Yar, you be here: A Man Called Horse > Customer Reviews
A Man Called Horse Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 9 Reviews)
One of the most powerful westerns ever made!
Elliot Silverstein got a hit with this film . The script turns around a white man kidnapped by the Sioux , will be the spark for that movie , Richard Harris made one of the finest performances in his career. Superb landscapes and dazzling direction.
Unforgettable!
A white man becomes Indian chief? Give me a break!
This 1970 film stars Richard Harris as an English Lord in the American West in 1825. He is captured by the Sioux Indians where he is first humiliated, but learns the Indian way of life, participates in a painful ritual, finds love and teaches the Indians a thing or two about war. Ridiculous! First of all, let's look at the cast. In addition to Richard Harris there's Dame Judith Anderson from Australia, cast as Buffalo Cow; Corinna Tsopei, a former Miss Universe from Greece, cast as Running Deer; Manu Tupou, a Polynesian from the Fiji Islands cast as Yellow Hand.
It's true the cast speaks in an Indian language but I wonder if that's just to cover up all their different accents. And even though there is a note at the beginning of the movie that the ritual has been well researched, it is doubtful that any white man ever had this honor, which is played with all its gruesome reality with the intent to shock. I can't believe that a white man would ever become chief either. This was supposed to be a groundbreaking film in 1970 because it depicted life inside the Indian camp, which I assume was based on historical research. But the lead was still played by a white man and the entire story is seen through his eyes. And thr emphasis was placed on the Indians' cruelty. This is unacceptable to my sensibilities even though the film did hold my interest, the cinematography was good and I learned a few details about Indian life. Richard Harris is a good actor and the rest of the cast did the best they could with the material given them. But I cannot recommend this video.
Maybe someday they'll be a good film about Native Americans. This isn't it!
Some "improvement" from the old Westerns...
Okay, so here I am at my home on the Pine Ridge Reservation, watching "A Man Called Horse" for the first time with a bunch of friends. They are Native (Lakota "Sioux" and a Navajo), I am not, but I seem to be the one elected to write the review so here goes.
Where to start? To the people who say that this was such a leap forward in the representation of Indian people, I really have to wonder exactly what their familiarity with Indians is and where it comes from. Books? Catlin paintings? First of all the speaking of the Lakota language was atrocious. The far-flung actors can be forgiven for their unfamiliarity with a relatively obscure language, but they could barely have been worse. Lakota is a beautiful language, and it is really not that difficult to get the gutteral and nasal sounds at least passably well-pronounced (it was far less painful to listen to the actors in Dances with Wolves). These people, though, seemed bent on making it sound like Hollywood-Indian language at its worst.
Although the film purports to have done a lot of research on the subject of the "Yellow Hand Sioux," whoever they may be, it manages to evoke every thinkable American stereotype about Native peoples. They are alternately dirty primitives, noble savages, romanticized sexpots (Miss Universe's slinky character), ignorant people waiting for a white person to come lead them and educate them, etc. It is true that the film manages to get some things right. During what I felt to be the most appalling and offensive scene, for example, the singers were singing an actual Sundance piercing song, one that is still sung commonly at ceremonies today. And yet the entire _emphasis_ of the movie, the whole tone of it, was problematic. Was this movie shown to Native audiences for their feedback? I am sure that even back in 1970, Native people would have demanded a less caricatured portrayal of their ancestors. In fact, with the Indian rights movement coming into full swing at that time, it seems like their must have been a lot of outcry over this film, but I can't say for sure.
Now about that Sundance scene. So yes, the Sundance was and is a major - some would say THE major - Lakota ceremony. But it was NOT used as a ritual to prove one's manhood or endurance as Hollywood and American popular culture would have everyone believe. It is done in a spirit of extreme prayer and humility. I have been to Sundances and many of my friends take part in this sacred act. To see this ceremony perverted and twisted in this movie was frankly infuriating. If a bunch of moviemakers wanted to show an exceedingly sacred ritual - and one which was banned by the U.S. government for decades (at least the movie gives a token mention to this fact) - they could have at least done it with a little more accuracy.
I could go on and on but am limited to a thousand words, so I had better just leave it at that. Well one more thing. This movie was one in a long line of movies that never (to my observation) showed Indians cracking a smile. At least Kevin Costner realized that Natives are some of the funniest and most good-natured people in the world and was able to put some of that in his film. His Lakota weren't just going from wardance to warpath to whooping and screaming and whatever else the Indians of "A Man Called Horse" spent their time doing.
I should say that I do not think that Dances with Wolves was the pinnacle of movies dealing with Native Americans - far from it. I do think that more recent movies like Smoke Signals and the soon-to-be-released "Skins" are major steps forward - showing Indian people from their OWN perspective. Surely they will be able to do better than this film. It is just the same old story with the wording slightly changed.
PS - If you are really interested in Lakota culture/society at roughly the time this film took place, I recommend the book Waterlily. Ella Deloria (the author) was not only a Native (Nakota) woman herself, but also a very distinguished and erudite ethnologist. The portrait she paints is far more respectful and, I would argue, more accurate.
| 1 2 3 | Next Page |
