Dances with Wolves (1990)

Wednesday's AA Furniture & Appliance DVD purchases were put to use last night. I lasted all of ten minutes into Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King (2003) before retuning the disc to its case. I have no words to describe why this "epic fantasy adventure film" did nothing for me, nor the energy to summon them.

Tolkien had little time for critics and scholars. "It's just a story," he was wont to say when asked if The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were allegories. In certain respects, Peter Jackson's film adaptation could be seen as a tribute to Tolkien's diffidence: not only has he cut out the tongue of this critic, he has removed his nervous system as well. (With a little help from the virus, that is.)

With Tolkien back in his case, I inserted my second unseen film of the evening. Dances with Wolves (1990) is the story of a bored Union soldier who has been redeployed by his employer, the expansionist United States federal government, as an unwitting arms dealer in an effort to help the Lakota Sioux defeat the more resistant Pawnee.

The picture up top features the nicely-assed Lieutenant Mullet and his soon-to-be-wife Finger in Socket as they return to her Lakota Sioux camp. It was the Sioux who adopted Finger when she was a child (the Pawnee killed her settler family). A few scenes later, the Sioux adopt Mullet too. The film ends with a written epilogue torn from the "salvage anthropology" playbook.