Embark on a cinematic odyssey with us, Natey and Katy, as we launch our fourth season dissecting the nuances of "Dances with Wolves." Wondering how an epic Western directed by Kevin Costner himself can juggle Oscar-winning performances with unexpected laughs? We've got you covered. Our latest episode peels back the layers of this film, examining the rich storytelling and the choice of Costner as the lead - a man who walks in two worlds, yet is he the white savior the narrative hints at? We're tackling the hefty buffalo hunt scene's cultural implications and debating whether the romantic subplot adds depth or distracts from more compelling character arcs.
This season opener isn't just a reflection on a renowned movie; it's a conversation about the power of portrayal and the voices that shape our view of history. As we analyze the film's pacing and its reliance on extended scenes and narration, we contemplate the film's reverence for Native American culture and whether it truly serves to deepen or diminish the protagonist's transformation. We highlight the crucial need to include indigenous perspectives in cinematic discussions, offering insights into the complexities of cultural representation. So, whether you're a film aficionado or a history buff, join us in this thought-provoking journey through the plains and the pivotal moments of "Dances with Wolves.
Embark on a cinematic odyssey with us, Natey and Katy, as we launch our fourth season dissecting the nuances of "Dances with Wolves." Wondering how an epic Western directed by Kevin Costner himself can juggle Oscar-winning performances with unexpected laughs? We've got you covered. Our latest episode peels back the layers of this film, examining the rich storytelling and the choice of Costner as the lead - a man who walks in two worlds, yet is he the white savior the narrative hints at? We're tackling the hefty buffalo hunt scene's cultural implications and debating whether the romantic subplot adds depth or distracts from more compelling character arcs.
This season opener isn't just a reflection on a renowned movie; it's a conversation about the power of portrayal and the voices that shape our view of history. As we analyze the film's pacing and its reliance on extended scenes and narration, we contemplate the film's reverence for Native American culture and whether it truly serves to deepen or diminish the protagonist's transformation. We highlight the crucial need to include indigenous perspectives in cinematic discussions, offering insights into the complexities of cultural representation. So, whether you're a film aficionado or a history buff, join us in this thought-provoking journey through the plains and the pivotal moments of "Dances with Wolves.
One's a movie buff, one watches movies, just enough Together. Fun will be had by all. This is Nady and Katie at the Movies.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to a brand new episode of Nady and Katie at the Movies. I am your host, nathan aka Nady, of course, and with me on today's episode is my good, good, good, good, good friend, katie. Hi, katie, how are you?
Speaker 3:I'm great. I'm actually not riding the car this time or driving, but I'm cooking dinner yummy leftovers and I'm excited for this to be our first movie of our new season. Also, I'm already excited. I've only watched two parts of our new season and I'm already like wait, this was a great idea. It's so nice to go not just go see new release movies, but ones that have already been vetted as being good.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So if you're listening and you have no idea what season four is all about, I'm just going to give you a quick recap of what we're going to be doing, which you can know about If you go back and listen. We've released it two times already, because this episode was supposed to be released last week, but technical difficulties and things like that got in the way. But season four, we are going to be watching some of the top 250 best movies of all time and some of the top 250 best TV shows of all time.
Speaker 2:We found two lists of movies and TV shows. Obviously, we're not going to be watching every single one, but we will be watching the ones that we're able to watch via streaming services, and I will actually start trying to do my best at letting people know other than Katie and myself of what streaming services you can catch these movies and TV shows, if you'd like to follow along with us on this journey because, like Katie said, there are some movies and some TV shows that I have never seen before, which is going to be interesting because I like to call myself a movie buff, but, case in point, our very first movie is actually one I had never seen before and a lot of people would probably consider it a classic Katie. Do you want to go ahead and let our listeners know what is the first movie of season four?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's Dances with Wolves, directed by and starring Kevin Costner. And back to your point about streaming services. Nathan gave me a little flack. I did not give him the secret that Dances with Wolves in its entirety is on YouTube, which is kind of wild to me. It's a three hour runtime which we can talk about later, but I ended up watching it sped up because you can do that on YouTube, and it really made me think, man, it would be super convenient if every movie was on here, because if I don't, if it gets to a boring part, I can speed it up, slow it down. So, yeah, some of it's free, and I was excited to start off this journey with Dances with Wolves.
