Dances with Wolves

Dances With Wolves is three hours long, but that is not long enough, it is so wonderful. It is set in the Civil War-era prairie, and it captures the encounter between a white man and a Sioux tribe. However, it is timeless. It is romantic, adventurous, active, comical, tragic, and educational. It demonstrates the color of one race and the cruelty of another. It forces us to view our own culture with a different eye. It features redemption, nay, salvation. The camera captures the prairie beautifully, the bluest of blue skies and the whitest and puffiest of white clouds, the most colorful of colorful ground, the roundest of rolling hills, and the largest of buffalo herds. This movie was a risky project. The story and the symbolism is simple, but it was filmed and performed masterfully. It deserved the seven Academy Awards it received and then some. A must-see masterpiece. Ten out of ten does no justice. See for yourself.

Dances With Wolves Is directed by Kevin Costner who also stars. It's adapted by Michael Blake from his own novel of the same name. Starring along side Costner are Graham Greene, Mary McDonnell & Rodney A. Grant. Dean Semler provides the cinematography & John Barry the musical score. Set during the American Civil War, the story tells how Lieutenant John Dunbar (Costner) goes to a military outpost on the American frontier, where confronted with alienation he befriends nature, the Lakota Indians and finds himself in the process.

"I had never known a people so eager to laugh, so devoted to family, so dedicated to each other. And the only word that came to mind was harmony"

The critics were rubbing their hands with glee, getting ready to tear Costner apart for what undoubtedly would be a failure. An epic Western movie made in 1990, had he not learnt from Heaven's Gate? It was long in production, and with only a $15/$22 million budget afforded it, word came that Costner had to put in $3 million of his own cash to aid production. It was beset with production delays as the problems mounted up with the weather, animal training and with action scenes taking up to three weeks to shoot, all contributing to the belief that it was doomed to failure. "Kevin's Gate" they cried, what's that? It's partially sub-titled too? Never work.

Dances With Wolves went on to make $424 million in Worldwide theatre tickets alone. Heaven knows what the total would be if we added the VHS & DVD returns as well! Come Academy Award time the film won 7 Oscars, including Best Picture (making it the first Western to win the prestigious award since Cimarron in 1931) & Best Director. It was also nominated in five other categories with Costner up for Best Actor, Graham Greene for Best Supporting Actor & Mary McDonnell for Best Supporting Actress. It was, all told, a personal, artistic and commercial triumph for Costner. One can see him post Oscar night sitting there on his porch sipping sour mash and flipping the finger at all those critics who willed him to fail.

Costner's movie is a simple tale, of that there is no arguing. But Dances With Wolves (the name given to Dunbar by the Sioux) is magnificently told, as enchanting a Western that has ever been made. It boasts everything needed to make a first class Oater. The story may be simple but it's rich on detail, the characters have real depth and it never sags, not even in its magnificent elongated directors cut that runs 236 minutes. The credit has to go to Costner, who in his debut as director lest we forget, has managed to blend everything together in the style of one of the old masters from the classic Western period. Every tonal avenue ventured down pays off handsome rewards, it all goes somewhere, awash with wistfulness, romanticism and elegiac poetry. The action sequences are expertly crafted, with a buffalo hunt particularly breath taking; no CGI here, the odd animatronic for a close encounter, but mainly the real deal, as are the wolves and the Lakota Sioux, too, who are played by Native Americans. Its humorous too, with its fun being intentional and aiding the flow of the friendships forming.

As most Western fans will tell you, a lyrical horse opera needs great location work and a score to match. Thankfully Dances With Wolves has both, as both Semler & Barry produce work that picked up the Golden Baldy on Oscar night. Lensed predominantly in South Dakota around the Black Hills & Badlands regions, Semler infuses the film with natural landscapes that send the frontier bursting thru the screen, his framing explains things better than words can in this environment. While Barry's score, lifting nicely from A View To A Kill at times, is suitably grand, deft in touch for the main theme and blood pumping for the buffalo hunt and the Pawnee attacks. Acting wise the award nominations received for Costner, Greene & McDonnell were richly deserved. The boys are quiet and undemonstrative, at one with the essence of the story and infusing it with a sincerity so lacking in many epics. Playing Stands With A Fist, a white woman raised by the Sioux after her family were slaughtered when she was a child, McDonnell has to reach different character levels as the story unfolds, and she delivers emotional depth on every level. No nomination for Grant, but his work is top dollar also, his latter scenes with Costner really nail the shift in tone.

There's some historical missteps that will no doubt annoy the purists, like I don't believe the Pawnee were the aggressors they are painted as here. While the central romance between Costner & McDonnell is delicate but not fully formed; tho it does improve in the directors cut. But it's hard to criticise little itches when such vision and ambition comes together as well as it does here. Structured with precision and showing respect for tradition, this is a movie about loving people for people lovers. And one can quite easily believe that some genre legends up in the sky were looking down and nodding approvingly. 10/10

What the heck are people thinking! There are way too many Costner bashers on the internet. This was a revolutionary motion picture at its time, never has a story about the American indians ever been told with such emotion and grace. What a sham. For the record Costner is not that bad of an actor.

9/10

I just can't for the life of me understand why this movie is rated below Avatar...

After having seen this movie again for the first time in years, and after having seen Avatar, it is my opinion that Dances with Wolves is in an entirely different league in terms of story telling. The main ingredients of the story between these two movies is fairly similar - however, the pace and finesse with which Dances with Wolves portrays the development of the relationship between John and the Indians is masterfully done. While Avatar has huge flaws in its story-telling including some scenes with very weak dialogue - it might have gotten away with it as the audience is perhaps distracted by the bombardment of impressive CGI effects!

If you thought Avatar was good and haven't seen Dances with Wolves in a while - I highly recommend it. An excellent move that I think deserves a much better review score - and also should definitely be on IMDBs top 250 list.

It's hard for me to believe this movie is not in the top 250 on IMBD all time list. Without question my favorite movie. We live in a strange world when Pulp Fiction ranks #18, and Dances with Wolves just misses the top 250. Maybe people thought the movie was too long. I thought it was too short if anything. I wish they would have gone on forever. What an incredible story. The way Costner continued to get closer and closer to the Indians way masterfuly done.