Remember That Movie: Dances with Wolves
How well has the film aged over the years?
In case you don’t remember, Dances with Wolves is the fictional story of Lt. John Dunbar (Costner), a Civil War Yankee soldier who, after a melodramatic incident of personal endangerment, is exiled to a post in the western frontier. The threat of attack by the natives, who are rumored to be brutal savages, looms over Dunbar and his solitude. He eventually meets members of the Sioux tribe and learns all the hullabaloo was for nothing; the Sioux are actually a peaceful, family-loving sort. The bridge between the two cultures is found in Stands with a Fist (Mary McDonnell), a white woman who was found and raised from a young age by the Sioux tribe. She begins to open up and fall for the affable white soldier. A friendship is soon formed between the tribe and the lieutenant and Dunbar finds himself torn between loyalties.
Costner worked on this film – based on a novel that originated as a spec script that no one would buy – for five years, with principal photography taking up only four months of that time. To this day, Dances with Wolves remains an incredible achievement by an unproven director.
For example, there is a hunting sequence featuring hundreds of real live buffalo that was handled so masterfully it was enough to earn my respect for the film. Not a single buffalo was added later by computer – only a handful were animatronic or otherwise artificial. These days, rather than dealing with the challenge of directing hundreds of live animals, a director would just add them all in digitally. Costner spent three weeks filming that scene. As a result, this film not only captures the end of an era, a period of history when the American frontier was at the tipping point of change, but it was created near the end of a period in film history when the role of a director required much skill and command and less reliance on the click of a mouse.
Dances with Wolves is amazingly directed with great performances by Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, and Costner himself – all of whom were nominated for Academy Awards (more on them soon). But it does start out dangerously close to having a sense of self-importance as we see Costner reach for something very early on that’s not yet earned and proceeds to linger during the following twenty minutes on details that aren’t as necessary as those of the rest of the film.
Also, while Costner successfully avoids maudlin self-importance on the whole, he does lay the Evil White Man thing a bit thick during the last third of the film, which soils his message of good and evil existing among all races.
Once you get past the first half hour, though, this film really takes hold.
Dances with Wolves is mostly remembered as a sincere western epic – and it is that, for sure – but nobody remembers how incredibly funny it can be. I wouldn’t ever label this film a comedy, but there is a lot of levity, keeping the audience from feeling weighed down for three hours. Most of this humor comes from the language barrier between Dunbar and the Sioux tribesmen.
Graham Greene, who plays a curious holy man, offers quite a bit of levity through his physical reactions to Costner, as when Greene stumbles wide-eyed through a fence and runs from Costner who suddenly approaches him in the buff (it plays less like homophobia and more like intimidation). Greene is great here, balancing humor, curiosity, wisdom, and imperfection. He was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but lost to Joe Pesci’s performance in Goodfellas. Greene would later lampoon his character Kicking Bird in Maverick with Mel Gibson.
Mary McDonnell, who we’ve seen too infrequently since, was 38 when she portrayed Stands with a Fist. She gives a powerful performance as a woman who’s lived with the natives too long to remember how to speak English well. McDonnell’s manner of speaking English, sometimes in forced phonetics, is consistent and adds to the film’s credibility. She earned a Best Supporting Actress nod, but lost out that year to Whoopi Goldberg for Ghost.
Costner reminds us that he was once a good actor with Dances with Wolves, however it is his direction that is where he truly impresses. That said, while he would win for Best Director, Costner oddly lost the acting trophy to Jeremy Irons for a largely-forgotten film called Reversal of Fortune.
Kevin Costner went on to direct Waterworld, The Postman, and Open Range. None were as successful, either critically or commercially, as Dances with Wolves. It was the fourth top-grossing film of 1990 (behind Ghost, Home Alone, and Pretty Woman), raking in $424 million – more than $400 million above its budget. It also won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, and Score (composed by John Barry of the 007 theme, who died a couple weeks ago). In 1998, the American Film Institute also named it the 75th Greatest American Film. Dances with Wolves is reputed to be the film that revived the western film genre, allowing for movies like Unforgiven and Tombstone to follow.
Kevin Costner’s directorial debut may not be flawless, but it is an incredibly impressive triumph that is not only technically awe-inspiring and brought out great performances by its cast, but is a magnificent story of tolerance (reach out and trust others, especially those we don’t understand) and historical change. I encourage movie fans to not be put off by the film’s length and make the time to revisit this modern classic.
9/10
Should you see it? Rent
Dances with Wolves is available on 20th Anniversary Edition DVD and Blu-ray.