Speaker 2:Katie was talking about how excited she was about doing the streaming services and how convenient it was for her. But I found while trying to watch Dances with Wolves on my fire stick that I was having so many technical difficulties that I almost was like I miss going to the actual movie theater because I was having so such a hard time. But I did end up getting MGM plus just for this. I'm not paying for it, but I ended up getting that free trial so I could watch Dances with Wolves in its entirety. But before we get into our thoughts, we got to go over the synopsis.
Speaker 1:Lieutenant John Dunbar, assigned to a remote Western super war outpost, finds himself engaging with a neighboring Sue settlement, causing him to question his own purpose.
Speaker 2:Dances with Wolves stars Kevin Costner, mary McDonald, graham Green and Rodney a grant. So this movie won a plethora of awards when it came out in 1990. It won a lot of awards at the 1991 Oscars and I'm going to go ahead and list those right now. It won Best Picture, Best Director, best Adapted Screenplay, best Original Score, best Sound, best Cinematography and Best Film Editing. It did not win Best Actor, which I'm actually kind of shocked by because it is the same person, like Katie said, that directed this movie, mr Kevin Costner.
Speaker 2:I was very worried because I know a lot of people, like I said before, consider this like a classic movie. It's Dances with Wolves, kevin Costner in his prime, when he was doing all these classic movies, and I was very confused by this movie. I was very confused because I didn't know going in. I had seen clips before, so I kind of knew what I was getting myself into, but I didn't know if it was supposed to be a drama or a comedy at times or a dramedy, because there was a lot of awkward moments in this movie.
Speaker 3:No, that's totally. I don't think it was in any way to be comedy. But yes, I agree there was some and maybe it wouldn't have been as funny back then.
Speaker 2:Well, it's just like awkward moments between Kevin Costner and the Native Americans, when he first is like hanging out with them and stuff, and just like the sex scenes are really awkward.
Speaker 3:We get to see Kevin Costner's booty full blown bottom buttocks, which is very nice, by the way. It is funny, though. I was reading an article that Kevin Costner had no intentions of directing. Like he wanted to make this movie. He was excited, he helped to write it and wanted to star in it, but supposedly the only reason he directed it was he couldn't find a director. So it is ironic that he won best director for that. But yeah, let's get right into our thoughts of this three hour saga.
Speaker 2:I will say probably my favorite part was the never ending Buffalo killing scene, where they just kept on killing Buffalo's left and right.
Speaker 3:It was a long scene. That was one where I was like so glad to be on YouTube, I definitely double speed. There's a whole yeah, to make this point, there's a whole long scene. I mean it could be close to five minutes straight. I don't know what the runtime but of them hunting down and killing Buffalo.
Speaker 3:But maybe that's our like white people perspective because, like I think they maybe wanted to give that its full, entire piece because it was representative of that culture. But like that is a very important part of Native American culture, the reverence for that. I mean, obviously, like you saw, before they go on the hunt, it's a big deal. They get painted up, it's very symbolic. They were very upset about the other tribe and how they treated the Buffalo. So like I think this was a really I mean that's mostly what they talked about with with the Lieutenant. Like that was the main thing they talked about for the first few interactions was Buffalo like the bison. So to me was it boring and long? Yes, but maybe to somebody else who appreciates and understands the culture more, it could have been just a very beautiful part.
Speaker 2:I would actually be interested to talk to some like Native American people who make watch this movie. What do they feel about it? Because I know there are many movies like this that you have the white savior mentality of the white guy comes in and saves the day. I wonder how people saw I mean, I'm assuming they didn't see it like that when it was released but in today's society how would people see this movie? Like, how important is it? It's kind of like a killers of the flower moon.
Speaker 2:You know the director is a white guy, but he understands the importance of the story that needs to be told and I'm assuming Kevin Costner surrounded himself with Sue Indians to consult with everything going on in the film, just like Martin Scorsese did. And so it would just be interesting to not just get you and I's perspective of our thoughts on this film, because we're gonna look at it as people who are just critiquing a movie. But I would be interested to see how did the Sue Indians like this movie? Did they like it? Did they think the story was told well? Do they think there were stereotypes in this movie? I think that was a big thing back in the 90s being very stereotypical with Native Americans in films, so I don't know.
