So it is no shock to see him, in Union soldier uniform, atop a horse on the great plains of the American West. The wide-open spaces have always been a congenial home to Hollywood’s reticent romantic figures: the wilderness demands down-to earth heroes, even as it leaves lots of space for big dreamers. Dances With Wolves, which Costner directed, coproduced and stars in, is a sweeping, three-hour epic that mixes Old Hollywood grandiosity with New Hollywood sensitivity. As a filmmaker, Costner reinforces the persona he’s developed as a star. Like the idealistic hero of “Field of Dreams,” who fused countercultural sentiments with Bush-era conservatism, Costner gives us an ambitious revisionist reading of the frontier within an esthetically conservative form. Redressing a century of Hollywood historical bias, he presents the Wild West from the Native American point of view. This time the Sioux Indians are the good guys, and almost every white man in sight (our hero excepted) is a lout. In a sense, he’s merely turned the old cliches inside out: Costner’s frontier remains a moral landscape where only white hats and black hats are worn. Only the heads have changed.
“Dances With Wolves” is vulnerable both to charges of sentimentality and anachronism–the hero exhibits a sensibility at times dubiously contemporary. But if one’s mind sometimes balks, one’s heart embraces the movie’s fine, wide-open spirit, its genuine respect for a culture we destroyed without a second thought.
Costner plays Lt. John J. Dunbar, who becomes an improbable Civil War hero when he miraculously survives a suicidal ride in front of enemy troops. As a reward, he’s reassigned to duty at remote Fort Sedgewick in the Dakotas, where he hopes to observe the frontier before it’s destroyed by civilization. It turns out to be a solitary post: the fort is deserted when he arrives. He settles in alone, Thoreau-like, recording his impressions in a diary, observed only by a solitary wolf until he experiences his first tense encounter with the Sioux.
Michael Blake’s sturdy screenplay, based on his own novel, is a story of cultural assimilation: it’s about how the inquisitive Dunbar, sickened by the martial madness of the white world, finds himself increasingly drawn to the harmonious tribal life of the Sioux. Dunbar goes Indian–and falls in love with a white woman raised from childhood by the Sioux (Mary McDonnell)–and in the process of abandoning his culture finds his true identity. It’s a classic 19th-century romantic trope–the worship of natural, “primitive” man–informed by an elegiac 20th-century political consciousness. The idyll can’t last: at the back of Dunbar’s mind, and just over the horizon, lurks the implacably advancing white civilization.
It’s an engrossing tale, and Costner directs with the confidence of a Hollywood veteran well aware that entertainment comes before earnestness. He has a showman’s instinct for mixing violence, humor and romance, a painterly eye for epic landscapes and an almost anthropological appreciation of the Sioux people. The large Native American cast–Graham Greene as the wise Kicking Bird, Dunbar’s first ally; Rodney A. Grant as the more skeptical warrior Wind in His Hair, and Floyd Red Crow Westerman as the old chief (all of whom speak in the Lakota language)–create noble but believably human characters. Costner is no less shrewd serving himself up: like Robert Redford, he understands that understatement and a touch of self-mockery enhance his appeal. Dunbar may be too good to be true to the period, but in these cynical times it’s nice to cheer for a soulful hero, a man who realizes there’s more to life than looking out for No. 1. “Dances With Wolves” has a true epic reach and a romantic generosity of spirit that one is happy to succumb to.
title: “How The West Was Lost” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-11” author: “Anne Johnson”
Not much attention has been paid to Bill Clinton’s failure in the Mountain States. His failures elsewhere – the South, the tabloids – have been far more gruesome and spectacular. But not more significant: the West was a great New Democrat hope, an area some thought would be crucial to the party’s post-Reagan revival. ““Washington always saw politics in North-South terms,’’ says Gary Hart, ““and it was clear our support in the South was eroding badly. I thought we might rebuild from the West, become the dominant party in the region, especially if a Westerner was leading the ticket.’’ Yeah, well . . . But Hart’s dream was based on some solid politics. The West was gentrifying in the ’80s, filling up with young professional sorts who were fiscally conservative, socially liberal and environmentally sound. A new generation of Western politicians rode these themes to office. ““You weren’t as tied in to interest groups as the party back East,’’ says former Colorado governor Dick Lamm. ““There was no epicenter, no ethnic-labor coalition. It was more diverse.''
Bill Clinton seemed part of that movement; Arkansas was sort of quasi Southwestern. He was close to most of the governors in the region. He and Lamm had issued a joint statement on the need to reform the party after the Mondale debacle of 1984. ““I remember a whole bunch of us, Western Democrat governors, taking a campaign swing with Clinton in 1992,’’ says Lamm’s successor Roy Romer, ““and thinking, well, maybe we’re creating the impression of a New Democrat party out here.’’ Clinton became the first Democrat to win Colorado since Harry Truman. He also carried such exotic – for his party – locales as Montana and Nevada: 38 electoral votes (plus California’s 54) in the West. At first glance, it seemed the beginning of a new era.
At second glance – not quite. Clinton won the West but pulled 3 percent fewer votes there than Cambridge cowpoke Michael Dukakis. The difference was Ross Perot, who did better in the Rockies (about 25 percent on average) than in most other places. And the combination of Perot and Bush voters sent a very clear, conservative message in Colorado, which – while electing Clinton – was also enacting ballot initiatives that lowered taxes (and subjected all new tax increases to public referendums) and opposed gay rights.
Still, Clinton had an opportunity. He could try to win over the Perot folks. He could do this by pinching pennies, reforming government and, Romer says, being ““direct, upfront, candid . . . if you do that, folks out here will cut you some slack.’’ Instead, Clinton was – well, you know how he is. And his problems were compounded, curiously, by Bruce Babbitt, a former governor of Arizona and certified New Democrat, who managed to alienate much of the West over a group of issues that are incomprehensible to Easterners, but have to do with the never-ending struggle among locals, enviros and the federal government over land use and water development. ““The trouble is, out here we have the biggest bunch of welfare queens anyone could imagine,’’ says Lamm. ““They’ve been getting a great deal grazing and mining on federal lands and they didn’t want to give it up.’’ Others say it wasn’t so simple: Babbitt tried to give the enviros undue power in the process. ““Babbitt was the Clinton of the Interior,’’ says Floyd Ciruli, a Denver pollster. ““There were all these self-destructive, arrogant, pissy forces waiting to explode and he gave in to them.''
Even Babbitt’s buddies like Romer and former Wyoming governor Mike Sullivan think the situation was badly handled. ““Everyone knew there had to be reforms,’’ Sullivan says – but there was a Western way to do it, and Babbitt seemed to represent Washington interests (bureaucratic and green). ““He’s worked to correct the situation,’’ Romer says, ““but a feeling still hovers around: they don’t exactly trust him.’’ Clinton seems in even worse shape. ““The Republicans would truly have to commit suicide to lose out here in 1996,’’ says Ciruli. But they might: the Christian right is slowly taking control of the GOP in many Western states, alienating social libertarians. Consequently, there’s a fair amount of third-party talk in the Rockies. ““They’re looking for charismatic leadership and a manifesto. I think 20 percent would jump to a third party overnight,’’ says Hart, who insists he’s too old and liberal to make the leap. But Nighthorse Campbell’s move – and the expectation that he’ll be as uneasy a Republican as he was a Democrat – reflects a stirring in the electoral corral, a deep dissatisfaction with the existing parties, a casting about for something new, independent . . . maybe even individually individual.
