Wherein Ben and I wax nostalgic about the days when men wore mullets proudly and Kevin Costner had a career.
Ben Begins:
Saw only a period of this, thank god. Am I allowed to say that all of the political correctness in the world still does not make this movie any good?
You can let Graham Greene deliver lines in Lakota all day and it still won't make up for Kevin Costner speaking in any language you choose. What a wet rag. The hack voice-over narrative is bad enough but to have the words come out of his mouth, I've heard "dumb jocks" in grade nine read better than that. And then his acting up on the screen, the best work that guy ever did was in the Big Chill. And the political correctness is so politically correct and sappy and sucky and conscience-appeasing and politically-pacifying and just generally brain-numbing. Yuck!The cinematography of the buffalo hunt was pretty cool but the music was so grand grand grand, even that was lame.
And Dan:
I confess to liking the film back in the day, not because of Costner, but in spite of him. I enjoyed the Indians, particular Greene and the pissed off to the point of crazy Indian, and they got me through the cloying love story.
However, if you wanna really suffer, you need to watch the director's cut, which is about (I shit you not) four hours long. Better yet, watch it and listen to Costner's commentary at the same time. Then you can watch him emote, and listen to him narrate the film, as well as comment on it, all at the same time.
Then Ben:
I saw the film in New Zealand after living in Malaysia for a year and half, watching only the most dreadful Hollywood trash for the most part and all of this censored to death by the government. So believe me, I was a lot more forgiving about it then than I am prepared to be now. But even then, I could tell it was a putrid ideolodical tract posing as essential historical revisionism and even then, I thought Costner needed to be shot in the face with a ball of his own shit. The actress playing the white women raised by the Sioux is acceptable and I recall Monica saying it was nice to see an older woman appropriately cast in the part.
3 comments:
man, i totally haven't thought of this movie in the longest of times.
It certainly has not held on to it's piece of the spotlight people expected it to.
--RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com
It's a good film, and it's only "politically correct" to those over 50, or mentally stuck in the last century. The film actually shows the Sioux as, gasp, indigenous PEOPLE, with all the humanity present in others - love, custom, irrationality, violence, and awe at being alive. Shows the reality of the rape of this country, whether you like that truth or not, it's true. Out of balance, and unless you hide from the world, it's clear we've continued into that path towards it's logical point of no return. Preachy, but well, sometimes we need to be.
Anonymous, no no please. The political correctness I am attacking is not the portrayal of the indigenous people; rather, it is the revisionist portrait of the protagonist as a man of humanist moral fiber with whom the audience is supposed to identify. He's such a nice guy, so by association, we are too. Dances With Wolves does not enter seriously into history to the extent that Costner's character is nothing more than an escape hatch from facing the legacy of that history that confronts us today.
Then - Ben
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