Dances with Wolves
Without question Kevin Costner is one of the most astute directors when it comes to the use of open space. He has a way of making a viewer feel small in the large scale of the location. Several of the camera's pans of the wide open prairie territory with its long, yellow grass and rolling hills makes a person feel fully enraptured in the scenery."Where the Cowboy Rides Away: Mythic Places for Western Film" by Gary Hausladen discusses just such a landscape. He says, "And the setting for these stories was the American West, those 'particular, picturesque American landscapes' that enhance the confrontations and transformations that take place."Dances with Wolves is a perfect representation of man versus nature in that it shows a "city boy" who is forced to learn how to survive on the frontier, and he tam
The above-mentioned article also discusses the brutal fashion in which white soldiers dealt with indigenous people. Somewhat evident as well is man versus technology in that the Indians are eventually killed off by a technology that they neither have nor embrace-that of the gun. Another way that this is addressed is through Costner's mental breakdown while in the army, a situation that eventually pushes him in the opposite direction of technology-the frontier. es it as is symbolized by his befriending of the wolf. What was formally enough to protect oneself, such as arrows and knives, has now become null and void considering you can be enumerable feet away from a man and still shoot him. In conclusion I would say that this film is one that will stand the test of time and prove to be a painfully honest perspective on what really happened in order to create our wonderful United States. This idea is vanquished with the death of the wolf at the hands of a soldier. Also symbolized by this friendship is man's ability to have harmony with nature, instead of conquering it. " Although Costner's Dances with Wolves is what I would call a new-age Western, it still has the lone and emotionally detached white male hero. " Another important point addressed in this quote is one that discusses the idea of the "lone hero. Humans have a real knack for exacting the same intolerable circumstances on others that they have themselves fought so hard to overcome. On the contrary, it shows how a relatively peaceful group of people were harassed and eventually wiped out by white men. Because they occurred beyond civilization, these transgressions had to be dealt with violently to restore law and order, by a single hero, who was generally a loner (a solitary cowboy), outside of society. " Most of all though, the movie is a sadly truthful perspective on the colonization that occurred in America during and after our revolt against the suppression of the English. There is a huge message encoded throughout this film, and I read it as saying, "Technology is the death of true civilization.
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