102. Dances with Wolves (1990)

Stars:  Kevin Costner (Lt. John J. Dunbar), Mary McDonnell (Stands With A Fist ), Graham Greene (Kicking Bird), Rodney A. Grant (Wind In His Hair), Floyd Red Crow Westerman (Ten Bears)

Director:  Kevin Costner

Awards / Honors

• 7 Oscars Wins - Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Original Score
• 5 Additional Oscar Nominations - Best Actor (Kevin Costner), Best Supporting Actor (Graham Greene), Best Supporting Actress (Mary McDonnell), Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design
• #75 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies list (1998)
• #59 on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers list (2006)
• In 2007, Dances with Wolves was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
• Dances with Wolves is approximately the 112th highest grossing movie of all time, accounting for inflation (see Box Office Mojo)

Genre:  Historical Drama

Running Time:  3 Hours, 54 Minutes (Director's Cut)

Format:  DVD (not yest available on Blu-ray)

Odyssey Rating:  4 1/2 Stars (John - 5 Stars, Beth 4- Stars)

John's Take

As I have mentioned in previous posts, sometimes movies don’t age well.  Usually this is taken to mean that one or more elements of the movie seems wrong or odd to a modern audience – say, something like showing a husband and a wife sleeping in separate beds, antiquated special effects, or even something more serious like racial stereotypes.  Despite how critically acclaimed a movie may have been at the time, it always runs the risk of eventually becoming irrelevant.  On a rare occasion, however, it is not any particular element of the movie, but the success and accolades that the movie receives that have a negative impact on its shelf-life.  In other words, it becomes the victim of backlash.  It seems like Dances with Wolves is becoming one of those films.  As the years have past since the movie’s release, it seems like there is a growing desire among people who write about movies to take this movie "down a few pegs" for some reason.  In other words, the film’s reputation is starting to be affected by the backlash it has been subjected to over the years.  That backlash has come in many forms.

First, there is the fact that Dances with Wolves was Kevin Costner’s directorial debut, and a great number of people thought he was certain to fail.  This is because, as the stories go, Kevin refused to play it safe.  Instead, Costner consciously chose to break all the “rules” that first time directors are supposed to follow: 

• Don’t work with animals – this film is full of difficult to train animals like wolves that needed to perform on cue, not to mention Costner nearly breaking his back during the buffalo hunt.
• Don’t work outside – the entire film takes place outside and South Dakota is not known for predictable weather.
• Don’t work with children – there were several supporting characters that were minors.
• Don’t get too attached to your “vision” – A director can’t always include everything they want in a movie.  The theatrical release of Dances with Wolves is just over 3 hours long.  The Director’s Cut, which seems to be the default home video version, is just under 4 hours long.  Your movie better be really good if you want an audience to sit still for that long.

With information like that in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the film was dubbed “Kevin’s Gate” as the production began to spiral over budget.  Costner even ended up throwing in a few million dollars of his own money to get the movie completed.  There were plenty of Hollywood insiders and pundits that were convinced that film was doomed. I am sure that many of were extremely disappointed that in the end the movie was a huge success.  

Now had Costner taken a step back, thanked his lucky stars, and made a vow to himself not to make the same sort of mistakes again, he probably could have prevented some backlash.  Unfortunately, he didn’t do that.  It seems like the success of Dances with Wolves seem to simply just convince him that he knew precisely what he was doing and he preceded to handle his next two directorial projects – Waterworld and The Postman – more or less the same way.  History has shown that was a mistake.  The critical and / or commercial failure of both those films gave those Hollywood naysayers the ammunition they needed to write off Dances with Wolves as simply a fluke.

A second thing contributing to the backlash is how often Dances with Wolves has been copied or parodied.  In Hollywood, success brings on imitation, and having been very successful, Dances with Wolves has been imitated many times.  There was The Last Samurai (Dances with Katanas), FernGully: The Last Rainforest (Dances with Fairies), and  Avatar (Dances with Smurfs) just to name a few.  A host of movies such as Hot Shots! (“Now I am called Tukachinchilla. -What does it mean? - Fluffy Bunny Feet.” “Dances with Bikers got this for you…”) parody the movie as well.  While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, it can also diminish the thing being imitated – especially when those imitators are of lesser quality.  People forget how good the original was because they have grown bored with all the copies.

A third thing that people like to pick on is that Dances with Wolves tends to be a preachy.  The Native Americans are portrayed perhaps just a little too idyllically while the white Calvary men are portrayed perhaps just a little overly cruel.  Is that a bad thing?  Considering how badly America has treated the nation’s indigenous peoples – not to mention how they have traditionally been portrayed in film – I don’t think really think so, however, as a general rule, people don’t go to the movies to be made to feel bad, whether or not it is justified.  Thus, people feel the need to point out inaccuracies in an attempt to feel better.  If you are really successful, like Dances, or say Avatar, eventually the focus on inaccuracies transform into accusations of indirect racism; that the film is nothing but a fantasy where a white guy becomes an irreplaceable member / leader of a culture that is not his own.

Lastly, but related the third point, you have the fact that Dances with Wolves beat out Goodfellas for the Best Picture Oscar because it was a “cause film”.  In fact, Goodfellas never had a chance to win Best Picture.  There was no way that a movie about violent gangsters was going to be beat about a film that tells the story of how white Americans cruelly treated the Sioux because the white-man is too ignorant to see how brave and noble the Sioux are.  Hollywood and the Oscars live for movies like that – at least until another cause-of-day comes along.  Unfortunately it has been quite a few years since Dances was the cause-of-day, and just on its own merit Dances with Wolves was better than Awakenings, or Ghost, or The Godfather, Part III, but it clearly wasn’t better than Goodfellas.

As I said earlier in the post I really don’t agree with a lot of the backlash concerning this movie.  Not that I think that some of it isn’t completely without merit.  The film was indeed a vanity project for Costner.  The film (or it is copies / parodies) was everywhere for a while and it is understandable that people got sick of it.  The film is a little preachy and the fact that it was more “socially conscious” than its competition was ultimately how it ended-up winning the Best Picture Oscar.  All of that is more or less true; however, that is why it is important to re-visit movies from time to time.  It had been about 5 years or so since I had last seen this film, and I had probably seen it maybe 10 or 15 times since it had been released, so I am fairly familiar with it and could have easily written about it without watching it again.  Had I done that, however, my ranking for the film would have been different. I would have probably given the movie 4 Stars.  However, after watching it again, it reminded me that it is still a really great film and deserves to be included on the list of all-time greats and am somewhat confused on why it was excluded from the AFI 2007 list.

Despite that how long it is, and how legitimate some of the other criticisms may be, this movie is beautiful to look at, tells an engaging story, and has a good heart.  I give it a ranking of 5 Stars.

John