In the movie, Dances with Wolves, we experience John Dunbar’s story, the story of a man who goes on a suicide stunt, but ends up becoming a war hero. When Lieutenant Dunbar is offered a post is the most western part of the new frontier, his life becomes completely flipped. His story is narrated through his journal in which he recorded his days out on the western frontier, which is loosely based off of a man actually named John Dunbar, who was a missionary that later allied with the Pawnee in the 1800’s. In the movie, he encounters the nearby tribe, in which he has a unique relationship with them that would be looked at during the time of his life as him acting as a “traitor” to his country and way of life.

          The way the story plays out in this movie is seamless. The narration offers a better look at his perspective of communication between him and the tribe, a tribe who speaks no english. The director of the movie had a wise decision to not have the Native Americans try and learn English, but make John Dunbar learn their language. In this situation, John Dunbar is for once a minority, so it was nice to not see this movie become whitewashed by the Native Americans conforming to white culture. The interactions between characters are quite slow and are slow to develop, but once the relationship is established, it makes the relationship between Dunbar and the Natives stronger.

          Lighting was a major part of making this movie a theme, as well as give it a realistic look at frontier life. Shots indoors were mostly in the portable huts used by the Natives to migrate easily. The only light indoors was fire, so the lighting crew had to make the lighting indoors move quite a bit to give off the look that it’s actually fire. The shots in this movie are almost never still. The shots that focus more on dialogue and interaction between characters are all moving, but not enough for them to be handheld. Even though you really do not notice, it gives it more movement that gives the feeling you are really there. Some of the landscape shots in this film are breathtaking. The director of photography truly captured the beauty of the western plains, and gave the feeling of how bare the land was before the colonization of the west.

          This film is one for people that have patience in movies. It is around three hours long, so it is on the side of the longer movies that are out there. It is slowly developed, but it allows the audience to feel like they are also building a relationship with the characters within the movie. Sometimes movies jump right into the plot, but this one allows the climax to build up quite a bit for us to really feel a lot more emotion in battle scenes, while other movies that have battles within them seem to be just nonsense with no emotional attachment. I would recommend this film to people aspiring to be site scouts or directors of photography.