Dances With Wolves is not really the movie I was expecting. By which I mean it’s a good deal better than its’ reputation, which isn’t so much that it’s bad as much as it is hollow -a well-meaning but empty act of reparation for Native American representation in film. It seems to be held up often as the quintessential “white saviour” movie, and yet I was shocked to find it only barely meets that definition. While it is certainly a white person’s story (he’s literally the title character) and every aspect of Lakota culture is illustrated through that lens, it is not the narrative of a white guy becoming leader of a non-white collective fighting his own on their behalf and ushering them into new prosperity as I was led to believe by its’ comparisons to movies that do do that. Indeed, Kevin Costner’s John Dunbar is a rather passive and observational character for significant stretches of his time among these people. Lawrence of Arabia, a movie less criticized for this, is way more of a white saviour story than Dances With Wolves, which though flawed has a genuine earnestness to its’ depiction of Indigenous peoples in the old west.
The use of language especially was something I wasn’t prepared for. Large passages of the film play out entirely in Lakota, without the Indigenous characters ever being pressured into speaking English. Indeed the only other English-speaker among this collective is the other white character Stands with a Fist (Mary McDonnell). Otherwise it is Dunbar who must adjust to them -speak their language, adapt to their customs, put more effort into earning their respect. This movie was one of the first to use genuine native language rather than the racist approximations so common of old westerns, and it makes all the difference, reflecting a certain noble integrity of the filmmakers. Their interest in capturing an authentic idea of Indigenous life and culture so often ignored by the western genre and history books alike does stand out. The ways in which the characters are humanized, their intelligence and perspectives honoured. The utmost respect is given over, an intense reverence in fact to their way of life. Maybe it’s not so easily laudable now and comes with its’ own baggage (one could make the argument it is merely an extension of the “noble savage” trope of James Fenimore Cooper), but at the time it came out, it was honestly revolutionary, and for its’ purposes I think the treatment of the Indigenous by this film still largely holds up.
Obviously, there are some hiccups. As good as the representation is for its’ time, the movie is again fundamentally a white story -whether it be white enlightenment or white guilt, it is still the white person at the centre of things, his journey into understanding the basic lesson that Native Americans are people. It’s played as a big moment when he discloses they are not the racist boogeymen that he has been brought up to believe: a low bar to rise above. To the films’ credit, it doesn’t position him and his culture in innately superior ways (though there is one scene where he demonstrates for them a piece of technology), it generally avoids blatant ‘othering’ of the Lakota rituals; but also it makes sure to give Dunbar an obligatory white love interest. Stands with a Fist is certainly based in the truth of white survivors of raids often being indoctrinated into and raised by Indigenous tribes; but the choice to make this character white feels calculated. Her purpose, aside from being a love interest, is to be Dunbar’s translator and a kind of link between the two worlds -which could have been achieved as well with a Native actress and just a slightly retooled backstory. It would have made that whole subplot feel just a little less like a movie afraid of miscegenation. Plus it would have been a great starring opportunity for a Native American actress, then and now a severely underrepresented class in Hollywood.
There’s also the fact that for as glorified as the Lakota are by this movie, their rivals the Pawnee are just bad guys, coded as villains through alienating warpaint and a general aggressiveness to their characterization. They are raiders and killers while the Lakota are more inherently peaceful and willing to take in those left behind in the Pawnees wake. It’s more than a bit too binary in addition to its’ historical anachronism, and may be a by-product of the films’ disinterest in developing a key villain -assigning that role to groups, the Pawnee first and then the white men. And I can’t help but think about something like The Last of the Mohicans, which at least in the 1992 movie had a compelling Indigenous villain who didn’t reflect some broader generalization. It’s a curious though not unexpected thing to note that both that character, Magua, and the apparent Pawnee leader of this movie, are played by Wes Studi.
