PRINCESS OF THE SPIRIT

By RICHARD CORLISS

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.

All this is to say that every work of popular art is political, and the good ones are more than that. Like this one. Pocahontas takes a while to get going, but when it does it becomes a wistful meditation on lost love in what it depicts as the last age of innocence. The lovers Pocahontas (voiced by Irene Bedard) and John Smith are from a gentler, more serious movie era; and so, to its credit, is this film. The picture has its light moments and patentedly adorable characters, notably Meeko the raccoon, a most fastidious glutton with a lot of personality. But Pocahontas lacks the menagerie of cuties that filled The Little Mermaid and The Lion King, and the absence must be intentional. For this is an animated film for adults who have a touch of the moony adolescent in them. The movie passionately argues that, of all causes, love is the one most worth fighting for.

And singing about. Of all the fine scores Alan Menken has composed for Disney animated features (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin), this is the most complex and rhapsodic, full of swelling passages that are artfully complemented by the Disney artists' imagery of pristine streams and forests. Menken's lyricist, Stephen Schwartz of Broadway's Godspell and Pippin, has a poetic righteousness that deftly avoids propaganda. Colors of the Wind -- among the loveliest ballads composed for a Disney cartoon, and sung to fierce perfection by Judy Kuhn -- ends with the admonition, "You can own the earth, and still/ All you'll own is earth until/ You can paint with all the colors of the wind."

Political arguments aside, this had to be called Pocahontas. It is not the story of John Smith and his Indian girlfriend; it is the portrait of a princess of the spirit. Instead of reducing the historical character to a cardboard placard of goodness, the film gives her an impish curiosity and willfulness. Because she also has a classical heroine's sense of quest, the picture's Pocahontas rises above stodgy old legend into the sky of myth; and there she soars, eagle-like, watching over the land and its contentious people. That's apt for a role model for any child, red or white. And it's perfect for a film romance that earns a place of honor among Disney's latter-day animated film stunners.