Handsome, Entrancing Version Of The Pocahontas-John Smith Love Story

Rating: 6/10 (18 October 2010)

John Smith is an explorer helping establish the colony of Jamestown in Virginia in 1607 who falls in love with Pocahontas, a native girl. As tensions between the settlers and the tribespeople rise Pocahontas renounces her past, but is Smith sincere in his intentions ?
For such a famous tale from American history and mythology, the Pocahontas / Matoaka story has been filmed only a few times, most notably the 1995 Disney animated feature. This is a beautiful, definitive version of the legend of an American Indian girl who saved the colonists' lives, acted as peacemaker, married an English tobacco farmer, and was an honoured guest of King James at Hampton Court Palace. As with Malick's other movies, it's a gorgeous, dreamy, extraordinarily sensory banquet - true cinema - where the images and sounds are more important than anything else. Emmanuel Lubezki's camera lingers sensuously on the grasslands, forests and inlets, while the actors embody their characters more in how they move through the landscape than what they do or say. I love all this stuff; few directors dare to tell a story so languidly, with minimal dialogue and so much screen time devoted to creating the atmosphere of a physical location (it was shot on the Chickahominy River near to the real events). At the same time it has the same liabilities as Malick's other work - woolly plotting, narcissistic leading men and occasional listless scenes - but it's so consistently jaw-droppingly beautiful that who cares ? The music is equally inspiring and resonant - a mixture of James Horner's symphonic score and deftly orchestrated source music (particularly the prelude from Wagner's Das Rheingold, which is also used to great effect in Werner Herzog's oddly similar Nosferatu). In some ways the cast play second fiddle - much of the time all they are required to do is look morose or hug each other - but they look just the part and they give it their all, particularly the fourteen-year-old Kilcher (an American of Peruvian-Swiss descent) who is expressive, haunted and delivers a mature performance well beyond her years. I tend not to like too many critically acclaimed directors but Malick is a definite exception - nobody sees the physical world quite the same way he does and his rare forays into filmmaking (this one only took seven years, positively rushed by his standards) are always breathtaking and exceptional. Here he serves up a moving, thought-provoking, passionate slice of history, shot through with drama, authenticity and outstanding imagery. Trivia - King James and Queen Anne are played by Jonathan Pryce and Malick's wife Alexandra.