Dances with Wolves - 1990

Starring Kevin Costner. Directed by Kevin Costner. Edited by...his mother, maybe?
In this six hour oddesy across the stunning Dakota plains, Kevin Costner stars as a good and noble white man. Maybe the only noble one on the planet. All of the rest of them are craven, weak, foul and/or insane. White women? Well, there's one. A woman who's been raised from a child by an Indian tribe. Recently widowed and lucky for our Kevin she's a short ride from his camp. I say lucky, because otherwise the movie would have to deal with the possiblity of an interracial relationship. Whew!
I think what really got me in this movie is how little work went into making the actors look authentic. Most of them look like they just came out of the hair salon. And Costner sounds like a lifetime Californian who just happened to get plopped down on the set and said some lines.
The FP Gal thinks that I've come at this move with an agenda and that's colored my appreciation of it and made my cynical. There's truth in that. But this movie also has an agenda. It's aimed at least in part on activating white guilt. While I recognize that white men often treated Indians treacherously and abysmally, I don't take any of the blame for this myself. Let the men who did this pay for their own sins.
I remembered thinking this movie was longer than it needed to be but pretty good anyway. It sure hasn't aged well. I have no idea how this movie won Best Picture.