12/31/2023 0 Comments Graham greene dances with wolves![]() Costner approaches his Indian characters with a respect verging on awe no filmmaker has ever portrayed the Native American way of life with such passionate dedication. There's a residue of 1960s counter-consciousness in the telling of this 1860s saga. "Dances With Wolves" presents itself as a corrective to the classic Hollywood western's version of American history, and in a sense, Costner uses Ford's own vocabulary to debunk him. It's ironic that Ford should be a presiding spirit here. And his ability to make the landscape a character in the drama recalls both John Ford and David Lean. (He also has the Japanese master's sentimentality and his appreciation for low, masculine humor.) There's virtuosity in his staging of scenes, like the one in which Dunbar first makes contact with a buffalo herd, which moves over the half-dark of the prairie like a battalion of ghosts. Costner's feel for the visceral pleasures of big-screen imagery brings Kurosawa to mind. One of Costner's greatest achievements here is the balance he strikes between the film's larger strokes and its smaller ones, between the seriousness of its themes and the lightness of its approach. Who was taken in when her parents were killed by the Pawnee - is carefully constructed most of the movie, in fact, is devoted to developing it. Grant), and a young white woman, Stands With a Fist (Mary McDonnell), The lieutenant's relationship with the tribe - in particular with the medicine man Kicking Bird (Graham Greene), the warrior Wind in His Hair (Rodney A. When Dunbar has his first encounters with the members of the Sioux tribe, Costner gives each one a distinct personality these are anything but faceless heathens. And he never generalizes when he can be specific. Costner's scenes between characters are vibrantly close-in and delicate. For an epic, "Dances With Wolves" is remarkably nuanced and intimate. It is through this accumulation of brilliantly observed minutiae that Costner seduces us into Dunbar's psyche. Costner is keen to the millions of small facts - such as the clanking of whiskey bottles in an officer's bottom drawer - that reveal character or throw a vivid spotlight on a dramatic moment. We discover his world as he discovers it, and feel along with him the pleasures of new revelations. Our reactions throughout the film, in fact, are keyed to Dunbar's. ![]() Working with the Australian cinematographer Dean Semler, Costner makes us feel as if we're seeing these western landscapes with fresh eyes, as Dunbar is seeing them. The images, though, are splendorous, expressive and constantly surprising. This first section of the film, which reveals Dunbar's first impressions of this virgin paradise, makes daringly spare use of dialogue. When Dunbar arrives, he finds the fort deserted but, determined to gain some experience of this new frontier, he decides to stay on alone. Our window into this tale is John Dunbar (Costner), a Union Army lieutenant who, as a result of an inadvertent act of heroism during a Civil War battle in Tennessee, is awarded a command at the Army's westernmost outpost, on the Dakota plains. That he does have it qualifies as some kind of minor miracle. And if Costner didn't have the talent to match his ambition, the project might have been a disastrous folly, an act of megastar self-indulgence. At nearly three hours long, with nearly a third of its dialogue delivered in authentic Lakota Indian dialect, the film is as vast in its ambitions as it is in scope. His subject, in the most general terms, is the settling of the American West and, more specifically, the conflicts during the 1860s as white settlers began to move in larger numbers into Indian territory. Costner makes the story accessible without cheapening it he's accessible in the best and purest sense in that his intention is always to find the telling human detail that draws us inside his sprawling saga. What he also possesses is a born storyteller's instinct for engaging his audience. He's got the moviemaker's fire in his gut. But with "Dances With Wolves," Costner instantly steps up into that exalted front rank. With a few notable exceptions - Orson Welles and Charles Laughton among them - actors have not made great filmmakers. This picture isn't just competently directed, it's masterfully directed. It's also one of the movies' most impressive directorial debuts and one of the year's most satisfying and audaciously entertaining films.įrom the picture's opening shots, it's clear that this new director has a thrilling command of his tools. ![]() Kevin Costner's "Dances With Wolves" is a stunning combination of all-American boyishness and sweeping grandeur - it's the movies' first regular-guy epic. Picture Director Adapted Screenplay Cinematography Editing Score Sound Children under 13 should be accompanied by a parent
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |