Dances with Wolves - Book Report/Review Example

Movie Reviews Running head: Movies MOVIE REVIEWS In APA Style Movie Reviews 2 DANCES WITH WOLVES America has always glorified that one chapter in its history whereby it started to make a push westward and opened new frontiers to the west, capturing control of that vast wilderness west of the eastern colonies. That was one historic moment, America keeps on harking and reminiscing about. From this historic era, came movies such as How The West Was Won and all those making heroes out of General Custer and Wyatt Earp. The western movies became one genre immortalizing heroes who paved the way for the capture and control of lands where milk and honey overflows, all for the sake of future generations. But lo and behold, the trek westward and the cementing of the future of the next generations were never easy tasks. Those western films we grew up with had always taught us that there were villains along the way who made sure that future America cannot partake of the wealth and prosperity that would be generated by the gold strikes in California and the oil finds in Texas among other discoveries of the west's vast natural resources. These brutal, uncivilized savages they named as Indians or red men were called by them as America's version of the Barbarians, the Tartars, the Huns, the Vandals and the Visigoths. They were supposed to be the embodiment of evil. These former western movies depicted them as hindrance to civilized man's search for prosperity and as such they should be obliterated by whatever means possible including violence by the barrel of a gun. But then like a breath of fresh air, came Dances With Wolves which humanized these savages and depicted them not as vicious villains but as victims who are continually being forced out of their own lands that their ancestors owned since time immemorial, albeit without deeds of title, by this thundering horde of gun-toting imperialist Americans who leave no stone unturned Movie Reviews 3 to erase them from the face of the earth and thus remove all possible claimants to the title of these new, vast lands which held massive potentials. Suddenly, the indigenous Indians are depicted as desperate to protect themselves and their lands from this new land-grabbing forces who are without respect for their traditions and culture. For the first time, Sioux Indian language, the Lakota, was used with only English subtitles to make them comprehensible to the viewers. Finally, they are humanized and allowed to vent out their aspirations, dreams, frustrations, pains, insecurities and the whole gamut of emotions that had been kept away from us in the earlier western movies, where we were all treated with their savage grunts, wild gibberish sounds that only fortified or fears for these red men. Suddenly we are awed by the wisdom of Ten Bears, the gentleness of Wind In His Hair and the humanity of Kicking Bird. The presence of Stands With A Fist, a white woman who was raised up an Indian and portrayed by Mary McDonnel, taught us that Sioux Indians knew how to raise a child and impart her with proper Indian values so that she grow civilized, despite nary a formal education. Like us, this movie made us realize that these native Indians also have their beliefs and fears. They have more respect for nature, animals and fellow Indians than the 'civilized' societies. They can also be very vulnerable. As for example, Kicking Bird keeps on expressing his anxiety about the coming of the white men and keeps on cajoling Lt. John Dunbar, portrayed by Kevin Costner, as to how many more of these white men are coming by which Dunbar responded with the curt reply "like the stars". If those Union surgeons operated nonchalantly on wounded soldiers without anesthesia, these Indians are sensitive to the conditions of their fellow Indians. If those generals curse blatantly, these red men are careful with the words that come out of their mouths. So we ask the question, "who really are the civilized ones''. If the movie Schindler's List gave us the urge to protect the Jews from a sure Movie Reviews 4 extermination in the hands of the Nazis, Dances With Wolves also was victorious in arousing in us the urge to lend a mantle of protection to the Sioux Indians, who we realize are on the brink of some kind of genocidal holocaust, this time in the hands of Union soldiers, who are too trigger happy to decimate anything whose essence they fail to comprehend. Even Two Socks, Dunbar's wolf-friend and the buffaloes were butchered because their existence do not make sense to the soldiers. Family oriented and peace-loving but brave and proud of their heritage, the Sioux Indians instinctively knew that like the buffaloes who were facing extinction, they will suffer the same fate because the white men are prejudiced against them and such is rooted in their ignorance and their pre-conceived notions that they are savages whom God forgot to bless with gentle hearts and civilized minds. It takes a liberal minded Lt. Dunbar, who once made a suicidal attempt to ride through enemy lines, to realize that if we open our hearts and minds and try to make something out of that which is totally strange and incomprehensible, we find that goodness lurks outside of us. It helps that Costner made use of voice-over narration by Dunbar and facilitated us with our understanding of the plight of the Sioux Indians. This movie is riveting and mesmerizing and offered all of us a new experience. However, it is too long and would have been more effective, if pruned a little more. Also, it contained graphic and excessive violence, mayhem and murder such as the murder of Dunbar's companion to the frontier, the gory scenes of amputations, the killing of the buffaloes. It seemed violence is endless in this movie and violence is the only alternative solution to the problems at hand. Despite these drawbacks, its theme of spiritual renewal and rebirth, indicated by Dunbar's rejection of the violence of Civil War, his leaving a sick society and a search of a peaceful life in the deserted western frontier and the embrace of a new culture which his own abominated, made it a movie worthy of one's time. This movie is one of a kind as it pictured these 'vicious savages' as