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Dances with Wolves (Special Extended Edition) Customer Reviews (61 - 63 of 64 Reviews)

At long last . . . . . THE EXTENDED CUT ON DVD ! ! !
I actually wasn't as impressed with this film as I was the first time I watched it (and no, it's NOT because this is the supposedly "inferior" extended cut, which is the only version of the film I have ever seen). While I previously considered DANCES WITH WOLVES flawless, I see one particularly annoying flaw now: almost every single white man aside from Kevin Costner is either portrayed as stupid, cruel, or just plain crazy. Now I know this movie is supposed to be from the Indians' point of view, but it's also from John Dunbar's (a white man, obviously). Then again, this also signifies that he never truly belonged the White Man's civilization, which is why he only found piece on the open prairie and among the Lakota Sioux. Even so, this little factor is still pretty annoying at times.

That said, it is definitely Kevin Costner's best film to date (though I eagerly await his latest Western and third film as a director, OPEN RANGE). He is one of my favorite actors, and he does his finest work here. What's most impressive about the film is how realisitc it is. The world of the Native Americans comes to elegant life with incredible detail (and it only cost $18.5 million to make). The love story works incredibly well, and the cast is dazzling; you're truly transported back to the American West/Civil War. All this if further enhanced by John Barry's Oscar-winning musical score. Well, I guess all other reviewers have already stated everything there is to love about this film, so I'll concentrate on the actual DVD.

I was awaiting MGM's Special Editon DVD with great enthusiasm. But I was somewhat disappointed. For starters, the picture quality is nothing to cheer about. While sometimes it is stunning, it is all-too-often blurry and hard to focus on any objects. The sound quality is fine, however, but still far from perfection.

The extras on the second disc are also disappointing. The massive retrospective documentary on the making of the film is kind of slow at times, and not all that intriguing. And since this is the highlight of the extras, it's all the more crushing. I haven't listened to any of the two commentaries yet, however. Somehow I just haven't gotten around to listening to two four hour-long comentaries. Go figure.

Overall: The whole reason to buy this DVD is, of course, the masterpiece film itself. And while the extras aren't the best in the world, since I got it for $$$$ at Target I'm not all that upset. Definitely worth buying.

Turned the tide in Hollywood's picture of Indians
Granted, the movie has it's inaccuracies. By the time of the civil war actual war between Whites and Lakotas had been raging for a decade already. Although Lnt. Dunbar's Winchester rifle wouldn't be developed until 10 years after the time frame of the movie, the Lakota did already have guns. However, the mayority still hunted and fought with bow and arrow. The Lakota had been trading with whites for at least two generations already and therefore had a lot of trade items when the film suggests otherwise. Granted.

But what makes this film outstanding is that it lets the Lakota speak mainly for themselves, in their own language, neither in Tonto-speak suggesting an IQ below room temperature nor in english spoken backwards as in so many other distortive Hollywod films about Indians. Sure, the main character is not Indian, it is Dunbar who lets the predominantly white audience discover the Lakota through white eyes. I wonder when we will see a film which doesn't rely any more on this crutch of culture mediation. Its Lorence of Arabia on the plains. Similar to the dramaturgy of "The Man they called Horse", the Lakota seem to have waited for Dunbar to lead them to success. But without that element there wouldn't have been any room for Costner in the score ;)

There are quite a lot of people who resented this film for being PC propaganda. GA Custer buffs and John Wayne fans have come to talk of "revisionist" Hollywood propaganda painting an overly saintly picture of Indians.

I disagree. This is just one of a handful of films which portrays Indians not as the "bad guys" posing as pop-up targets for the glorious cavalry but as what they really were: members of a colorful, close-to-nature culture that was mercilessly crushed out of greed and race hate. Let's face it, whites who travelled to the west or joined the army had been fed since early childhood days with abduction and torture tales, the first and most prevalent category of truly American literature. That the "indian savages, the red devils" had to be exterminated could be read in countless books and newspaper articles and would be reiterated by congressmen and Presidents from Jefferson down to Roosevelt a century later.

Some people objected to the whites being often depicted as filthy as opposed to cleanly indians. Well, whites on the frontier mostly had a proper bath once a week and many maybe once a month. Indians bathed every day in the next river, they just had a different attitude to the body than christian whites of that period ;)

It is also not correct that the element of violence in Lakota culture is completely blended out. At the band meeting when the Lakota people discuss how to react to Dunbar's presence Wind-in-his-hair suggests to shoot a few arrows into the white stranger in order to set straight who is boss. Strangers on the prairy were mostly considered enemies until circumstances proved otherwise. The movie doesn't gloss over this at all. Later on, enraged by the sight of slaughtered buffalo herds left to rot in the sun by white hunters, the Lakota track down the hunters, butcher and skalp them. At night the whole village rejoices in a scalp dance. Dunbar feels repelled and realizes that a huge cultural chasm separates him from his new friends. Is this PC? I don't think so. What Wind-in-his-hair was not allowed to do is later accomplished by the Pawnees: they kill and scalp Dunbar's stagecoach driver on his way back. A warrior is nothing without war and enemies to overcome, this basic rule of plains cultures is also part of the colorful mixed bag Costner presents to us.

The huge merit of this film is that it gives a very authentic picture of indian life, actually how it used to be a few decades prior to the civil war. The movie leaps across the division line of "us vs. them" and views the "clash of cultures" from the native side. Most of the soldiers Dunbar is confronted with after returning to his post are absorbed with hate and contempt of the "injuns". This characterization is unflattering but, sadly, most accurate. The movie portrays whites essentially through indian eyes. Is this imbalanced? Well, we all have seen hundreds of traditional westerns where it was the other way around. This latter movie helps to create a sort of balance in our minds which has been so sorely lacking previously.

Someone here suggested watching Bruce Beresford's "Black Robe" (1991) instead for "a balanced representation of the clash of two disparate cultures". My advice: do so if you think that whites only came as missionaries instead of soldiers, that whites do upper-class house music whereas indians do it all day and night doggy-style in the dirt, that matriarchaic democratic Iroquois communities are in reality under male dictatorship and that captive women and children are tortured to death instead of being adopted into the tribe and that the same fate awaits white captives although they just passed the initiation ritual of the gauntlet etc. Oh yes, and if you think that Mohawk people speak Cree instead of Mohawk ;)

Now for real, see Dances and Little Big Man and maybe Soldier Blue if you want to know what Sand Creek was like and have an itch to have Saving Private Ryan topped in terms of carnage (uncut version, only availlable outside the US). The rest is white history distortion to the bone, not history.

A DVD worthy of an epic Best Picture
For those who have seen, Dances With Wolves, this extended edition, with 52 minutes on additional footage remastered and worked into the films, does the movie a service it's long deserved. Like the case refers to it, this "beautiful story simply told" pulls you in to the lives of its characters in a way other movies that forego character development can't. The additional footage only adds to the story, and the special features do justice to one of my favorite movies ever.

Well worth the money, this edition of Dances with Wolves will quickly remind you why you loved the film.

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