Though a small role, this was something of a breakout for Studi, as it was for some of the films’ other First Nations actors. Chief among them is Graham Greene, younger than I’ve ever seen him and the performance highlight of the movie. He is typically a treat of the movies he appears in but this performance really does make the case he ought to have had a more fruitful career. Even at just thirty-seven, he exudes an air of great power and experience as Lakota medicine man Kicking Bird, yet he doesn’t conform to a stock character. He’s got a good deal of personality, an affable charm, and a sense of serenity with his life that makes his wise, grandiose Native-isms ring with actual import. There’s a similar melding of dignity and humanity to the performances of Rodney A. Grant as Wind in His Hair and Tantoo Cardinal as Black Shawl (who like Greene is a Canadian national treasure). Floyd Red Crow Westerman plays the noble Chief Ten Bears a bit more to type, but is very good at it. Honestly the only performances that are a bit lacking are the white ones.
Costner I’ve never much thought of as a particularly good actor. He’s got a great Hollywood look but not the charisma to match. That being said, I think he’s mostly fine in this movie, even impressive in a couple of moments. But he also narrates the piece. There is so much exposition relayed through narration as Dunbar keeps a journal, and almost all of it sounds stilted or just a bit bored. It may be that Costner is trying to evoke the dryness of a written record, but if so it’s a choice that doesn’t translate well to film. We as audiences crave more emotion, more distinction, more personality -we want to see the changes he’s undergoing reflected, especially as so much of what is conveyed in this narration is exciting and profound. It perhaps stems though from the problem of Dunbar not being much of a character. In some ways, he’s an audience surrogate through which the (presumably white) audience can be exposed to and appreciate Indigenous culture. But it leaves him a bit of an empty vessel, which is especially noticeable when he has to anchor a love story or when we’re meant to be invested in his capture. Costner seems to put more effort in at those stages in the latter end of the film perhaps to make up for Dunbar’s shallowness -he actually gets some of his best moments during the captive sequence. But contrast that to, once again, Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence is an extremely fascinating character all throughout. We’re kept at a distance from Lawrence, but very intimate with Dunbar -perhaps that’s the rub. In any case it does hurt the film somewhat that its’ titular character leaves so little an impression.
But where that’s true of Costner the actor, it certainly isn’t the case for Costner the director. It is bewildering that Dances With Wolves is his feature directing debut, it is so confident and competent. In the early goings, Dunbar’s near-amputation and suicide attempt while in Tennessee, the film feels a little constrained, a little uneasy, like a generic Civil War movie without much sense of scale. But once on the frontier there’s a shift, an energy is pumped into the pacing, Dean Semler’s cinematography rejoices in the wild untouched terrain, the scope balloons to its’ rightful epic proportions, and we get shots like Dunbar looking back from outside the hut that is Fort Sedgwick as the camera stands in for his escort on the wagon, his last connection to white civilization, receding from him. Costner doesn’t make a ton of these really specific visual choices but when he does, they are excellent. Consider the scene where the Pawnee ride through the Lakota village, charging through the tepees, the camera tilting upwards to better emphasize the size and power of this host. Its’ one of several clever ways that Costner hides his limitations -he’s not working with countless extras or necessarily enormous budgets, but he can make the film feel extraordinarily big through shrewd choices made with the aid of Semler. What he did have though was a shit-ton of buffalo for the big hunt set-piece that is the films’ most impressive sequence. Watching this film, it seems a shame that Costner only made two movies afterwards -he might actually be a greater talent behind the camera. At the very least it makes me actually curious about seeing his infamous bomb The Postman.
John Barry’s beautiful score wafts in and out of this movie with grace. Its’ gentle but ancient gravitas was my first inkling of Dances With Wolves many years ago and I wondered if the movie it belonged to could match up. And I think in many ways it does. It’s a movie that has shortcomings and in particular areas doesn’t go far enough with its’ ideals, but I respect a lot its’ importance. As much as it was made for white audiences, it is still a landmark in Indigenous representation on the big screen, and that’s worth appreciating. It gave birth to a trend in Hollywood focused on native peoples and their history, which produced movies like The Last of the Mohicans, Dead Man, Pocahontas, and Smoke Signals. Most of these were geared towards white folks as well, but it was a great shift from all that had come before and paved the way for even further representation driven by Indigenous artists themselves. For the Indigenous, Dances With Wolves is a movie that at last gives their people respect and depth, that celebrates their culture and traditions. For the whites, it is a story ultimately about embracing a community you’ve been taught to hate, and white people today still need to learn that lesson. What harm is there in this movie being a vessel for that?
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