For more than 35 years, "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," a landmark history about the late-19th-century mistreatment of Native Americans, has defied inevitable attempts to turn it into a movie. It appeared virtually unfilmable.
The Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning critic reviews shows with wit, humor and a quick finger on the remote.
Certainly the movie, made by writer Daniel Giat, director Yves Simoneau and executive producer Dick Wolf, is a powerful and respectable piece of work. And HBO deserves credit for tackling a project that is arguably too depressing to be commercial (the film airs tonight in the "Sopranos" time slot, with "Sopranos" returning next Sunday).
But for a number of reasons, "Wounded Knee" -- produced for a hefty $15 million -- falls short in terms of dramatic impact, especially considering that it opens and closes with massacres.
Part of the problem would haunt any movie of Dee Brown's book such a long time after publication (in 1971): Many a movie has been made with similar subject matter, and although it might sound cold to say so, the plight of the American Indian is hardly a big historical secret.
"Little Big Man" and "Soldier Blue" (which was unbearably violent until a later reediting job), both released in 1970, preceded the publication of Brown's novel. Intervening years then brought many other films on the subject -- including not one but two TV-movie versions of "Ishi, the Last of His Tribe.
" George Armstrong Custer has been dutifully removed from the roster of historical heroes and tossed into the halls of infamy. The story of how Native Americans were swindled, betrayed and murdered in the name of progress will never lose its relevance. A character in the new film says, "We will be known forever by the tracks we leave behind," a potent note for the citizens of any era, including the early 21st century.
"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" approaches fairly familiar material in a way that is hardly revolutionary but still punctuated with insightful details, and its battle scenes are impeccably spectacular and yet conscientiously, hauntingly anti-violent.
In the final, most horrible battle, near Wounded Knee Creek in 1890, women and children are shot -- in the back -- by Army troops acting on behalf of the advance of capitalism and what is recklessly referred to as "civilization." The film does not present the essential underlying conflict in a strictly black-vs.
-white way (although the movie becomes literally black-and-white at times, for reasons that remain murky); the Indians sometimes act in ways that appear to hasten their own doom.
But no one who sees the film is likely to break into a chorus of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" as the closing credits roll. And the filmmakers are skillful enough so that many scenes with no violence or threat of violence are still deeply affecting.
The film covers the years 1876 to 1895, opening with a brief, hushed prologue, during which we hear a young woman's voice say: "There is no honor in killing, only necessity. Honor comes with true courage. But that day is long gone.
" The hush ends abruptly and seemingly hundreds of extras reenact the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. It's a condensed rather than laborious version that includes such graphic moments as an on-screen scalping.
Director Simoneau then upstages his own battle scene with a thrilling aerial pan of a vast American Indian village, tepees dotting the landscape far into the distance.
The movie is often visually striking, although Simoneau's use of sepia-toned still photos in montages that indicate (usually) the passage of time comes across as one of those intriguing ideas that don't quite work. The photographs, however, are beautiful.
Good guys and bad are subtly shaded.
Aidan Quinn plays Henry Dawes, a bureaucrat (eventually a senator) who naively imagines himself an advocate for the Indians even though he is often the bearer of very bad news -- some new ploy to force people off their land, erase their heritage and deprive them even of their given names -- replacing them with "Christian" ones.
Quinn hardly sets the screen afire, playing Dawes more stiffly than stoically. But other performances in the film carry considerable dramatic weight.
The most imposing of these is Adam Beach as a handsome young Sioux named Ohiyesa, given the name Charles Eastman and held up by "the whites" as a role model for his willingness to learn English, attend college and return to his people as a doctor, albeit one limited to dispensing castor oil. Beach gives the strongest, proudest performance in the film, and he makes Eastman's innocence understandable and empathetic.
Anna Paquin plays another well-intentioned but misguided character, a schoolteacher named Elaine Goodale.
Fred Thompson turns out to have won the presidency already; he plays Ulysses S. Grant, briefly, early in the story. Wes Studi, Colm Feore and the musically named Gordon Tootoosis also make solid and authentic-looking contributions, but the standout among the supporting players is August Schellenberg, tremendously moving as the tragic martyr Sitting Bull, whose story is told with more complexity than one usually encounters in retellings of the tale.
One of the lesser-known aspects of the story is introduced in a visit to an Indian camp by red-clad members of the North-West Mounted Police, who say they welcome a settlement across the border in Canada. This earnest effort, like others depicted, goes awry, and in this case not because of the white man's betrayal. Feuding tribes muddy the waters, rivalries escalate and we see a potential paradise lost.
The larger story can only end in massive and terrible tragedy.
The film contains many poignant scenes and sights, including a sequence in which Indians line up outside a cabin for more noblesse oblige from the federal government: paltry rations of blankets and sets of clothes. Some of the Indians are ironically converted into tourist attractions and unfortunately let themselves be demeaned.
Sitting Bull contributes to his own humiliation but will eventually rediscover his dignity in one of the film's most stirring scenes.
Producer Wolf is best known, of course, for his "Law Order" franchise. He wanted to prove he could tackle weightier material, and with the help of gifted filmmakers, he's come close to success.
"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" might be too late, but no one can justifiably say it is too little.
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (150 minutes) debuts tonight at 9 on HBO.
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