1990 in movies: Only my second viewing of Dances With Wolves, and I'm a first time "Ghoster"

 

Last week/year, the Oscars saw fit to award Driving Miss Daisy the Best Picture award, and so it seems natural that the Academy should decide to follow that up by honouring Dances With Wolves for a similarly tame portrayal of a complicated history. Except, I will say, Wolves has much more to chew on from a filmmaking perspective than did Daisy.

This is, in every way, a Kevin Costner movie. You can feel it in the direction and in the slow-moving storyline. He strikes me as a man of patience, who as a filmmaker will linger on shots and avoids cluttering up scenes with conversation. This film manages to celebrate the Sioux culture in an ultimately inoffensive and non-patronizing manner, which, let's be honest, is a pretty big deal for 1990. It shows the good and bad of all groups and actually saves the worst of the worst for the American soldiers. 

So that's not nothing. Beyond that, though, I truly don't think it is a movie striving to be more than a love story. Love of the land and love between people. Its scenery is beautiful and its dialogue not overly moralistic.

Best Picture? It's always a murky conversation. It's certainly not the worst picture, and it has a lot going for it.

It definitely deserved to beat out ...

I liked Ghost. It was funny, had some tension, and was pretty on par for a turn of the decade 90s thriller. Just to briefly return to the Oscar conversation, though, it's hard to see it as one of the five best pictures of the year. But again, as soon as you start down that road it's hard to make sense of any nominations. 

So let's go with this: Swayze did some good stage fighting, Moore has learned to cry much more effectively since St. Elmo's Fire, Whoopi was more of a force than I remember in those days. And Goldwyn steals the movie as the super-prick Carl. He is a tremendously whiny villain and it works here perfectly. 

Also: Vincent Schiavelli is back in another Best Picture nominee! Okay, I've convinced myself. It deserved to be nominated. Maybe it deserved to win. I mean, look at what it did with what it had. Maybe that's the best Best Picture criteria.