Noted "Chicago Sun Times" critic Roger Ebert, who had read the novel and believed the film is true to its themes, awarded the film 3 and a half out of 4 stars. In his review, Ebert makes the case that producer Saul Zaentz has a history of producing "unfilmable" source material. He wrote, "Watching it, we are looking at a morality play about a world in which sincere people create unwitting mischief so that evil people can have their way. The movie essentially argues that all peoples have a right to worship their own gods without interference, but it goes further to observe that if your god lives in the land and the trees, then if we destroy your land, we kill your god. These messages are buried in the very fabric of the film, in the way it was shot, in its use of locations, and we are not told them, we absorb them."