Dances with Wolves

Kevin Costner had been a star for just three years when he persuaded Orion to put up $15 million so that he could direct and star in a Western.

At a time when that genre was moribund, Dances With Wolves would be three hours long, and 40 percent of its meagre dialogue would be in the Lakota dialect (subtitled). Orion initially released the film on just 14 prints, but the reviews were raves — Costner was compared to everybody from John Ford to Akira Kurosawa — and the movie went on to play for nearly a year, becoming one of the most commercially successful Westerns ever made, and beating out Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas for the Best Picture and Best Director Academy Awards.

Sent from the Civil War to man a far-flung army outpost on the frontier, Costner’s Lt Dunbar finds himself left to his own devices — until he strikes up a relationship with the Sioux who are his only neighbours. Costner’s “regular guy epic” has spectacle and pays authentic respect to the land’s original occupants.

Staff Pick: Ingrid

Rich, lyrical, warm, full of unlooked-for laughs, heartbreaking and spectacularly cinematic… as enchanting a western as there ever was. The film’s eloquence and evocative beauty make it enduringly enjoyable.

Angie Errigo, 1001 Movies to See Before You Die

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