CINEMA: PRINCESS OF THE SPIRIT

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Ah, innocence! these days, can a movie be made on that subject, or any other, without stepping into a puddle of trouble? With the Christian Right and its political cronies on one side and a gaggle of cultural protectionists on the other, it's now possible for even a G-rated film to annoy somebody, anybody, with a special interest and access to a fax machine.

This week's example: Pocahontas, the handsome, deeply felt, even more deeply reverent animated musical from the Walt Disney Co. In retelling and retooling the 17th century encounter between the Powhatan princess and English Captain John Smith, the film takes the American Indians' self-image at face value. These are men of probity, women of dignity, curators of the land, weavers of white magic. Their standoff with the white man is one of eco-heroes vs. strip miners, defenders of an idyllic homeland against greedy invaders.

Yet many historians and aboriginal Americans are at odds over the film's version of the tale. The historical Pocahontas was a child of 11, not a buxom woman of 20, when she met John Smith -- with whom she did not have a romance (though she did marry an Englishman and move to London). "I wish they would take the name Pocahontas off that movie," Shirley "Little Dove" Custalow McGowan, a storyteller of the Powhatan nation and for a time a Disney consultant on the picture, told the Washington Post. On the other side, Russell Means, the Wounded Knee insurgent who provided the voice of Chief Powhatan, said, "It is the finest film ever done in Hollywood on the Native American experience."

Both could be correct, at least politically, and still miss the main point. Yes, the Indians are very nice people here, which is a nice thing. And yes, the real Pocahontas probably didn't have Tina Turner's posture and Iman's neck. She probably didn't sing Broadway-style songs either or talk to a clever raccoon and a persnickety hummingbird. Maybe John Smith didn't look like Fabio and sound like Mel Gibson (who speaks the role). But this is a movie-a cartoon, for goodness' sake! It is a boy-meets-girl, boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl story whose plot is familiar in every weepie affair, from Romeo and Juliet to The Bridges of Madison County. And it follows the rule of historical romance: Print the legend.

In fact, Pocahontas, smartly directed by Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg, has a political agenda, but of a more general sort. In designating as its hero the spunky but idealistic princess and as its villain the English Governor Ratcliffe, head of the Jamestown expedition, the film takes the side of every available underdog: the working-class English sailors fighting the avaricious aristocrat, the Indian conservators over the white predators, the female spirit of conciliation over the male itch to resolve every dispute by going to war. Boldly eco-liberal, Pocahontas even pokes fun at the Disney Co.'s recent attempt to buy Virginia land and build a historical theme park, Disney's America, not far from Jamestown. "With all ya got in ya, boys,/ Dig up Virginia, boys!" sings Ratcliffe, as his toadying manservant sculpts exotic animal topiary of the sort found at every Disney park.