Recommendations of the Editorial team
When Kevin Costner announced that they wanted to turn a western, they shook their heads in Hollywood. That is a Ascension Command. In the early nineties, Western was considered dead genre. The symbol of this also provided the first scenes of “Who dances with the wolf”. 1863, the injured North States officer John Dunbar (Costner) threatens to lose his leg. But because he doesn’t want to live like this, he climbs on his horse with the last strength – and rides with open arms into the enemy’s ball. An almost sure ride to death.
In the end, “The one with the Wolf” received seven Oscars, including for the “best film” and “The Best Director”. This made the only 35-year-old Coster rise to one of the youngest filmmakers who have ever been awarded the most important cinema price. When Clint Eastwood also won the most important Academy Award categories in 1992 with the revisionism western “mercilessly”, the genre experienced its Renaissance. Today, in times of “True Grit” and “Django Unchained”, films about the Wild West no longer mean risk.
Friendship with the Sioux
With “Silverado”, a representative of this direction last flopped in 1985 in 1985, Costner played in it. Before the shooting of his directorial debut four years later, he was also not a superstar. With “The Untouchables”, Costner only had a single cash hit in her back. And no other A actor was involved in the “wolf”. The best-known crew member may have been composer John Barry, who celebrated his comeback after a life-threatening esophagus tear in 1988. The “wolf” should then give him his fourth Oscar for his indispensable and furious score.
Hollywood, the American critics and the global audience loved the film immediately. An ex-soldier and dropout who closes friendship with the Native Native of the Sioux? Who becomes an Indian under the name “Who dances with the Wolf”, fights against the enemy Pawnees and ultimately stands against his own soldier that want to drive away the Sioux? The work made a contribution to reconciliation – at least from the perspective of the former settlers who had come from Europe and almost exterminated the American indigenous people.
John Dunbar was a white one who wanted to protect people and their nature, and who not only stands for the mistakes of his compatriots, but also stands against his own people. Clearly Oscar material. It almost surprises that Dunbar, as a partner, does not choose a native native, but with “stands with a fist” a settler’s daughter who is now an Indian.
The film ends up how the Sioux has to clear their territory, there is no happy ending. Today, however, most of the “wolf” fanatics describe a different scene than the saddest. Dunbars Loyalest friend, the title -giving lupus, is shot by American soldiers because he does not want to give away his prisoner master. A really sad moment. But director Costner was more important at the time that other scenes are remembered. Here he missed its effect.
Dunbar, the indigenous improvement
For this, John Dunbar did a great job on the human level. He almost becomes an indigenous improvement, the ex-lieutenant teaches the tribal warriors new military strategies. With this, “who dances with the wolf” is part of the unfortunate series of films, in which foreign, threatened peoples cannot save themselves, but first the white man from the West must come.
In the Tom-Cruise-Vehikel “The Last Samurai” (2003) this is the case, the most prominent in David Leans “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962), the Brit, although based on true events, leads the Arabs against the Turks, and also in James Cameron’s “Avatar” (2009). In it the blue giants are sometimes shown like impulsive fools; A disoriented US marine, now na’vi himself, then leads the lumbar carrier to their last battle.
Critics of the “wolf” stated, perhaps a bit meticulous that the language of the Sioux by Costner and the other actors, who mostly had no roots to the indigenous people, was poorly pronounced. Others refer to a supposedly too friendly representation of the Sioux tribe, the lifestyle of which is described by historians as particularly brutal.
In the end, almost $ 200 million was found
Either way, the picture of the coster in the Indian costume went around the world, and the better film had the better film at the 1991 Academy Awards, Martin Scorseses “Goodfellas”, not a chance (it was the great Oscar of the nineties, in addition to the-equally foreseeable-defeat of “Pulp Fiction” against “Forrest Gump” 1995).
For Kevin Costner, the time as a superstar started, but it shouldn’t be long. Although he had the rare feat of four consecutive blockbusters in four different genres with “Those who dances with the wolf” and then “JFK”, “Robin Hood” and “Bodyguard”, he already maneuvered himself in a kind of eternal in 1995.
To date, he is no longer entrusted with big roles. His end-time epic “Waterworld” came to the debacle 20 years ago, and nobody wanted to see his second end-time epic “Postman”. For Costner, who put the “wolf” against all genre probabilities to success in the mid-thirties, this must have been incomprehensible.
In Hollywood, people had already made fun of him in front of his western – half a star, the thousands of dollars of his private wealth and five years of planning in his dream of reconciliation with the indigenous people. And who originally did not want to direct himself, but did not find a suitable filmmaker. In the end, almost $ 200 million was found-so “who dances with the wolf” was curiously one of the most successful films that never reached the US Box Office charts.