Reviewed by Kate Ahrens THIS FILM was the child of one man. He fought the establishment of Hollywood to create it. He fought the unwillingness of American financiers to put money into it.
He directed it and he starred in it. And he won. The film won seven Oscars and has received rapturous critical and box office acclaim since its release last year.
The story is told through the diary of Lieutenant John Dunbar (Costner) who is left alone in a deserted outpost on the American Frontier. He meets and is befriended by Sioux people and through them comes to change his perceptions of both Sioux and white culture.
Soon, Dunbar decides to make his home with the Sioux, but returning to the outpost to collect his belongings, he discovers that sotdiers have retumed.
The soldiers are gleeful at the thought of having captured a real live 'injun' and when he tums out to be merely a deserter from the army are only marginally less satisfied at the prospect of him being hanged as a traitor.
The killing of these soldiers by the Sioux coming to Dunbar's rescue is looked upon as a triumph of right over evil. Not just because of the film's sympathy for the Sioux, but also because the soldiers are seen as unfeeling brutes, who get their kicks from the thought of Costner being hanged.
The film is a brave attempt to portray the Sioux not in the traditional Hollywood way, but as real, good people who fought to preserve their way of life from invasion by the whites. It is a fairy tale story, not a realistic portrayal of life in the mid nineteenth century in America.
Its failing is not in its portrayal of the rights and wrongs of the invasion of America by whites, but that it is a film about that invasion presented from a white perspective.
It is not a film about the destruction of the Sioux way of life from the perspective of the Sioux. This is the real tragedy: even in a film which is trying to present an honest view of what the Europeans did in America, the real victims are still not the ones who tell the story.
Within these limitations however, Dances with Wolves is a wonderful film. The majestic mountains, the desolate wilderess, the brutality of the American army and contrastingly the difficult yet harmonious life of the Sioux are all captured with al most painful intensity.
Thirteen years after the film was set, the last group of free Sioux gave themselves up to white rule. It has taken this long for the struggle of native Americans to gain even this much recognition in Hollywood. How long will it be before a Sioux can make a film about that struggle?
She's a champion of bourgeois individualism, in Kollantai's sense of the phrase, as well as being an example of a classic rise from rags-toriches. And yes she could even be described as a feminist, albeit of the bourgeois variety.
The fact remains that it's be cause she's a sexually assertive WOMAN that she's so controversial. If she were a man No.1 thestory would be completely different. Im ages of sexually assertive women can only be good. What socialists need to do is use the political space opened up by the controversy to argue that sexual freedom should exist for all women not just Alexandra wrote that there has never before been a time 'when the problems of sex have occupied such a central place in the life of society! Eighty years on and many socialists still don't appreciate the social and class significance of sex and morality. Madonna has helped open the debate amongst millions of young working class people. It's time that revolutionary socialists take it seriously too. Bring back Kollontai...
May 1, 1991