I urge everyone to check out the
review of 'New World', a new movie based on Pocahantas, in the San Francisco Chronicle. Regardless of the attributes of the movie, there are so many racist and overused caricatures in the review that it's worth a
comment to the editor..
I will counterpoint the review in the Chronicle with a review in Indian Country , the leading Native newspaper in the country, and my own comments.
SF Chronicle writes :
Malick (the director) tells the story of Pocahontas, and the film's central insight, which is never overtly stated, is that she, even more than the colonists, was in a very real sense the first American.
Me: so, Pocahontas is the 1st American , the English 2nd, the rest of the savages do not count ?
SF Chron:
As we all know from grammar school, Pocahontas saved Smith from being beaten to death in an Indian ritual, and what follows, in the movie, is an innocent romance.
Indian Country: One of the few things historians agree on in this story is there was no romance between the two...(after she gave them help) In return, the colonists kidnapped her.
Chronicle:
A later scene, of Pocahontas playing hide-and-seek with her child in a manicured English garden, completes our sense of her journey with eloquent simplicity. It suggests all the things Malick wants to express about the inspiring resiliency of Pocahontas' personality and also about the character of what was being created in the new world.
Me: Comparing hide-and-go seek to mass death, and probably the greatest human extinction in history ?
Indian Country: More than half of (the Pocahantas) died by the end of the first summer.
SF Chronicle:
We first meet her (Q'Orianka Kilcher) as a teenager, full of playfulness and spontaneity
Indian Country :The real Pocahontas was probably about 10 or 12 when she met the bedraggled colonists in 1607.