intrinsically good. As Dunbar wrote in his journal "I had never known a people so eager Movie Reviews 5 to laugh, so dedicated to family, so devoted to one another". AMISTAD When I have decided to view Steven Spielberg's Amistad, I expected a movie that would scathingly condemn slavery as an odious, dehumanizing system that all civilized people must denounce in the strongest possible terms. Although the first of the movie did produce a revulsion so strong to make anyone with such respect for human dignity wretch, the rest of the movie was pure legalese, tackling the issue of whether or not Cinque and the rest of the slaves, who engineered a mutiny in the high seas and murdered their captors aboard the Spanish schooner La Amistad, were born slaves to Cuban or Spanish masters (and thus were personal properties of their masters) or were they freemen who were kidnapped to be sold as slaves as part of an illegal slave trade. Because the subject of dehumanization and oppression were drowned in the legalities within the confines of a legal court not to mention the political maneuverings involving President Martin Van Buren and Queen Isabella II of Spain, Amistad is simply not the movie to see if one wants to fortify his understanding of the plight of the African slaves or if one wants a clear picture of the slaves' dreams, hopes, frustrations, ambitions and disappointments as well as struggles to survive. The more apt movie to see is perhaps Roots. The fact that Mende, one of the dialects of Sierra Leone, was used without subtitles, in the opening scenes of the movie, did not help us in our desire to vicariously learn from their experience. There were certain scenes though that were earthshaking, sending through us volts of lightning enough for us to be conscience stricken and moving us to commiserate with the appalling conditions of African slaves. Foremost of these was the scene where the slave masters, realizing that there was a dearth of food and provisions carried by the ship, decided to toss overboard 50 slaves to drown in the rampaging waters. Cinque, portrayed by Djimon Hounshou, further recalled , thru an interpreter named Ensign Covey, how they were ripped off from their families, brutalized Movie Reviews 6 into submission and forcibly thrown and imprisoned in the slave fortress of Sierra Leone to await buyers of slaves from Europe. Another shocking revelation was the discovery that fellow Africans capture their enemies belonging to rival tribes and sell them to the slave trade. It dawned upon us that not only westerners inflict damage to these hapless people but also fellow black Africans. Another scene that tugs at the heartstrings was when Cinque was filled with homesickness upon the sight of African violets at John Quincy Adams' greenhouse garden. But probably the most pitiful sight was the inhuman conditions that the slaves were forced to go through. Being chained and stripped almost naked in cruel conditions fit for animals express the sentiments that slave traders have over these slaves i.e. that because of the color of their skin, they were being prejudiced and discriminated against and treated not as fellow human beings but animals destined to serve the white men and obey their whims and caprices and to think that these slave traders were supposed to be Christians who were taught that every human being is equal before God and God loves the meek and the downtrodden. In Amistad, the slave traders were Spanish under Queen Isabella II, who was reputed to be pious and religious. Queen Isabella II pressured President Martin Van Buren, who was due for reelection, to return the slaves to Spain so that they may face indictment under Spanish laws. Van Buren, scared of negative repercussions including a possible souring of relations with Spain, which in 1839 was the world's most dominant world power with its mighty Spanish Armada and a possible civil war if slaves were adjudicated to be set free, thus piquing the slave-owning lords of the south. Another thing that stands out in Amistad is the maturing of the relationship between the slave Cinque and his ambulance-chasing lawyer, Roger Baldwin, played by Matthew Movie Reviews 7 McConnaughey. Baldwin at the outset, treated Cinque as a mere object of property law, someone he had to defend by incontrovertible proofs that Cinque is not a property of the Cuban or Spanish masters, who must be returned to his owners but was born free and was a victim of the illegal slave trade. But as time progressed and as he got to know the humanity of his client, he began to appreciate him as a decent human being and ultimately he became an abolitionist. Baldwin is representative of most of us who only appreciate people who are different from us if we get to know the human being. Another relationship that also matured was that of Cinque and John Quincy Adams, brilliantly portrayed by Anthony Hopkins. The former US president at first refused to assist in Cinque's case but after the slave traders appealed the case to the Supreme Court, Adams accepted to be his counsel. The most memorable lines from the movie came from Adams' 11 minute soliloquy. Adams' speech carried so much power and brilliance that the Academy was compelled to give him an outright Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. Said John Quincy Adams: "This man is black'.now if he were white, he wouldn't be standing before this court fighting for his life'.Yet if the South is right, what are we to do with that embarrassing, annoying document, the Declaration of Independence' What of its conceits' All men are created equal, inalienable rights, life, liberty and so on and so forth. What are we to do with this'" Holding a copy of the Declaration of Independence, he began tearing it in half. He then proceeded with this monologue, which should be the apt conclusion of this paper i.e. "The natural state of mankind is freedom. And the proof is the length to which a man, woman, child will go to regain it once taken. He will break loose his chains. He will decimate his enemies. He will try , against all odds, against all prejudices, to get home". The Supreme Court probably moved by this unforgettable speech, declared the slaves free and ordered them to be allowed to go home in