This past weekend Melissa and I decided to watch a movie at home together. Being Netflix subscribers, we browsed through what was available and I noticed the 1990 movie Dances with Wolves. Neither of us had seen it, and I knew it was critically acclaimed and won multiple Oscars, including Best Picture. So in spite of the fact that it was listed as lasting for more than 3 hours, we settled down to watch it. Kevin Costner starred in it, directing, co-producing and portraying the protagonist. Adapted from the same-titled book by Michael Blake, Costner's character was that of Lt. John Dunbar of the United States (Union) Army, whose introductory scene in the Civil War has him lying in a medical tent with his injured foot about to be sawed off. Somehow he manages to painfully put his boots back on and sneak away, but he realizes that he's liable to suffer a slow death from infection and decides impulsively at the start of a battle with entrenched Confederate soldiers to take a horse and ride to his death in front of their lines. But miraculously none of the enemy soldiers' bullets find him, and his action spurs his own side to boldly attack, winning the confrontation and resulting in Dunbar getting the best medical treatment for his foot, a promotion in rank, decorations, and the choice of where his next assignment will be. Finished with the war, he chooses the westernmost outpost, deep in the northern Great Plains. Eventually he is further assigned to a remote post in the middle of nowhere and which has been abandoned. From here he faithfully performs his duties in solitude until he discovers he is not alone...there are Indians nearby, camped by the creek with many horses and tents. And from here the story takes off about how this one soldier first confronts, then befriends...and finally joins the Sioux people, complete with buffalo hunts and a battle against their enemy, the Pawnee. He also finds love among his adoptive people. But Dunbar knows that the whites will be coming in great numbers here, led by his own Army...and the meeting of the two cultures can only go one way. The movie's ending as expected is very climactic and I felt that both Blake the author and Costner the director and actor did a great job spinning a very compelling tale...no wonder it garnered those awards. Still, I have some issues about it to discuss...
I remember, when Dances with Wolves first came out, from its description that it sounded an awful lot like the 1970 Dustin Hoffman film Little Big Man. In fact, while the later story essentially was independent and stood well on its own, I kept noticing elements of the first movie that were incorporated into it...there seems to have been a lot of derivation going on. Even the Pawnee Indians were depicted as thoroughly murderous and depraved in both movies. Which brought me to another problem: the Pawnee were shown to be collectively and individually bad while the Sioux were just wonderful in every way. The white Union soldiers, when they finally arrived on the scene (except for Costner's character, of character), were dominated by cruelty, petty greed, fear, and bigotry. Were these three groups really this distinctly categorizable? I think not...I tend to believe, and you're free to disagree with me, that within different ethnicities of people there are both the good and the bad, and yes, sometimes the net effect of those different groups meeting one another will result in one becoming dominant, sadly at times even to the point of genocide. But if I were a descendant of the Pawnee nation I'd really feel like my ancestors were getting a unfair, bad rap from these movies. Nevertheless, I thought Dances with Wolves was great and Costner deserved all the accolades he received for it. Still, it was a little difficult sitting through three hours of it...we decided halfway through to take a break and walk around the block...
