Literary/Artistic Words
In the early 1990s, Kevin Costner made a big splash with "Dancing with Wolves" to the Academy Awards and won seven awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography.
The film was also nominated for Best Film at the 41st Berlin International Film Festival Golden Bear Awards and best foreign language film at the 15th Japan Academy Film Awards. It can be said that the position of the movie "Dancing with wolves" in the history of film is so prominent, we will next look at the profound performance of the confrontation and choice between human beings and nature from the perspective of the theme connotation.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > "Dances with Wolves" for the first time objectively and fairly projects and reproduces the living conditions of Indians, thus completing a re-understanding of Indians</h1>
The Westerns of the past Hollywood period often set the 19th century when the United States opened up the western frontier and used civilization and order to transform the barbaric land as the background, through the dual confrontation and conflict between civilization and barbarism, justice and evil, to celebrate the pioneering spirit of Americans, and its promotion of the individualism and freedom values represented by foreign Americans in addition to the rule of law and order.
"Dancing with Wolves" from the beginning of the film, Dunbar gave up the modern civilized city, and chose the western remote grassland and the sky to start the rhythm of the film gradually, which makes the film somewhat Chinese Taoists return to nature, this return process is finally completed with the gradual Indianization of Lieutenant Dunbar.
Therefore, "Dancing with Wolves" can be said to be a comprehensive rewrite of traditional Westerns, and the inheritance and transcendence of traditional genre films is the basis for its great success.
The plot of the film is as follows:
Lieutenant Dunbar (Kevin Costner) was instrumental in the Civil War, and the government rewarded him by giving him the privilege of choosing his station at will. Longing for a new life, Dunbar chose the remote western outpost of Seckwick. There are a large number of Indian Sioux people living here. At first, the Sioux resisted his arrival, and when Dunbar took the initiative to approach and understand their lives and rescue a white girl who grew up in the Sioux clan, the relationship between the clan and him began to warm up. He got an Indian name: Dancing with Wolves. Dunbar's riding skills amazed the tribesmen, his kindness was praised by everyone, and he and the white girl also fell in love with him for a long time. In a war against foreign invasion, Dunbar was named a national hero of the Sioux. However, the decline of horseback culture has become inevitable, white soldiers come to this land, drive out the Sioux, capture the "traitor" Dunbar, this simple land slowly changed its appearance...
Then we will see a stark fact that "Dances with Wolves" is different from any previous Western. The most controversial aspect of traditional Westerns is that they tend to stigmatize Indians, and these slanderous and distorted depictions have caused a lot of controversy. As we all know, the so-called westward expansion movement in the United States presupposes the plundering and slaughter of Indians, and in many Westerns this historical fact is not only not mentioned, but also portrays indians as representatives of barbarism and evil, and becomes the object of white conquest and hunting. This brings a hurtful and emotional viewing experience to many people's perceptions.
As the first Western film in the United States in decades, the second and most important point is that it changed the Western-centric values of traditional Westerns, jumping out of the old-fashioned white-dominated individual heroism, exploring and thinking about the cultural conflicts and mutual understanding between whites and natives on the North American continent, it can be said that "Dancing with Wolves" is the most anthropological Western.
This promotion and popularization of the concept of the theme of the previous Westerns is not only limited to shallow conceptualization in this film, but is reflected in the process of Lieutenant Dunbar's impression of the Indians, from being full of fear and doubt, to being friendly with them, and even voluntarily assimilating as one of them, and finally becoming a "dance with wolves".
This process, in the video narrative, is expressed as the different experiences and feelings of Dunbar's three visits to the Sioux village, the fog of history is eliminated layer by layer, and the audience is presented with the fact that it is as clear and clean as the western sky.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > this film still has a binary conflict, but it has changed from the opposition between good and evil, civilization and barbarism in traditional Westerns to the conflict between civilization and nature</h1>
The film completely abandons the traditional Western's praise of the spirit of territorial exploration, but reflects on and criticizes the barbaric invasion of white people and the destruction of the western world, which symbolizes harmony and beauty.
In the film, the kind and simple Indians and the lush western wilderness of water and grass become symbols of nature, and Lieutenant Dunbar's position is very meaningful and symbolic.
In the film, Lieutenant Dunbar can be said to have a series of classic anthropological investigation experiences, through a character with such a personality can make the audience feel the difference in thinking, so that the audience who was accustomed to Western values can change the perspective to observe all this happening in history.
Environmentally speaking, the Sioux can not leave the small area that can bring them food, then the survival is the large number of bison on the Great Plains, the chief of the great chief and the chief of the seven major clans are the administrative and religious spiritual leaders of the Sioux, and the clans use the tribal council as a link to decide various matters, which also determines that the Sioux people's understanding of the world and themselves is limited, and their social division of labor must first meet their own survival needs, which is different from the division of labor in the development of the Western white world to a certain historical period.
It can be said that the U.S. government in the film at that time, the attitude toward the indigenous people is "obedience to surrender, reverse is to clear the suppression", in any case, it is also in order to maintain the needs of the country and the government security, etc., and force all the indigenous people to obey Western values, with the white way of thinking to live, then the white people's attitude towards the indigenous people is naturally formed, which is also determined by the specific history of white Americans and the inevitability of the development of Western civilization.
If Dunbar, who came to the west in a military uniform and holding the American Star-Spangled Banner, was still just hovering between modern civilization and nature, then the "dance with wolves" who wore Sioux costumes, wore Sioux headdress feathers, and could skillfully use the Sioux language to communicate and communicate, marked that Dunbar had completely abandoned modern civilization and threw himself into the embrace of nature.
This is to transform the theme from the opposition between good and evil, civilization and barbarism in traditional Westerns to the conflict between civilization and nature, so that the film has an unprecedented depth of connotation.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > conclusion: Actor-turned-director Kevin Costner's debut film shows a strikingly mature skill</h1>
The narrative structure of the film, which is 236 minutes before editing and still in the 180 minutes after editing, is grand and magnificent, and many scenes on the western savannah are unforgettable, such as the picture of shooting stars in the night sky on the savannah, the snow-covered Grand Canyon that the Dunbars walked through when they bid farewell, and the tents of the Sioux people are shrouded in smoke in the smoke...
The handling of the details pays great attention to the contrast and echo before and after, even in the headdress, the audience has the psychology of recognition, such as the number of headdresses (feathers) of several major characters of the Sioux is as follows: the number of kicking birds is 5 or 6, the stone cow is 4, the wind is 3 or 4, the ten bears are 2, Dunbar is 1, and the number change is a phenomenon that occurs after the Sioux expedition, which will make the audience seem to be immersed in the movie, led by the plot, so as to achieve a certain degree of convincing in the narrative, And that's very important for watching Western-genre films.
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