**1/2 (out of ****)
Starring Kevin Costner, Graham Greene, Mary McDonnell, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, and Rodney A. Grant
Directed by Kevin Costner & written by Michael Blake, from his novel
181 min
1990 PG13
Kevin Costner is such an earnest, well-meaning dope. It’s why we like him. For him, there is no irony, there is no sarcasm, there is no ambivalence. What he means and what he says are always the same. He’s like that guy who shows up to take out your daughter wearing brown shoes and a black belt, and keeps dressing like that no matter how many times she tells him not to.
In his best roles, Costner uses this quality to his advantage. Try to imagine someone who isn’t transparently sincere playing Eliot Ness in “The Untouchables” or Jim Garrison in “JFK.” It’s because of this “gee whiz!” open-face that, even though it doesn’t really work for me, I still like “Dances With Wolves” better than the smug, satirical superiority of “Little Big Man.”
“Dances With Wolves” follows a Civil War officer (Costner) alone at a frontier outpost who, after some initial wariness, comes to know and even join a tribe of Sioux. I like that Costner’s officer begins the movie blank and it takes his relationship with the Sioux for him to grow out his mullet and find himself. Although, in true Hollywood fashion, it is the white character who is dynamic, and the non-whites are basically static. Yes, they come to accept him, but only because he changes into one of them, and not because they meet him in the middle.
The officer’s relationship with the Sioux, and his subsequent run-ins with the cavalry, are in many ways a treatise on how white-red relations ought to have gone, before gradually descending into the way things actually turned out. These are two cultures that should have been more curious about each other than they actually were. A lot of bad blood could have been avoided (and can still be avoided) if we realize that culture is, 9 times out of 10, the result of pockets of the same human species adapting to different sets of natural resources and environments.
There is not something inherently superior about Indians that led to their close harmony to the land, nor is there something inherently superior about Europeans and Asians that led to their mastery of gunpowder and steel. Europe and Asia have large domestic animals, which can be harnessed to increase farm productivity, which creates the leisure time necessary to develop writing and sciences, which leads to crossing oceans and the kind of disposable income that necessitates complex social systems, like stupid clothes, big hairstyles, and an abstraction from the means of production (that’s “not close to nature” in pseudo-Marxist terms). There are no large domestic animals native to the Americas and the people who lived there adapted to that—scientifically, culturally, religiously.
The movie features fine performances from Hollywood Indians Graham Greene (subtle as the Sioux who befriends Costner), Floyd Red Crow Westerman, and Wes Studi, some intensely affable and formidable actors, as well as the lesser known Rodney A. Grant. As the white woman who grew up with the Sioux and acts as translator, Mary McDonnell is mostly indifferent. There are also some great costumes and cinematography.
For all its willingness to be one of the first films to—gasp!—actually portray Native Americans as people and not moving targets, “Dances With Wolves” is stylistically a conventional epic. It’s not much different from the triple-hour bladder fillers of the 1950s and ‘60s, complete with an intrusive John Barry score, tearful reunions, and manipulative, drawn-out farewells. The gritty bits—the farting, the journal used for toilet paper, the suicidal major—struck me as ham-fisted when I was 14 and still strike me as ham-fisted. Among the movie’s pile of Oscars is one for Best Director, which Costner probably won simply for mounting a piece of such size, for hiring all the right people, and for masterminding the brilliant buffalo hunt.
Is my indifference justified? “Dances With Wolves” is still partly ruined for me—and may well always be—because it got the “Separate Peace”/“Lord of the Flies” treatment in my high school English class. It is a movie beloved by high school literary types because it is so completely without ambiguity. “Dances” is a great primer for “Symbolism!” because the symbols only mean one thing.
I like the point the movie is trying to make, but it’s so hard for movies with morals to not come across as didactic. The whole affair is undone by voice-over narration that Costner reads like it won the junior high essay contest. It’s really a failing of Michael Blake’s screenplay (which also won an Oscar…what the hell do I know?) that he couldn’t find a better way to get the job done without resorting to direct narrative quotations from his own novel. I was liking “Dances With Wolves” more in the beginning, but three hours is a long-time to get spoon-fed. I was going to watch the Director’s Cut, which clocks in 55 minutes longer, but thank God the DVD was too scratched up to play properly. “Other Culture” movies tend to work better without the white interpreter. Try “Atanarjuat” and you’ll see what I mean.
Finished Wednesday, December 27th, 2005
Copyright © 2005 Friday & Saturday Night
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