"Dances with Wolves" (1990) - Movie Review

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them. - Charles Caleb Colton

Incidentally after watching this movie, when I opened the personalized “iGoogle” of mine, the above quote popped up. It is something most of us have fine tuned. It is either against a religion or a group of people or just a person. Hearing third hand information of the people is to believe blindly and fear or embrace the people when they are encountered in person. Here is Lieutenant John Dunbar (Kevin Costner) who is among the Sioux tribe people. He does have the fear on seeing them. All he has heard is that they are thieves and beggars. And he discovers them and himself in the course of the movie.

Not ready to lose his leg, Dunbar flees from the hospital during American Civil War. The hospital looks more like a carpenter’s work place. In the process of performing his suicide by riding the horse directly in the war zone opening up to the enemies, he dodges all the bullets miraculously. This makes him a hero and he is awarded the horse Cisco. Also he is placed in posting where he wants to, the Frontier. He travels a long journey and sees a desolated Post. With the supplies, he lives alone guarding and enjoying the nature. Things get interesting when he encounters the tribe people. And he takes initiative on finding whether they are going to kill him. With no language as a bridge, the contact takes place. Then he gets into their day to day activities and becomes one of them.

The transformation of soldier to tribe member takes the period it needs to. And the discovery of lot of the assumptions about the people is not based on major events. Rather it is how he blends in with them day in and day out. Dunbar is tacit and bold. He speaks his mind when he needs to. He keeps the journal through which we get to know his thoughts about the happenings around him. Dunbar is not a bad person but definitely infected with the gossips and judgments the people made him believe. He slowly learns how it does not matter to be in either side of any war or fight. The survival remains the soul goal. What if we all lead a life style of tribes? Also eliminate the concept of currency, land and basically to eliminate the materialistic creation of humans. Whether there will be harmony? I guess not, but definitely a better state of mind and peace than the modern world of chaos and hatred. Dunbar has those questions but answers it within himself and does not let us know about it. The film puts those questions to see where we are and what is it we are living for.

Kevin Costner who is also the director provides a spectacle of roaring nature with the beauty of its own. Now a day every other movie comes up with a funding so big that it is no more important. This movie seems to have got the funding of such big dollars and it is properly used. I can see where all the money went. Not on the grandeur sets but the magnanimity in showing the wild country with abundance of nature. The buffalo hunting scene is shot with so much energy and clarity that the elevation of those frames is beyond comparison. Over 300 buffaloes running all around with its megaton stature and some twenty to thirty people in their horses chasing and targeting it is pure technical niche.

Sure there have been so many movies about a character on his own with no one around making them to open up his/her mind to try out daring new things. Also here have been movies which promote a person from totally different culture and background to enter the opposite world to learn new things. Most of the movies while forming the bond in between those opposite poles, some times forget to say that given a chance to know them, they are all humans. In the sense, the concept of humanism does not get its light as it supposed to. “Dances with Wolves” does not preach about it but makes you realize that some where in the corner of your mind, it is there. The life of those tribe people are no different than any one else. They have a colony against our big cities and they have families and work to do. And there exists enemies but looking at it in big picture, it seems reasonable. But with proper care and learn even the enemies inside them could be made to strike goodness with each other. The film is about how the other side of the coin really is the same as the one exposed. It is to turn the coin and make an effort to see it.