"Dances With Wolves" won seven Academy Awards for 1990, including best picture and best director, both of which were claimed by the film's star, Kevin Costner, whose performance was also recognized with a nomination. There's been grumbling from film buffs that Costner's triumph was undeserved, that Martin Scorsese's gangster epic, "Goodfellas," should have won, with Scorsese taking the director prize, and there's been a tendency to sneer at Costner's directorial debut ever since. If the Academy was turned off by "Goodfellas"'s violence and misanthropic characters, they could feel safe voting for "Dances With Wolves" since it seemed more noble, in the same vein as "Gandhi." As Kevin Costner's Calvary officer makes peace with an Indian tribe and they welcome him into their fold, it speaks well of the human race, certainly more so than Ray Liotta talking fellow mobster Robert DeNiro out of "whacking" a fellow hoodlum. "Dances With Wolves" has its villains, all of them white U.S. calvary soldiers, whose anti-Indian actions make them racists, and, therefore, deserving of the audience's hatred.
Native American issues were big at the time, thanks in part to the critical and popular success of Forrest Carter's "The Education of Little Tree," a "memoir" of the author's childhood as the member of a Cherokee tribe that continued to be popular long after Carter was exposed as Asa Carter, a pro-segregationist former Klansman and speechwriter for Alabama governor George Wallace, and definitely not a Cherokee. A true Native American author, Sherman Alexie, was also making a mark at this time with such novels as "Reservation Blues." In short, Costner's feel-good epic was the right movie at the right time, very appealing to audiences, who made it a several hundred million dollar grosser, and the Academy, who could vote for it and feel as though they were finally addressing the grievances that Marlon Brando introduced when declining his Oscar for "The Godfather" 18 years earlier in protest of Hollywood's treatment of Indians in all those John Ford westerns.
I avoided "Dances With Wolves" for years, having dismissed it as politically correct, New Age slop in a pretty package. I finally caught up with it in 2006 and was impressed. Slow moving and rather boring at times, especially when Costner reads from his diary in a monotone that would have gotten him kicked out of any high school drama class, it is nonetheless an extraordinary achievement overall, with lovely cinematography and a John Barry score that's already a classic. When it comes, the action is well-staged, particularly a buffalo stampede, and the Indian's attack on the Calvary troop that has taken Costner hostage. There's a lot of mystical nonsense, including the shot of a wolf howling from a cliff, but it's moving regardless, especially set to Barry's majestic score.
Although it's often classified as a western, "Dances With Wolves" is more of an historical epic, though a fictional one. I don't think it deserved the Oscar over "Goodfellas," but it was far more deserving of that prize than many other films that the Academy has honored through the years, and Costner gambled with his career to make it.
Brian W. Fairbanks
Native American issues were big at the time, thanks in part to the critical and popular success of Forrest Carter's "The Education of Little Tree," a "memoir" of the author's childhood as the member of a Cherokee tribe that continued to be popular long after Carter was exposed as Asa Carter, a pro-segregationist former Klansman and speechwriter for Alabama governor George Wallace, and definitely not a Cherokee. A true Native American author, Sherman Alexie, was also making a mark at this time with such novels as "Reservation Blues." In short, Costner's feel-good epic was the right movie at the right time, very appealing to audiences, who made it a several hundred million dollar grosser, and the Academy, who could vote for it and feel as though they were finally addressing the grievances that Marlon Brando introduced when declining his Oscar for "The Godfather" 18 years earlier in protest of Hollywood's treatment of Indians in all those John Ford westerns.
I avoided "Dances With Wolves" for years, having dismissed it as politically correct, New Age slop in a pretty package. I finally caught up with it in 2006 and was impressed. Slow moving and rather boring at times, especially when Costner reads from his diary in a monotone that would have gotten him kicked out of any high school drama class, it is nonetheless an extraordinary achievement overall, with lovely cinematography and a John Barry score that's already a classic. When it comes, the action is well-staged, particularly a buffalo stampede, and the Indian's attack on the Calvary troop that has taken Costner hostage. There's a lot of mystical nonsense, including the shot of a wolf howling from a cliff, but it's moving regardless, especially set to Barry's majestic score.
Although it's often classified as a western, "Dances With Wolves" is more of an historical epic, though a fictional one. I don't think it deserved the Oscar over "Goodfellas," but it was far more deserving of that prize than many other films that the Academy has honored through the years, and Costner gambled with his career to make it.
Brian W. Fairbanks