Hide Article Text (OCR)
directorial feather in Costner’s capHis ‘Dances’ taps the wellspring of our epic historyBy Jim EmersonThe Orange County Registerevin Costner’s “Dances With Wolves,” the well-known actor’s magnificent directorial debut, reminds you of why the Western is (or was) such a vital, enduring American genre: It’s the story of how this country came to be.Costner’s movie is told on an epic scale — three hours long, in panaramic widescreen, featuring spectacular battle scenes, a breathtaking buffalo hunt, lots of majestically unspoiled South Dakota scenery, archetypal Western characters — and yet it remains intimate and emotionally involving.In its finest moments, and there are plenty, the film combines the straightforward, elegiac storytelling of John Ford with the mythic violence and imagery of Sam Peckinpah and the dark, absurdist humor of Monte Heilman. And if you’re making a Western, you couldn’t have better influences than those.“Dances With Wolves” is the tale of one man and his search for himself in the vastness of the American frontier. At the same time, the chronicle of this individual, Lt. John J. Dunbar (Costner), named Dances With Wolves by the Sioux, also exemplifies the larger tale of how America itself was born.The figure of the loner, the wanderer, the outsider (memorably personified by John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards’ in Ford’s great 1956 “The Searchers,” widely considered the best Western of all) is a classic Ameri-Stands With a Fist (Mary McDonnell) is a white woman raised by the Sioux after her family was killed.can character. In a sense, Dunbar — who chooses a solitary assignment at Fort Sedgewick, a one-shack outpost in the middle of the prairie and is eventually adopted into a Sioux tribe — embodies the opposing viewpoints of Wayne’s character and Natalie Wood’s (an orphaned white girl raised by Indians) from “The Searchers.” Paradoxically, Dunbar is an outsider who comes to find a nlarp far himcplf (andthus unearths his own true identity) within a human community. But the home he discovers is in the supposedly alien (to him) Native American culture, with the people who belong to the land he inhabits and feelsclose to, rather than in the society of the encroaching European settlers.Dunbar is an insider/outsider, and this dual perspective unites the Western genre’s traditional pioneer perspective with that of the native Indians from whom they wrested this land. It makes “Dances With Wolves” all the richer an American legend.From the beginning, Dunbar is a divided soul. He’s a Union soldier in the Civil War who, after a peculiar act of bravery, requests that he be stationed at the farthest edge of the frontier. Dunbar’s heroic act is actually a suicide attempt (“In trying to produce my own death I was elevated to the status of a living hero,” he says in voiceover) — a symbolic killing-off of his old self, as well as an opportunity for rebirth.The film resonates with mythic imagery that underscores and enlivens an already exciting adventure. Dunbar is given his orders by an insane officer who addresses him as “Sir Knight,” for example. And his Sancho Panza for the trip west is the personification of the Ugly American, “quite possibly the foulest man I have ever met.”But Dunbar’s quest is a solitary one, his only companions (initially) being his horse and a curious wolf he names Two Socks. Dunbar’s first encounter with a Sioux comes when he is stark naked, having just emerged from bathing in a stream. Out here, there’s no place to hide from himself. He’s stripped to his essential being in this expansive wilderness, and ready to be reborn.An encounter with a white woman named Stands With a Fist (Mary McDonnell), raised by the Sioux after her family was slaughtered (shades of Natalie Wood and “The Searchers” again), leads Dunbar to the heart of the tribe, where he is befriended by Kicking Bird (Graham Greene, not to be confused with the author), a holy man, and Wind in His Hair (Rodney A. Grant), a warrior.MOVIE REVIEWThe film: Dances With Wolves.”Stare: Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney A. Grant, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Tantoo Cardinal, Robert Pastorelli, Charles Rocket, Maury Chaykin, Nathan Lee Chasing His Horse.Behind the scenes: Directed by Kevin Costner. Screenplay by Michael Blake, based on his novel Cinematography by Dean Selmer. Music by John Barry.Playing: Starts today at Edwards Newport Cinema in Newport Beach.Running time: 3 hours, 1 minute.Rated: PG-13 - violence, language, sex.Costner the actor injects a few stray modernisms into his portrayal, but Costner the director is astoundingly sure-footed. The movie rarely strains for an effect, its rhythms and pacing sometimes slow but always purposefully, even fascinatingly, so. The three hours and one minute of “Dances With Wolves” go by much more quickly than the 90 minutes of most contemporary action-adventures, because this movie has a living, breathing soul. You can tell that the picture up there on the screen is one somebody really wanted to make.That care and attention show up in the movie’s many authentic details — from the fact that Costner clearly does much of his own stuntwork (including bareback riding during a thunderous buffalo hunt) to the costumes, customs and language of the Sioux (who speak the Lakota dialect with English subtitles).A few lapses — probably due to excised scenes — are apparent, but they aren’t too bothersome. But it might have taken only a line or two of narration to explain when and how the Sioux learned to use firearms.Altogether, however, “Dances With Wolves” is a triumph for Costner, all his collaborators — and for the American Western.
Newspaper Details
Santa Ana Orange County Register
Santa Ana, California, US
Fri, Nov 09, 1990
Page 68
Full Page
Clipped by
Rotten T.
USA 02 Nov 2022
Other Publications Near Santa Ana, California
Santa Ana Pacific Weekly Blade
Santa Ana Excelsior
Santa Ana News
Santa Ana Evening Blade
Santa Ana Orange County Register Evening
