Dances with Wolves is one of the more important films on my 250th anniversary watchlist. While movies sympathetic to American Indians had been made, it had never been done on such a scale, and certainly had not drawn as much commercial and critical success. This came as a surprise because everyone thought the director and actor, Kevin Costner, was wasting his time on a guaranteed failure. He literally spent five years of his life trying to get the movie made, turning down major movie roles while he sank his own money into the project. It was seen as a vanity project doomed to fail. Instead it was a vanity project that succeeded.
The movie is said to be based on a novel by Michael Blake, but actually the novel originated as a screenplay by the same author. It was turned into a book so that Costner could have better luck attracting support for his film. That being said, there is a stark difference. The novel is set in the American Southwest with the Comanches, but it turned out they couldn’t get enough buffalo in that region to film, so the location was turned to the northern Great Plains with the Lakota Sioux. However, there’s a scene where an old Indian holds up a conquistador helmet to explain previous European incursions. This is an obvious holdover from the earlier script and novel, as 15th-16th Century Spaniards never clashed and likely never even met the Sioux.
Costner portrays Lieutenant John Dunbar,
a wounded officer in the Civil War who, learning his leg is to be amputated,
attempts to commit suicide by riding a horse back and forth along the
Confederate line. In a great bit of foreshadowing, this was an intentional act
of bravery by a Sioux warrior. Anyways, Dunbar actually inspires an attack that
routs the Rebels and he not only gets to keep his leg, but gets the posting of
his choice. He wants to go to the frontier, as he knows it’s eventually going
to disappear. In a twist, the fort he goes to is abandoned, and those who know
he was sent there conveniently get killed off without his knowledge. Thus, all
alone, he ends up meeting and eventually socializing with a nearby group of
Lakota.
Dunbar has tries to advance his relationship with odd lone wolf Two Socks. Their cautious,
yet warm relationship is what gets the Lakota to name Dunbar Dances with Wolves.
The positive portrayal of the Lakota in
the movie was considered a big step forward in 1990, but does have its
inaccuracies and problems. Probably the funniest one involves their language.
They are all portrayed by Amerindian actors, but from different peoples.
Because of this, they got a female Lakota language coach. Somehow she neglected
to inform the filmmakers and actors that the Lakota language is gendered. Thus
everybody speaks the female version, even all the tough warriors.
On a more serious note, the Lakota are
not as well-versed in white culture and language as they should be. Their
inability to understand English is more possible and does serve a purpose,
turning adopted White woman Stands With a Fist (Mary McDonnell) into a translator and intermediary for Dunbar and Kicking Bird (Graham Greene) to
understand and learn about each other. However, it’s baffling that a branch of
the Sioux, the dominant power on the Northern Plains, is mystified about coffee
makers and other European inventions that would have already been circulating
and moreso that they possess nothing in the way of firearms until Dunbar
supplies them from his fort. It’s almost at first contact levels.
Kicking Bird (Graham Green, screencap source: https://onceuponatimeinawestern.com/dances-with-wolves-1990/#google_vignette)
That being said, the Indian characters
are likeable. Kicking Bird is the strongest of the bunch. His desire to learn
and his refusal to resort immediately to violence makes him very much like
Dunbar, so of course they form the strongest friendship of the film. Rodney
Grant plays the more impulsive Wind in His Hair, who initially looks like the
stock “native who absolutely hates the outsider” character, but once Dunbar
starts hanging around more he warms up quickly. Smiles a Lot is a teenager who
like all Lakota boys wants to prove himself a man by stealing horses and
hunting buffalo.
Though actually white, Stands With a
Fist is more Indian than European-American. I actually really appreciate her
character. Usually in these cross-cultural movies the hero gets the hot young
native girl. Here McDonnell’s character is already a widow well into her
thirties. Her backstory is that she was a little girl when her family was
massacred by Pawnee. She escaped and was picked up by the Lakota.
