Meaningful tale beautifully told

Rating: 9/10 (5 May 2009)

John Smith was a real soldier, adventurer and colonist. Pocahontas was a favoured daughter of a local important Powhatan chieftain. She was a young teenager when they met and it is reliably recorded that her interventions aided the colonists as they tried to survive an early tough winter. Much else about the story has been embellished in comic books and the Disney cartoon. Terence Mallick takes the elements of the story that are believed to be true to give substance his excellent exploration of the contact between two contrasting societies with very different needs and interests. Yet this compelling film is not primarily a history. It is a meditation presented through beautiful imagery offset by savagery and stupidity. Colin Farrell manages to capture the enigmatic Smith with his genuine wonder about this new world. In one scene he proceeds up a river on his own looking like something escaped from the Tower of London, for he wears a metal helm and body armor as he wades through a river. He is of course completely vulnerable and either very foolhardy or extremely brave. He is easily captured and shortly after we see the well known, but possibly fictitious, life-saving intervention of Pocahontas. Q'orianka Kilcher is a most convincing Pocahontas, deftly combining child-like awe at the beauties of the world around her and great spirit when it comes to dealing with Smith and the somewhat gross colonists. The film has a dreamlike quality in parts that is reminiscent of Tarkovsky, who delighted in slow explorations of water and the beauties of the natural world. For each society, the 'Naturals' as they are described, and the Colonists, the others are so beyond understanding that they might as well be from a dream. It is this dreamlike quality that pervades the whole film. Perhaps the abrupt editing and the way the story is presented in chunks with very spare dialogue may be too stylised for some. It worked for me, as did the musical score which is a counterpoint to the imagery. This is a film to watch when you have time to become really absorbed. It is not a film to miss.