"Dances with Wolves" (1990)

                Dances with Wolves has been one of my all time favorite movies since I was young.  This is probably because I’m from the West, and seeing mountains and open sky makes me happier than anything.  I also love the movie because of the meaning put behind the production and filming- the goal wasn’t to simply produce a high grossing movie (which it was with $424 million world-wide box office sales).  I personally find it strange that I ask many of my friends down here if they have seen it, and they think I’m crazy.  I grew up in the Colorado and Wyoming region, and lived almost ten years of my life on Arapahoe land.  Knowing about and being interested in the Native American culture and history has always been considered a “norm” for me, and I guess this movie has a different connection with me than other people who do not.

                One thing that I love about this movie is the real feeling I get from it.  This may be because of the natural and organic scenery, but also the technical filmmaking adds to the raw feeling of the movie.  If you think about it, this is when there was almost no computer editing or programming for film; this means that every animal, flower, person, rock, mountain, etc, were all actually there.  There are no animations or ways of digitally editing the film.  I can’t imagine how long it took to re-create a buffalo stampede without digitally adding in over a hundred buffalo.  The effort put into capturing the most real and raw footage to tell a story is amazing.

                Another unique thing about this American movie is it’s probably the only major American movie told in an actual native language.  English is not America’s native language; the lost language of the Native Americans is the true native language.  It is told in Lakota, which is the language of the Sioux Indians.