Dances with Wolves

The 1990 American revisionist Western, Dances with Wolves, is still highly regarded not just for once again revitalizing the genre during a period where they had long outgrown their welcome but was also the film that propelled actor Kevin Costner from a known talent into a hot commodity after he directed and wrote this picture to extreme success. With 12 nominations at the Academy Awards and taking home some of the biggest categories like Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director and Best Picture (being only one of four Western to win said award), it cemented itself as a pivotal film for cinematic history and is still referenced to this day, but how much of that praise still holds weight all these years later?

In 1863, Union soldier John Dunbar (played by Kevin Costner) chooses to attempt suicide in battle rather than have his leg amputated, but he miraculously survives and even causes a distraction that allowed the army to defeat the Confederates. Because of this victory, he’s transferred to the American frontier and assigned an outpost at Fort Sedgwick, and while waiting for the rest of the army, John learns that he lives close to a Sioux tribe after the tribe’s medicine man, Kicking Bird (played by the late Graham Greene) cautiously approach him with hopes they can gain something by interacting with a less hostile white man. After a period of learning a bit of each other’s language, John starts to get more involved with the Sioux people, helping them in hunts, teaching them how to use firearms, and even fully becomes part of their tribe after meeting and falling in love with Stands with a Fist (played by Mary McDonnell), a white woman who was adopted into the tribe after her family was massacred by a neighbouring Pawnee tribe. While fully ready to become one of the Sioux, the Union Army finally arrives and causes turmoil that’ll force John to defend his newfound community.

Dances with Wolves was a big movie upon release and is still viewed highly now, but despite this grandeur, it (much like many other Westerns before it) don’t always hold up as well with the passage of time, as what used to feel epic, poignant and raw, now feels singular, mundane and largely underwhelming. It has good intentions, the supporting cast do breathe life and charm into a criminally vilified culture, and all its components are competently structured and executed, but the sheer boredom that is felt when watching due to its very clinical form of storytelling, and garbage main character and leading performance, limit the kind of investment one can have for it.

While seen as one of the great films, studios weren’t gnashing at the chance to pick this movie up at the time, as Kevin Costner did a lot of the heavy lifting to get the film off the ground, noticed by others in the industry, and financed with enough backing that it could be brought to life in an effective sense. Initially starting as a spec script, Costner convinced the author, Michael Blake (whom Costner worked with on his only previous film, Stacy’s Knights in 1983) to turn his story into a novel to improve its chance of being produced, getting published in 1988 after numerous rejections. After Costner bought the film rights with the intent to star in and direct the film, he and his producing partner, Jim Wilson, struggled to find funding since every studio had turned off the Western genre after the colossal flop that was Heaven’s Gate in 1980, finally finding a distributing partner in Orion Pictures, which struck a deal that allowed Costner final cut rights. All of this is to say that even though Hollywood would grow to fall in love with it, it needed to fight an uphill battle, and because of this, no one else was brought on board creatively to spruce up the script (which Blake oversaw) or direct. This doesn’t have to be an issue and considering its success at the time from a critical and commercial standpoint, it didn’t suffer any pushback, but it probably would’ve been smarter to bring in another writer and allow someone else to direct.

These components aren’t handled badly necessarily, as for a first-time directing job, Costner is able to emulate the traditional sweeping, grand and magnanimous nature of a typical Western through nice imaginary and spectacle, and while seen as cartoonishly simplistic by today’s standard, the story of a white man learning to appreciate and even side with the Native Americans against his own society would’ve felt pretty fresh and even challenging for the time, but because neither he nor Wilson had a ton of experience in their respective fields, you can sense how it’s holding this story and the film in general back. With a very sterile presentation that seems to favor history and information over emotion and fluid expressiveness, Dances with Wolves is laboriously dull and doesn’t spend any of its three-hour running time diving into the psyche of its characters or what spurs the hatred and divide between these two sections of humanity, instead painting a childishly simple picture of the events that doesn’t evoke or raise questions, and merely uses it as a backdrop for a very standard Western plot. The screenplay has so much time to work with and a fairly straightforward premise to follow, yet feels so soulless in its dialogue and predictable with its conflict and drama that it can’t be anything other than shallow and uncreative (even for the time), the directing brings a sappy sentimentality that doesn’t evoke any sense of charm or character and therefore just muddies any sense of weight that should naturally blossom from these events, and even if the presentation is perfectly fine, the passage of time and future projects actually spotlighting the deeply rooted issues surrounding this period of time make it feel a little disingenuous.