Speaker 3:And I think it's also different. Like every tribe is so different, so you may have different people from different tribes weighing in. And of course you did have I can't remember what, I think it started with a P. The other tribe is kind of the like, more aggressive. You know, I'm assuming that was based on a real tribe and maybe some of that how can you not remember the other tribe?
Speaker 2:They're named after Parks and Rec.
Speaker 3:Pawnee.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay, well, there you go. But yeah, they, I may be a theater from that tribe. You're like what the heck? But I think there was a lot. I would assume there was a ton of integration, but it still may be.
Speaker 3:Someone in the more woke mentality today might say it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough and to where I may respond, wasn't enough. But it was a pretty good attempt. You know, someone may say, hey, you really still didn't allow them to be the main character.
Speaker 3:I didn't feel like it was overly white savior, because like he does kind of admit in the end like I actually can't help you guys, like the best, the most helpful thing he does is just to be honest and say, listen, they're coming. Like I can help you guys out a little bit, but like they're coming and there's nothing I can do about it. But I did as soon as I saw a white girl. So in the movie there's this like white girl who was, you know, her family was murdered by some really violent Native Americans and she gets taken in by the Sioux tribe and she speaks, you know, english. They bring her in.
Speaker 3:I was like fearful. I was like please, don't make her be a love interest with him Please like that's so and boom of course. And so the fact that she's kind of like the second name listed as one of the main characters, I'm like I was pretty disappointed in that. I wanted the relationship to be focused and I think, if I had to give, one of my biggest likes was getting to watch the character development. I think that was the biggest part. This was the watching a coming of age for two different men, you know, or maybe even three the two guys in the Sioux tribe, the main two tribal leaders, watching their growth and development and then watching the Lieutenant's growth and development to me was the most powerful storytelling. So, yeah, her adding in I was like what a waste.
Speaker 2:Well, coming from, I mean, I'm assuming you had never seen this movie either. But I had never seen this movie before in my life and so when they first showed her I was really worried because I was hoping they weren't trying to say that she was supposed to be a Native American because she was extremely white. And then they told her backstory because they didn't give her backstory right away. So I'm thinking she's supposed to be another Native American but I'm like she doesn't know. I don't think she's supposed to be and she wasn't. So I was glad about that. But my biggest like, I think, going on to what you said, my biggest like in the movie was the acting. Now I will say Kevin Costner's delivery, if sometimes of his lines came off as kind of monotone and not, I mean, I don't know, I guess he directed himself to sound like that sometimes. That's like my biggest like is the acting.
Speaker 2:I think the character development, like you said, was really well done. The relationships were really well done. I do think it was like kind of dumb that they had a love interest in there. I didn't think they needed one, especially the. Again, this is one of those really random. I don't think it was supposed to be funny, but funny moments where they were talking about how like she's in mourning from her ex-husband and who was like killed, and so Kevin Costner was like well, how long is she gonna be crying about that? And like the next scene she's like in the river walking and he comes up and she's like I'm in mourning, and then they just start making out and I couldn't help but laugh. It was one of as like one of many moments in this movie that I couldn't understand. Am I supposed to be taking this movie serious or not? I guess that could be one of my dislikes is I don't under like I didn't understand the genre 100% of the time.
Speaker 3:Right, right, and you know it's funny. I wouldn't call it a critique, it's just expectation. Dances with wolves that was his name, it's because they saw him. There was one scene moment where there was this wolf that kept coming around his camp and they watched him being silly and kind of doing these tribal dances alone. So they gave him sort of a funny nickname dances with wolves. But naive me, I'm sitting here thinking there's going to be this whole wolf thing. I thought the whole movie was like him and how he like integrates in the wild and builds relationships with wolves and like I didn't even call me dumb. But I did not realize the wolf was such a minor character in this movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and let's just talk about the sadness of the animals in this movie.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, and it's within like a 45 second clip.
Speaker 2:This guy just couldn't catch a break when it came to animals. It depressed me. His horse died, spoiler alert. And then the title of the movie Dance with the Wolves. His best wolf friend gets killed Spoiler alert.