Sierra Leone. Movie Reviews 8 THE JOY LUCK CLUB The Joy Luck Club is a filmization of Amy Tan's bestselling novel about camaraderie among 4 Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters and the generation gap problem between mothers, born and reared in Chinese culture and their daughters, born and raised in America. Their common heritage and culture and the difficult lives they went through in China, which ultimately drove them to immigrate in America drew them together. Their love for the pastime of mah-jongg further unified them together. The director, Wayne Wang, deftly connected all the pieces of the mosaic tiles of their lives together to present to us a clear picture of their broken lives which they furiously labored to rectify and to make whole in America. These mothers also tried to restructure their families and tried to lead their daughters to their own pre-conceived notion of the right path, but they failed to realize that such 'right path' is now also influenced by the new culture's (i.e. America) standard of what is the 'right path'. Thus conflicts arise between mothers and daughters. In effect this movie encapsulates the situation and the dilemma that each Chinese immigrant face when they reach this new, strange land called America. First, is the tendency of Chinese immigrants, raised in the ways of Chinese culture to seek each other and to form a protective bonding for their own security against societal prejudice, in the total exclusion of immigrants from other cultures and the so-called native Americans. They find solace and strength in each other's company. Their scions, themselves, try to mingle with their fellow Americans. Some are successful but others are hindered by the fear that their yellow skin and slit, chinky eyes might be reasons for them to be discriminated against. This inner turmoil is the first hurdle they have to achieve in order to have satisfying, peaceful lives. The second block is Movie Reviews 9 the realization that society, even prior to their births, has already a pre-conceived notion of what they would be. This is called stereotyping. Women, are almost always thrown into that "China doll" syndrome i.e. she must be pretty, feminine and soft-spoken, subservient and passive, and a mere sex object. The men either fall into "the gangster stereotype, Yellow Uncle Tom, or the Mystic Fighter stereotype" (Wong 1997). The behavior of Lindo and Waverly Jong, An-mei Hsu and Rose Hsu Jordan. Ying-ying and Lena St. Clair, and June Woo of forming together The Joy Luck Club exemplifies the Chinese immigrants' desperate efforts to survive and to attain emotional and psychological balance amidst all the "rampant cultural and institutional racism as well as individual racism" (Sue 1991), they are continually subjected to. This is not to mention that they are labeled as a minority group and truth of the matter, they are not really accepted by many as Americans but the sight of those slit eyes and yellow skin, makes them vulnerable to be presumed as Chinese or Asians. As such, they are not given equal opportunities in work an d in other fields. They are also open to stereotyping. Because there is so much pressure to really prove their worth in studies and work, they have to expend gargantuan efforts to excel in academics and work, and failure to do so, would even prove more disastrous as the tendency of society would be to deem them as "outcasts, a waste to society and an embarrassment to the family" (Sue 1991). Each of these mothers in the film came to America already emotionally and psychologically scarred and traumatized after experiencing almost insurmountable hardships in China. With this trauma and the adjustment to a new environment, language and communication problems, the loss of emotional support coming from family and difficulties in immediately finding jobs, all the stacks are heaped against their favor. Suyuan Woo would always be haunted by her conscience because she abandoned Movie Reviews 10 her twin daughters during that time that both needed the comfort and security of a mother. That was during the Second Sino-Japanese War. She came to America with this burden which she passed on to daughter June after her death (due to aneurysm). Not only did she pass on the burden to search for the twin daughters in China but also the obligation to reorganize The Joy Luck Club in San Francisco. An-mei Hsu will always carry with her to America the stigma of being the daughter of a mother who was raped, made the fourth concubine of a rich man, rejected by her own family and ultimately committing suicide. Added to this is the sharing of the guilt together with daughter Rose of the death by drowning of his son Bing. Rose herself, had to deal with an ugly divorce and possession of the family home against her doctor-husband, Ted. Lindo Jong had to deal with this horrifying ordeal of having to marry by parental; arrangement a 13 year old boy at the age of 12 and to deal with a vicious, domineering mother-in-law who practically caged her and ruled her young life. Luckily for her, she was able to outwit this despicable harridan. But in America, she took the role of that harridan and tried to pressure daughter Waverly, who was a chess champion, to accomplish what she failed to accomplish. The independent Waverly in turn, to defuse all tensions quit her chess career. Lindo has always ascribed this tension and conflict between them as caused by Waverly's American upbringing. Ying-ying St. Clair was even in a worse situation and had to come to America with an even heavier burden. Passive and repressed, she was unlucky to have married a brutal and philandering husband. Impregnated against her will, she chose to abort her child hoping the act will avenge her against that monster of a husband. Instead, she had to carry the guilt of killing her own child. She is also hounded by the fear that daughter Lena may follow her footsteps. Lena herself, had to deal with her husband's insistence that they equally share in expenses. Movie Reviews 11 REFERENCES Sue, Stanley (1991). Handbook of social services for Asian and pacific islanders. Greenwood Publishing Group Wong, Al (1997). Why the Joy Luck Club Sucks. En.wikipedia.org/wiki/The-Joy_Luck-Club-37k. Read More