Speaking of the Pawnee, they’re at the
heart of the movie’s greatest controversy. The Pawnee (led by Wes Studi in his
third film on my watchlist), are portrayed as villains who are out to kill
anybody they come across, with the poor Lakota their particular victims of
aggression. In real life, however, the Pawnees were subjected to Sioux
expansion, and in fact they were at such a disadvantage that they ended up
allying with the United States to stave off further loss of land.
Understandably, Dances with Wolves
didn’t have time to delve into all the moral complexities of the Plains Wars,
but this was still jarring to more historically-literate viewers, and modern
Pawnees are certainly not fans of their depiction.
Dunbar takes a ride with some asshole soldiers.
The portrayal of the Union Army has also
gotten some criticism, but here I feel like there’s more historical basis in
favor of the movies. With a war for the nation of the American vision raging to
the East, the Federal government wanted all its best officers fighting the
Confederates. The result was that most of the men posted on the frontier were
losers or men who had failed early in the Civil War (the most famous example
being General John Pope, who was seriously outthought and beaten at Second Bull
Run). Compounding issues, resources were taken away from the frontier,
resulting in undermanned defenses and more tragically failures to pay Indians
promised annuities in return for peace. Therefore it’s not too propagandistic that
most of the soldiers in Dances with
Wolves suffer from poor discipline or depression. A highlight for many
viewers of the film is Maury Chaykin’s performance as a depressed and mentally
unbalanced officer.
The big action highlight is the buffalo hunt. They actually got people to ride horses alongside running buffalo. The
scene was immensely long and difficult to film, as the animals would run for
miles once made to move. Thus they had to be corralled back to the same area
for another few seconds of shooting. The end result is worth it, a recreation
of an event that used to be common on the plains, but is no more.
(https://www.gabbinggeek.com/2018/03/30/afi-countdown-challenge-75-dances-with-wolves/)
Of course I have to talk about the Going
Native and White Savior tropes often associated with Dances with Wolves. The Going Native trope is definitely there,
with Dunbar feeling more at home with the Lakota then white civilization. This
trope often romanticizes more primitive or old-fashioned cultures against the
ills, real or perceived, of an advanced civilization. Thankfully Kevin Costner
went out of his way to make sure that Dunbar doesn’t actually commit treason
against the US, like the marine in that Avatar
movie. Instead he’s forced into his circumstances by a convergence of
misunderstandings which I won’t spend a bunch of time explaining. It’s also
unfair to say that Dunbar exhibits the White Savior trope. While he’s
instrumental in scoring a massive victory over a raiding Pawnee force, he’s on
equal footing with the Indian characters and in fact is the one who has to be saved
at the movie’s end.
By the way, good luck finding a DVD or
blue-ray with the original 3-hour theatrical cut. For some reason most physical releases
only have the extended 4-hour cut, which I learned when I checked Dances with Wolves. out of the
library for this review. This cut was created for a special re-release in response to the movie's smash success. The original
cut is long and might wear on one’s patience depending on their mood, but still
moved along. The longer cut is just too much as not enough exciting events
happen and the characters don’t have enough depth either. There are a couple
positives that come out of it, though. One is a scene explaining why the fort
is abandoned. In the theatrical version Dunbar finds it empty and it becomes
something of a plot hole. The other positive is a brief scene where the Lakota
attack buffalo hunter, angry that they slaughtered a bunch of the animals and
left most of their dead bodies to rot. They celebrate with body parts, implying
that they took their time making the hunters suffer. It’s one scene that shows
that they have their own flaws.
Dances
with Wolves
is a major viewing experience, but I wouldn’t say it’s a great film. Perhaps it’s
the fault of the 4-hour cut, but sometimes the movie moves too slow, without
enough action and deep characters to sustain itself. More importantly, the
historical aspects are a mixed bag. The recreation of extinct aspects of Sioux
culture is great, a peek into a lost world. On the other hand, the simplistic
and sometimes romanticized portrayals of larger cultures, especially regarding the
Sioux-Pawnee conflict, is hard for more learned history buffs to digest.
Rating: 6/10
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