Speaker 2:If you haven't seen the movie, go watch it. It is a good movie, but let's go to our dislikes. So my biggest dislike I have two. One is just like with the buffalo scene, even though your explanation makes sense of why it might be longer than you would think it would should be. But there are like moments in this movie that are just unnecessarily long, like I get it. They're riding out to fight people. They don't need to show almost the entire ride out to these people. And there's just like and I think the biggest one, even though your explanation makes sense, is the buffalo part. I thought it was just way too long, and I get it, and I get it was building up to that moment where Kevin Costner's character saves one of the Native American children from being trampled by a buffalo. I get that. That's what it's leading up to. But you don't need to show me every single buffalo kill. You just don't need to do it, you don't.
Speaker 3:This movie did not need to be three hours long.
Speaker 3:That one. Again, this is funny. I think it also didn't bother me as much because I was watching that part in double speed. For me, the long scene was when the Tawny Indians came and attacked. I mean, I think it was good, it was gruesome. But again, maybe it comes back to the culture they wanted to show and highlight. This is what war looked like in that time.
Speaker 3:We have plenty of movies about people shooting guns, but really what would a battle scene look like for people that are using other weapons? And yes, to your point, there's long, long scenes where it's just them moving camp to a different camp and you're like I don't need to watch, I get the point they're moving. The length was long. For me I think this falls in the same camp as Killer's as a Flower Moon, ironically just in the fact that it could have been a short three-part TV. But to that point, although there were some slow parts, I definitely did not watch it in as fast of a speed as I wanted to initially, because I kept slowing down, thinking I need to stop and hear this whole thing in real time, because I think the storyline itself flowed and I really do think there was kind of three different stories to tell, so I do think that justified having a long movie.
Speaker 3:I'd be curious what your thoughts are too. Although this is an entertaining movie, it doesn't fit in my category, so that may be another negative. It's not my feel good, makes me laugh, makes me cry Sorry, I did cry when the animals were taken down but is it a weighty movie? If you were to talk to someone today and you said here's the reason for why you need to go back and watch this, do you feel like it's relevant today, and what do you think is the big takeaway for us Maybe today in society, or even us as non-native American people living in the United States?
Speaker 2:One thing that could worry people is making white people look bad, and I think this movie kind of balanced that pretty well, though, and I was very surprised because there's one moment where and Kevin Costner's character worked on the Union side he didn't work on the Confederate side, I don't know if you paid attention to that, but anyway he worked on the Union side, which I thought was interesting, especially with today's society. But there's actually one moment where he gets captured by the Union soldiers because he's mistaken as one of the Native Americans, and then they all all the Sioux Indians basically gather around these soldiers and they kill them all. And then there's one young Native American character who ends up killing one of the soldiers. And just a very subtle moment I don't know if you caught this, but just the regret that the Native American teenager had. That's something that I don't think nowadays you would see. I don't, even though Kevin Costner's character ends up saying he liked doing it or he felt that it was necessary to kill all those soldiers. I thought it was interesting that they showed another perspective of conflict, with at least one of the Native American characters of killing these people. So I thought that was interesting and I thought that was cool that Kevin Costner included that in there.
Speaker 2:I do think it's important. I always think it's important to look back at history and see where we came from and how far we've come from, and I think Dancers with Wolves is one of those movies that you can look back at and get a glimpse of what life was like all those years ago. I don't know how accurate it was. That's another reason why I don't necessarily want to take you or my opinion about this movie and say this is what this movie is. That's why I would love to hear a Native American point of view of this movie, and I'm sure there are some out there, maybe on YouTube somewhere, of people who have that experience or have ancestors who have that experience and can give a more rounded perspective and critique of this movie. That's why I'm not really leaning more so on the experience of the people in the movie as I am. How did I feel about watching it? That's really the perspective I can give, and so that goes actually go to another dislike of mine. There's a lot of narration.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of telling me things and when you could just show me there's a lot of I guess they would call it exposition that Kevin Costner's character does throughout the film and it's supposed to be him writing in his journal and writing letters and stuff. So I get that, but I feel like there was a lot of it going on and I feel like that added a lot of time to the movie where you can just show me that you're doing this thing, that you're saying out loud that you're going to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that didn't bother me as much because for me it supported my big like, which was the growth, the character, the growth, and I think there's some of it you can show in other parts. You're kind of having to listen in on what he's thinking and how his what he's saying changes. To that point though I felt like there was growth. But, nathan, I had to be totally honest, I was expecting there to be some big shift, like being with these people really shaped my perspective. But he kind of seemed like that kind of guy back when he was working for the Union Army. I think he grew and again, especially the Native American people, they grew in just understanding of accepting someone from outside. But he was already seemed very like open minded and nature lover, like that's why he wanted to go out in the wilderness in the first place. He was very curious about those people. So he kind of got what he wanted in terms of scratching his curiosity itch. But again, I was expecting there to be maybe more like. This is what I used to think of them and now I know I'm totally wrong Like the character you meet when he first lands at the fort doesn't strike me as someone who would easily just shoot a Native American point blank.
