A slow-moving epic. Lots of subtitles translating the languages of the Sioux and Pawnee into English. Mostly shot on location, including in national parks. Tons of live animals involved in the production, including buffalo, horses, and wolves. And, most complicatedly: a protagonist who is self-effacing of his whiteness and who seems to hate most other white people, but who might be a white savior anyway, and a Sioux community with numerous layers\u2014thoughtful, welcoming, protective, and ferocious\u2014and who might be noble savages anyway. Was Dances with Wolves<\/em> a subversive, revisionist Western that made clear how white people decimated the indigenous world? Or, with its depictions of valor and exceptionalism, did it live up to the same stereotypes that the historical cowboys-and-Indians genre crafted? \u201cDo you salute him or shoot him?\u201d a white soldier wonders when they see Costner\u2019s character walk by in Sioux dress. That\u2019s an extreme dichotomy, but it speaks to questions worth considering about films like Dances with Wolves<\/em>, and about who gets to be a hero. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Costner\u2019s omnipresence in the 1980s and 1990s, up until the pause caused by the commercial and critical failure of Waterworld<\/em>, can be tracked in a series of films that demonstrated his wide range: The Untouchables<\/em>, Bull Durham<\/em>, Field of Dreams<\/em>, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves<\/em>, JFK<\/em>, The Bodyguard<\/em>. Costner\u2019s image was defined by a sort of rugged-yet-approachable, dependable-but-still-threatening appeal, and the characters he played mirrored that. The agent tasked with bringing down Al Capone. A veteran baseball player, and a time-traveling baseball fan. Folk hero Robin Hood; a district attorney investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; a bodyguard tasked with protecting the world\u2019s biggest pop star. The spell Costner casts is one of reliability and sturdiness, but a little bit of roguish spontaneity, too, and his promise is that of white American masculinity done good. And there is no figure that better captures the myths that a certain slice of America likes to tell about itself than the respectable cowboy, tipping his hat to the genteel and grinding any opposition under his boot heel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dances with Wolves<\/em>, adopted by author Michael Blake from his own novel, is like an Albert Bierstadt or Olaf Wieghorst painting come to life: a gorgeous representation of the verdant and wild emptiness of America that no longer exists because we\u2019ve mostly destroyed it. The film (which won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Costner) begins with such devastation in the form of the Civil War, with First Lt. John J. Dunbar (Costner) trying to kill himself after learning that his foot might need to be amputated. With his arms outstretched, offering himself up to a higher power, Dunbar rides past a line of enemy Confederate soldiers\u2014distracting them so much that his Union Army comrades are able to attack and win the battle. Heralded as a \u201cliving hero\u201d for that surprise victory, Dunbar is given whatever placement he wants, and ends up at the abandoned Fort Sedgwick, Colorado. \u201cI\u2019ve always wanted to see the frontier \u2026 before it\u2019s gone,\u201d Dunbar explains, and because of a lost message, he\u2019s left alone at the fort, with no Army reinforcements on the way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But Dunbar isn\u2019t really alone, of course, because this whole country once belonged to indigenous people who lived all over it, knew every inch of it, and had their own beliefs and rhythms and religion. Dunbar has been told his whole life that \u201cIndians\u201d are \u201cnothing but thieves and beggars,\u201d but when he meets his Sioux neighbors, they\u2019re nothing of the sort. Medicine man Kicking Bird (Graham Greene) is patient but persistent, wanting to know why Dunbar is there. Warrior Wind In His Hair (Rodney A. Grant) is proud and bombastic (\u201cThese people are said to flourish? I think they will all be dead soon,\u201d he says after meeting Dunbar for the first time). Chief Ten Bears (Floyd Red Crow Westerman) is wise and considerate. They know so much more about this land than Dunbar does, but they know what a white man represents: more white men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, with a mixture of wariness on the Sioux side and excitement on Dunbar\u2019s, the two get to know each other, and here is where Dances with Wolves<\/em>\u2014depending on your perspective\u2014either so romanticizes native life that Costner\u2019s approach veers into patronization, or is well-intentioned in how it shares a culture that isn\u2019t common knowledge to many of us. Are we laughing at Wind In His Hair when he throws handfuls of sugar into his coffee, both new items that Dunbar has shared with him? Or is it Dunbar\u2019s awkwardness during this first meeting that is the source of our amusement? When Dunbar joins the Sioux on a buffalo hunt, and feels like an outsider in their exaltation (\u201cThe gap between us was greater than I ever could have imagined\u201d), are we to take his side, or marvel at the warriors\u2019 precision and violence? Before an attack by the rival Pawnee tribe, when Dunbar outfits the Sioux with guns from the fort, is he demonstrating the white man\u2019s superiority with these advanced weapons, and therefore undermining the tribe\u2019s own methods of security? So many scenes in Dances with Wolves<\/em> can be taken two ways. On its surface, the film is consistent in its numerous reiterations of Dunbar\u2019s loyalty to and affection for the Sioux, a community he begins to see as his true family. He learns their language, he adopts their customs, he protects them from white and Pawnee attackers alike. But it\u2019s undeniable that the film also builds up Dunbar as an impenetrable hero; to the Army, he becomes \u201can officer who\u2019s worth something,\u201d and to the Sioux, he becomes Dances with Wolves, their friend, ally, and brother. Dunbar isn\u2019t like those other white men, who kill animals for fun, who litter on the prairie, who threaten and steal and rape and murder. He is so pure-hearted as to almost be a fantasy, but hasn\u2019t the cowboy fantasy done enough harm already? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, the visceral allure of Dances with Wolves<\/em> is strong, and that\u2019s because of everything else that isn\u2019t Costner\u2019s Dunbar. It\u2019s in the bustling energy of the Sioux community: the games, meals, and stories that are shared; the kids who run around together; the intimacy of the relationships, whether friendly or romantic. It\u2019s in the bristling authority of Wes Studi\u2019s performance as the leader of the Pawnee, and in the playfulness of the wolf Two-Socks, and in the melancholy beauty of a star-filled night sky, and in the great plumes of dust and dirt kicked up by thousands of buffalo moving in unison across the prairie. It\u2019s in the aching finality of Wind In His Hair, high up on a mountain, announcing his allegiance to Dances with Wolves for everyone to see and hear (\u201cDo you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?\u201d), and in the concluding intertitle\u2019s reminder that American manifest destiny was the murderer of many. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere can be no place like this on Earth,\u201d Dunbar had marveled of the American West, and Dances with Wolves<\/em>\u2014with its broad scope and singular protagonist\u2014is perhaps the closest that American cinema has come to anything like Lawrence of Arabia<\/em> or Doctor Zhivago<\/em>. Those classics of David Lean\u2019s filmography, with their expansive cinematography and politically themed narratives, also explored the efforts of one lonely man during a changing time and wondered if one person\u2019s desire to get lost was worthy of our empathy and our understanding. It\u2019s possible neither of those films would get made these days, either. And so Dances with Wolves <\/em>remains one of the last films of its kind: noble and simplistic, majestic and problematic. ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/dances2-1024x576.jpg\")
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