While Kevin Costner had already made a name for himself by starring in movies like The Untouchables, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves was the one that put him on the map as a talent that could turn heads and even turn a seemingly dead-on-arrival project into a smash hit, but it’s also a movie that showcases some of his least favorable qualities as an actor. While he’s acted well in plenty of films before and after this, his worst traits are hard to ignore and they are all over this role of John Dunbar, who despite being semi-based on a true Christian missionary who worked alongside the Native Americans, is not the least bit interesting in this due to how he’s written and Costner’s terrible performance. While he does move and carry himself in a way that feels authentic to his position and time period, his limited on-screen dialogue is never convincing or well-spoken and his narrative is so terrible that it’s almost laughable how soullessly it comes across, it just doesn’t make the character or Costner look good in the slightest. The rest of the white characters are also terribly performed and play into that slightly hoaky form of acting that is usually seen as fine in a western, but in a story that focuses on a very grizzly and complex subject matter, come across as childish and even a little demeaning.

Since westerns as a genre have continually portrayed Native Americans as vicious, animalistic villains without any sense of humanity, you’ll notice a gradual but otherwise genuine attempt by later entries to try and present them in a more sympathetic or at least authentic fashion, and Dances with Wolves does deserve credit for being one of the biggest films to try and get this message across. While it’s not a nuanced portrayal of either the Sioux or the Pawnee tribe, there doesn’t feel like any ill-will behind its portrayal, and they can at least hold onto the fact that they’re easily the best part of the movie. They don’t fully work as the bad screenplay and story prevent them from truly engaging in the events in an interesting sense, but their conversations (which is spoken in a messily handled, but still Lakota language) are intriguing and well written, and the actors are very captivating and come the closest to feeling like believable individuals with distinct identities. Some are weakened by their limited screentime or hollow use in the story, mainly Mary McDonnell due to being stuck in a dragged-out and very limp romantic subplot, but Graham Greene as Kicking Bird, Floyd Westermann as Chief Ten Bears, and especially Rodney A. Grant as Wind in His Hair make for memorable characters who actually breath some life and passion into this incredible dull experience.

Dances with Wolves ironically being coined as a western is bizarre considering it doesn’t feel like one with its premise, but the many similarities present in the directing style, writing, character work and imagery makes it abundantly clear, and it can say that it manages to visually capture the genre quite nicely. While it’d be fair to assume that these kind of large sweeping shots of grassy or sandy plains would become tiresome after a while, cinematographer Dean Semler (who won an Oscar for his work on this film) does his best to still make these environments look wide-open, incredibly natural looking and uses that openness quite effectively during some of the fight scenes present throughout the story. While it doesn’t necessarily have a lot of action and the more close-quarters stuff isn’t that incredible, the spacious way these moments on horseback are filmed are eye-catching and allow this culture usually known for riding on horseback, to shine very brightly. The music by John Barry also captures that familiar western sound with the instrumentation and peppiness, but also more of a contemporary quality to it that helps it stand apart from others that came before it. You can tell that Kevin Costner loved Westerns and did his best to portray these specific qualities nice enough, so there was at least a valiant attempt.

Dances with Wolves has a lot of status and it’s understandable for the time, but with how many other stories have tried to tackle these kind of cross-culture topics in a more nuanced and excitable fashion, seeing one that feels more interested in feeling important rather than engaging with its audience, does leave it seeming pretty bland by today’s standards. From an outside viewpoint, all of its facets are functional and considering the trials Costner and the team went through to get it made, it deserves credit for presenting a solid premise for the time and some memorable and non-discriminatory Native American performances, but with a flat screenplay, fairly safe direction, and a terrible leading character and performance, it feels like history will remember it more fondly than deserved.