Dances with Wolves (1990)
Directed by Kevin Costner
Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.
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10 films that influenced Dances with Wolves
What critics say influenced Dances with Wolves
Foreshadowing Costner's Dances with Wolves, he uselessly slaughters buffalo, cynically saying, "At least they won't feed any Comanche this winter."
Though well played by Mary McDonnell (Matewan), the character seems lifted from John Ford's 1956 masterpiece The Searchers, in which John Wayne rescues his kidnapped niece (Natalie Wood) from the Indians.
He may have studied the way Akira Kurosawa splits his screen with a horizon line or sets a character a little off-center in the vastness of a plain; there are movements of cottonwoods and buffalo grass that may recall "Dersu Uzala," and figures against a flaming sunset that bring back "Kagemusha," but there are far worse directors to study if one is starting out.
He may have studied the way Akira Kurosawa splits his screen with a horizon line or sets a character a little off-center in the vastness of a plain; there are movements of cottonwoods and buffalo grass that may recall "Dersu Uzala," and figures against a flaming sunset that bring back "Kagemusha," but there are far worse directors to study if one is starting out.
The film’s revisionism was nothing new--both Ralph Nelson and Arthur Penn had turned the tables on western clichés back in 1970 with Soldier Blue and Little Big Man, respectively--but Costner and screenwriter Michael Blake (who adapted his own 1987 novel) reinvigorate the argument with depth of character and a narrative scope that allows for various shades of gray across all perspectives.
"Little Big Man" and "Windwalker" come to mind as examples of movies that treated Indians as multidimensional human beings or used native Indian languages with English subtitles.
Two decades earlier, A Man Called Horse and Little Big Man showed characters attempting to bridge the divide between white American culture and Native American tribalism, but Costner went for broke with his large-scale, Panavision epic, clocking in at three hours.
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Ford's Cheyenne Autumn, in 1964, also examined government mistreatment of Native Americans.
The film’s revisionism was nothing new--both Ralph Nelson and Arthur Penn had turned the tables on western clichés back in 1970 with Soldier Blue and Little Big Man, respectively--but Costner and screenwriter Michael Blake (who adapted his own 1987 novel) reinvigorate the argument with depth of character and a narrative scope that allows for various shades of gray across all perspectives.
Shot by veteran Australian cinematographer Dean Semler (The Road Warrior, Dead Calm), Dances With Wolves features some of the most extraordinary footage of the open plains since Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven (1978).
With a running time of three hours, Dances With Wolves aspires to be a Lawrence of Arabia of the prairie, but it lacks a protagonist with the internal conflict and mystery of Peter O'Toole's Lawrence.
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At another point, the new film plays like ''Blazing Saddles,'' but these are the exceptions.
KEVIN COSTNER has come a long way after playing the man whose suicide was the peg for "The Big Chill" but whose role was left on the cutting-room floor.