Dances With Wolves (35th Anniversary)
Kevin Costner’s seven-time Oscar-winning directorial debut about an American lieutenant who befriends a Lakota Sioux tribe during the American Civil War.
At his own request, the lieutenant is sent by the U.S. Army to the most remote outpost in the Wild West. There, he reluctantly comes into contact with the indigenous people and, yes, a wolf. As he is slowly accepted into the tribe and finds love there, problems also begin to arise. For one thing, there is the threat from the hostile tribe of the Pawnees. And whether the army that later joins the lieutenant is friendly toward the Lakota remains to be seen.
With Dances With Wolves, Kevin Costner made the film he had always wanted to star in himself. And what a film! The sweeping shots of the prairie are stunning. The epic story unfolds slowly and never gets boring. And for the first time, Native Americans are not portrayed as uncivilized savages, but as people with a unique and sophisticated culture of their own. Costner, who also produced the film, went to great lengths to reconstruct the language, lifestyle, and clothing of the Lakota tribe in meticulous detail. Such respect for strangers; we could learn a lot from that in these times of polarization.
Written by J.C.