you don't get another shot. That ship has sailed - literally, it's leaving with the tide.
The relationship between Pocahontas and Rolfe constitutes the first interracial marriage in American history. Doesn't it seem like that might be the more powerful story? Shouldn't that be celebrated and depicted, instead of her dalliance with John Smith? Although it was the first interracial romance seen in a Disney film, I guess that's something. (Ah, I'm being told that Disney did produce a sequel, in which Pocahontas meets Rolfe and subsequently travels to London. Never mind. Carry on.)
Honestly, though, no one really knows the true nature of the relationship between Pocahontas and Smith. Smith wrote his journals in the third person, so we don't get a lot of insight into where his head was at. Seems like he was kind of ambivalent about it, if you ask me. You'd think if he was tapping that, he'd at least brag about it. But it was a different time, when some men were gentlemen, I guess. The first account of their romance didn't appear until 1803, and that's quite a distance to be speculating from.
As for Smith, "The New World" made allusions to his mutinous behavior on the way to the New World, but this film depicts him jumping overboard to save a comrade. That's quite a discrepancy - but everything's conjecture, really. However, it's just so blatant that everything was made to fit a particular formula, one where heroes are good and villains are bad and there are no gray areas in-between.
The other obvious complaint is that there are too many sidekicks - about three too many - but that's pretty standard for a modern Disney film. Really, everything they do is a distraction, which means that DisneyCo. considers kids to be about as intelligent as a housepet. "Hey, look over here!" is the overall effect, because we don't believe in the ability of youngsters to pay proper attention to the main storyline. And they wonder why so many kids have HDAD these days - can anyone tie the growth of this condition to the increase in animated sidekicks? There was even supposed to be a fourth sidekick, a turkey named Redfeather, voiced by John Candy, but when he passed away the role was not recast, and in fact all of the animals lost the ability to speak English at that point.
Yes, the original plan was to have the cutesy raccoon, pug dog AND the hummingbird speak English, which would have made "Pocahontas" just as non-sensical as "Madagascar" or "The Little Mermaid" or any of the others - I suppose it's a step forward that they merely make animal noises here, but I think it would have been a bigger step if their roles were reduced or even eliminated entirely.
On top of that, the name "Pocahontas" is spoken way too many times. After a character is introduced, there's not usually much reason for stating their name over and over - it almost seems like time-filler here, or an admission that most characters don't have anything else constructive to say. Pocahontas herself even starts sentences with it, which seemed quite odd because why would she address herself before speaking to another person?
Also starring the voices of Mel Gibson (last seen in "The Bounty"), David Ogden Stiers (last heard in "Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs. Evil"), Russell Means, Linda Hunt (last seen in "She-Devil"), Billy Connolly (last seen in "The X-Files: I Want to Believe"), Gordon Tootoosis (last seen in "Legends of the Fall").
RATING: 4 out of 10 shovels
No comments:
Post a Comment