Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

Review by Steve Rogers

Production Year: 2007
DVD Release Date: September 11, 2007
Studio: HBO Home Video
Director: Yves Simoneau
Cast: Aidan Quinn, Adam Beach, Anna Paquin
Genre: Western - Historical
MPAA Rating: Not Rated

I had eagerly looked forward to the HBO production of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. For years HBO has served as the gold standard for made for cable movies, and I had high hopes that this never before filmed story would do justice to the book. Dee Brown’s bestseller was a sweeping account of the conquest and subjugation of the American Indian by the U.S. Army, focused primarily on the Indian wars of 1860-1890. It was a heart-wrenching tale of the indignities and degrading treatment meted out to the Native Americans by a government that conducted a policy of virtual genocide. HBO’s version could not of course hope to capture the epic nature of Brown’s book which chronicled tribe after tribe of Indians forced to give up their way of life as treaties were broken, corruption ran rampant and lies and racism ruled the day.

In HBO’s Bury My Heart, we get a condensed version, with a focus on the events surrounding the demise of the Lakota Sioux and Chief Sitting Bull. The movie begins with Custer’s defeat at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and ends with the massacre at Wounded Knee creek in 1890, the last armed conflict between the U.S. and Native Americans. In between there are numerous set pieces designed to highlight the misery suffered by the native peoples, and the arrogance of the white politicians, settlers and bureaucrats intent on profiting from government policies and the inhumane reservation system.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t come together. The focus and scope of the film is diluted by an over reliance on the mostly fictional character of Charles Eastman (played by Adam Beach), a young Sioux boy taken east by the whites and educated as a physician. Eastman serves as a sort of aide-de-camp for Senator Henry Dawes, whose sympathies for the Indians coexist with an earnest but patronizing attitude. Aidan Quinn stars as Dawes and, while he brings some conviction and emotion to the role, it’s not enough to keep the film from sinking at times into sermonizing. There’s a romantic storyline between Eastman and a prominent “Friends of the Indian” supporter Elaine Goodale (an underused Anna Pacquin) that lacks any real chemistry, but the biggest disappointment is August Schellenberg as Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull’s role as the last of the fighting Sioux chiefs to surrender is key to the film, but the aging Schellenberg is just not believable in the role and simply looks and sounds too Anglo to provide the impact needed for this fierce uncompromising warrior.

Of course, the film is not without its merits and the transformation of young Charles Eastman, played wonderfully by Chevez Ezaneh, from a carefree Sioux teenager to a shorn, humbled pupil in a prairie schoolhouse is as bitter and brutal a metaphor for the tragedy of the Native American as any. The battle scenes involving the hate mongering Army Colonel, Nelson Miles, and the final bloody carnage at Wounded Knee are also haunting and agonizingly depicted, and they will impact all who view them. There’s no shortage of human suffering and misery in the film, and that is as it should be.

But to translate Brown’s legendary book into a coherent narrative was probably asking a lot. Indeed, screenwriter Dan Giat himself notes on the disc that the book is basically unfilmable and they had considered a miniseries style filmization. One can only hope HBO’s depiction of what is essentially an American holocaust allows more people to recognize the injustice and deprivation that those original Americans experienced and continue to live with to this day.

Video Quality

The digital film process used for the film is nothing short of awe-inspiring. With an aspect ratio formatted for 16x9 TVs, the high def picture is striking in its clarity and sharpness. The extreme close-ups favored by director Simoneau will allow you to see more skin pores in one night than a dermatologist in a year. And the color scheme favored by cinematographer David Franco, featuring natural earth tones and lots of wintry weather, loses nothing in this presentation. The video quality is absolutely striking.

Audio Quality

The 5.1 Dolby Digital audio track offers a true workout for a surround system. Effects are scattered strategically across the soundstage, with stampeding buffaloes seemingly rumbling overhead as they rush away from the camera. Action scenes were surprisingly limited in this somewhat talky film, but those present are staged with a sonic clout, and the cannon blasts will give your subwoofer a real workout.

Special Features

This double-disc edition features two audio commentaries on Disc 1 and four bonus features on Disc 2, which clock in at less than 40 minutes. For a movie with a wealth of historical background, this is truly pathetic to say the least (not to mention overpriced). The bonus features include a standard 20-minute HBO making of doc that offers very little insight into the production or background of the film, and two other puny featurettes about respectively the American Indian in film (“The Heart of a People”) and bringing the book to the screen (“Telling the Story”). Each runs only about 5 minutes. If Native Americans have felt slighted by their treatment in cinema up to now, these featurettes aren’t going to make them feel much better. There’s also a useless artsy photo gallery. The first commentary track features Simoneau and it’s a snooze fest with the director essentially restating the scenes throughout. The second commentary features Quinn and Beach and it’s a bit more lively and entertaining. Beach drops so many “dudes” and “bro’s” you’ll swear Jeff Spicoli had wandered in from the set of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Summary

A noble attempt, and the only one so far, to film one of the most important and controversial accounts of Native American history unfortunately falls flat. Despite some obvious analogies to the current situation in Iraq, spectacular technical quality, and an unflinching eye cast on the abominable treatment of the Indian, the movie fails to capture the pathos and historical scope of Dee Brown’s book.