Speaker 3:So like I don't feel like we changed and I think, from a storyline aspect again, my probably other biggest critique was some of that savior complex. Like yes, he provided guns, but let's be honest, he just made it worse for them, right? And he kind of acknowledged that. Like now that you have killed Union Army, like I am probably gonna yeah, we escape. At the end of the movie you see how he's gives them a heads up so that they can move on. But let's be honest, fast forward a few weeks from now, like they're gonna get caught and that whole village is gonna get murdered because they allowed him into their tribe.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's funny you say that because, as they show him leaving with his wife because they do get married they show you know reading things, you have to read something, and it basically says that's exactly what happened. Like a few weeks later, the Union soldiers showed up and they surrendered and bad things happened. So even the fact that he was like hey, I'm gonna go and try to talk to them and let them know that, hey, that you guys are the good guys, that didn't happen. And so I understand the importance of the movie, but at the same time, it ends up being kind of pointless.
Speaker 3:Yeah, nothing, nothing. Yeah, I mean, we learn and we have an appreciation as viewer, but we don't see anyone. What good does it do the Native American tribes to learn more about the white man? What good does it say oh, you know, actually some white men are not bad. What, what really big good does that do for them and the same for him? Like, ok, great, he learned to appreciate the Native Americans and did he pass that along? Did he help others not, you know, help others on the outside to realize that? No, he just went off into the sunset with his chick.
Speaker 2:So well, jokes on you, katie. You didn't know that there is a sequel. It's called Dances with More Wolves. No, I'm just kidding, but but yeah. So that is. I think we've gone over our thoughts about this movie. It was very long, a lot of narration but good acting, good character development. So let's go ahead and rate Dances with Wolves, our first movie for season four. Katie, what would you give Dances with Wolves? One out of six, because we're sticking with our rating system.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do have a before we rate and I'm sorry I should talk about this beforehand, but one out of six is hard for a list of movies that are already supposed to be good. So I kind of want to know can, can we restart in terms of I don't want people to think that Me giving I'm going to give all these movies, hopefully a four and up, so maybe we could kind of reset the one like what is, what is a one, what's our baseline going to be?
Speaker 2:Something that, I'm sorry, I watched.
Speaker 3:All right. Well, in terms of movie, I did cry and that's what am? I my needs and I was interested to know what happened. I was engaged. I don't think there's a, there's no reason at all that this movie a one awards. I need to give it the credit there, where it's where it's due, and the cinematography, the musical score, fantastic. So I'm going to probably give it a four and a half.
Speaker 2:I'm going to give it a four because I agree, I think it definitely deserved best cinematography, and as I was watching it I thought that too. I'm like I'm sure, when you saw this on the big screen, just like the visuals were stunning because of where it was filmed and just the shots that were done. So obviously it deserved the awards that it got. So that is dances with wolves, y'all man classic movie. Watch it if you have time, if you have three hours to spare. So next up on our next episode, we're going to jump into a television show.
Speaker 2:We're going to do another classic, though, and when I say classic, I mean classic. This show is so classic that I don't even know if Katie and I can rate it. We'll probably just talk about the significance of it, because it's that classic. That's right. We're going to be talking about I love Lucy, starring the American amazingly amazing Lucille Ball and Desi Arnais, william Frawley, vivian Vance, all those fun people. If you've never seen I Love Lucy, what is wrong with you? Go watch it Again. I will try to post on our posts where you can watch all the things that we're watching. Katie, do you have anything you would like to say at the end of this episode?
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Nadie and Katie at the Movies. Feel free to leave us a review so people can find the show. Follow us on all our social media platforms and if there's a movie that you want us to watch, feel free to contact us at nadieandkadycom. Thanks for listening and have a great day.