Re “Dances with Wolves” I’ve never seen the film, but it won a ton of awards, but now 20 years later it’s a synonym for a shitty, bombastic movie?
How the heck can the artistic perception of, and opinions about a movie change that much in just two decades.
I’m not sure DWW is as reviled as you make it out to be. I think in general, Kevin Costner’s reputation suffered as a result of his two major follow-ups, The Postman and Waterworld. Those were… not good. But taken on it’s own, DWW is not a bad movie. It’s certainly beautiful to look at, which was a big part of the accolades it received.
Maybe part of the reason is people were upset that Goodfellas did not win best picture. Scorsese had to wait until the Departed to get his Oscar.
I think a lot of it has to do with fortunes of its star Kevin Costner. Dances with Wolves came in the middle of a long string of financial and/or critical successes for him. However, with Waterworld and (especially) The Postman, Costner suddenly went cold and he’s now seen as a once-likeable actor with limited range who let his ego run away with him. As a result, the reputation of many of his prior successes has suffered.
Also, don’t forget that Dances with Wolves beat out Scorsese’s Goodfellas for Best Picture and Best Director. Many people (myself included) think Goodfellas was by far a superior and more memorable film.
Part of it is, as Skammer mentions, Kevin Costner’s follow-up projects. Not only did they mar, in hindsight, previous projects he’d worked on, I think people saw him doing the same shtick in those movies that he did (and was praised for) in DWW. And some of it is just looking back at movies that seemed good at the time that, upon a second or third viewing, now seem decent at best.
I guess it’s like when a sports star keeps playing when he’s way past his prime people claim that tarnishes his reputation. Guess for Costner almost everything after DWW is viewed as past his prime.
It’s a shame that DWW’s Director’s Cut isn’t more widely viewed/available. I think it adds a lot to the cohesiveness and rationality of the film.
The book “The Making of King Kong” has a chapter entitled “Remember Cavalcade?” The point was that Cavalacde won the Best Picture oscar for 1933. King Kong didn’t get any. Ever hear of Cavalcade? Noel Coward wrote the screenplay, and it was a huge success as a stage play, but the only time I ever saw a clip was after “Titanic” came out, because the film has a scene set on the Titanic. The film is suypposed to be significant about the period between the World Wars, but it’s a hell of a lot less important to most of us than that wonderful big ape.
While DWW may have won a ton of awards, virtually none of them were from critics organizations (Oscars, Golden Globes, and even the NBR fall under other categories). The critics organizations (NY, LA, Boston, Chicago, etc.) picked GoodFellas unanimously. The industry awards (the Academy, the guilds) largely favored the Costner film, but that’s not uncommon for risky labors-of-love that find commercial success, especially those that focus on Important Themes in Epic Settings. Essentially, DWW exemplifies what many see as the Academy’s biggest Achilles heel: large scale sentimentality over less crowd-pleasing, harder-edged artistry. Costner’s subsequent directing career has not helped his legacy either.
I’d suggest watching the film. It really is pretty good.
Another thing Dances with Wolves going in its favor among Academy voters as opposed to critics organizations in 1990 is the fact that Academy voters tended to be older, more conservative, and image-conscious. I recall reading a pre-Oscar column by a Hollywood insider saying that while many of these voters respected the job Scorsese did in putting together Goodfellas, they found the film itself to be brutal, amoral, excessively profane, disturbingly violent, and a generally ugly piece of work. There was no way Hollywood was collectively going to give its stamp of “Best Picture of 1990” to this movie.
This, incidentally, was the same problem Scorsese had with Academy voters when Taxi Driver and Raging Bull were nominated for Best Director and Best Picture. As late as 1990, Scorsese was still seen as a wild-eyed rebel. However, when he did finally won for 2006’s The Departed (which was every bit as violent and profane his previous gangland pics), Scorsese was now among the distinguished elder voters of the Academy.
And, of course, there’s the fact that an Academy Award win doesn’t necessarily prove that a picture is Great Art. It just means that the industry has just performed a big circle jerk and (often) rewarded a film because it was “time” for the director to win one, or because the studio put on the biggest publicity extravaganza.
Dance with Wolves is also a Big Screen movie. If you never got the chance to see it in a theater and only ever saw it on a tv set, you would probably say “So what?”
the film was gorgeous in the theater, GORGEOUS.
I saw it first when it was new and in theaters. I just rewatched it about a week ago. While it didn’t have the same impact as the first time, it’s remarkable how well it holds up.
The more crime and gangster movies I see, the less I like them. It’s a personal foible. It seems like every director has to make a gangster film or crime caper at some point in his career, and then they stand around admiring each others’ gangster films.
I’ve never watched Goodfellas, for example, because I’m sick of the fetishization of gangsters. It might be a very good gangster film, for all I know.
Dance With Wolves certainly had its preachy moments and its own stereotypes, I’m not denying, as well as indulging Costner’s vanity a bit. But it did have its moments.
DWW is a big, gooey, sentimental bucket of suck. It has this in common with many Oscar winners. No surprise it won, no surprise it hasn’t had artistic legs.
Well, film critics still consider it a good film. It’s not popular, but popularity does not equal quality. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, and those rating it on his website give it 3 1/2.
Few people have seen Cavalcade, but those who have still consider it a good film (Maltin, for instance, gives it four stars). It’s dated, but that doesn’t make it bad. King Kong may be a great film, but there was no way it would have won an Oscar back then.
I haven’t heard very many dismissing it as a bad movie, only as a long movie. It was an 18-hour movie when 18-hour movies weren’t the norm.
My film prof - a huge Scorsese fan - used to say Dances with Wolves won not because Costner was a good director, but he had the sense to work with a GREAT cinematographer.
First, although Dances with Wolves isn’t considered to be a great film by any means, it’s still considered to be a reasonably good one. Second, look at this list of Oscar winners:
A lot of them are not considered to be great films anymore. Some are considered to be rather mediocre. There’s nothing particularly different about the drop in popularity of Dances with Wolves. There’s also nothing particularly interesting about the fact that some films drop in popularity in a relatively short time. This happens in all the arts. Novels, paintings, etc. also drop in popularity fairly often.