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Vincent CarrollSyndicated columnist‘Dances With Wolves’ is out of stepI hope I'm not the only American to shrug off the foreign takeover of Hollywood studios, but I can’t help myself. Anything that sets this smug indu stiy on Its ear may even be worth a cheer or two.To hear Hollywood's champions tell It, U.S. filmmaking Is a national treasure. That’s true, of course, to the extent that Hollywood rakes In billions from overseas. But a treasure In an endur-tngly creative sense? Come on.By and large, popular Hollywood movies have become vastly entertaining features of little genuine seriousness. The exceptions, such as “Driving Miss Daisy,” only reinforce the dreary rule.Even the most ambitious movies usually display the complexity of a Grimm fairy tale. For proof, look no further than a current megahit. Kevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves.The great screenwriter Ben Hecht once quipped that “anyone with a good memory for cliches and unafraid to write like a child can bat out a superb movie In a few days. “Dances With Wolves exactly fits this formula. It is a deeply enjoyable, gorgeous film whose narration never rises above romantic baby talk.Costner set out to portray Indians in a sympathetic light. And how. There Isn’t a single one who isn’t heroic, wise or at the very least in perfect accord with the natural and spiritual worlds. Costner, who both directs and acts In the movie, even sanitizes intertribal warfare: After the Sioux and Pawnee clash, the narrator (Costner again) extols the battle as one in which no “dark” political motive animated the contestants. Coming from a Civil War veteran who’d fought on the Union side — against slavery, one is tempted to remind the director — this is a remarkably unnuanced slam against all national purpose.Needless to say, the whites in the film make up for the dearth of Indian warts. To a man (and they virtually are all men), they’re cruel, racist and destructive — and those are just their most obvious flaws. One fellow cackles like a loon over sun-bleached human bones; another wets his pants during an Interview with Costner and then, calm as you please, produces a pistol and blows out his own brains. Their problem: In common with all other whites, their lives lack “harmony, the only known cure for which (no surprise here) Is the adoption of Indian ways.This is not history, of course: it is a morality play — the cinematic equivalent of an Ayn Rand novel. Real-life behavior rarely lives up to such expectations. Just ask Patricia Limerick. She’s the historian who, more than any other, has spent the past decade debunking American frontier myths. Yet even Limerick told me, In an Interview last summer. “If someone doesn’t read carefully, I seem to be saying, ‘Oh the wicked white folks.' And that’s not what I’m saying at all. It goes against human nature to suggest that every person in any particular group would respond with nobility and heroism....John Ford certainly realized this. Nearly 25 years ago, he directed “The Searchers, another movie about a disillusioned Civil War veteran and his encounters with Indians. While Ford romanticized some aspects of frontier life, he possessed the artistic integrity to portray both the leading white (John Wayne) and his Comanche nemesis as complex men whose racial rancor sprang from deep personal pain. The story concentrates on Wayne, but it doesn’t sneer at the Indians as “Dances With Wolves scorns all things non-Indian.
Newspaper Details
Corbin Times Tribune
Corbin, Kentucky, US
Sat, Dec 15, 1990
Page 4
Full Page
Clipped by
Jon C.
NJ, USA 17 Jan 2020
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