MovieChat Forums > Dances with Wolves (1990) Discussion > I'm sorry, the father/daughter thing doe...

I'm sorry, the father/daughter thing doesn't work

posted 9 years ago by jgroub
9 replies | jump to latest

I know that Kicking Bear is supposed to be Stands With A Fist's "father" in the sense that he found her after the attack and raised her. There is some dialogue to this end. But I don't buy it, and I just ignore it.

Mary McDonnell is far too old to be Graham Greene's daughter. And I'm not totally talking about the actors, either. Yeah, she looks every minute of her 37 years. There's no way in hell that he looks like he's, say, 15 or 20 years older than she is. Or his wife.

I just pretend that Stands With A Fist's dead husband was Kicking Bird's younger brother, or something, and that upon his death, Kicking Bird is now responsible for her. So she becomes something of a younger sister-in-law. That makes much, much more sense to me.

I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.

[–] one189teen50five 9 years ago

She was adopted into his family. That's all.

[–] jgroub 9 years ago

Yes, I understand that. I'm just saying that because of that there's supposed to be a large age gap between them. And there just isn't. If there were supposed to be, then they should have gotten an actor a lot younger than Mary McDonell's 37 or a lot older than Graham Greene's 37. They both look their ages, and they both look to be exactly the same age, which isn't surprising, because they are.

So I just ignore the movie's explanation - which is the actual "fact" of the movie - and substitute my own invented fiction about the brother-in-law thing.

I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.

[–] signlady 9 years ago

I thought this too ...

But then also . . . here are some grains of truth;
some races seem to age better than others ...
Some people, just in general also, seem to do so, never looking as old as they are . . .

But American Indians, orientals races, and other dark skinned races, seem to never look as old as they really are ...

But white people seem to age less gracefully (no flack please - I am not racist in anyway, I am 'white', and this is just an observation about the premise of a white pioneer woman traumatized as a child IN A MOVIE where for whatever reason, she was cast even tho she seemed to old for the part ...

Maybe Costner had a crush on 'er and just always wanted to do a movie with her . . .

In just sayin' . . .

I totally hated her hair too ...

[–] DiminishingRainforest 8 years ago

It's true. Black don't crack and Asian don't raisin. The same is true for natives as well.

White skin suffers a lot of damage from prolonged sun exposure. White people can stay young-looking by protecting their skin from the sun, but that goes against present standards of beauty that call for light-skinned people to spend so much time tanning.

[–] schuwomann 8 years ago

"Black don't crack and Asian don't raisin." I'm laughing my ass off.

[–] signlady 9 years ago

... I meant to add also, the grain of truth that emotional and mental trauma also ages people and maybe this was some unspoken premise of the obvious age appearance ...

The trauma she endured as a child ages her prematurely??

I'm just sayin' . . .

If these kinds of premises exist in the minds of movie makers, sometimes they need to be revealed or hintes-at somewhere in the dialogue . . .

[–] one189teen50five 9 years ago

Age isn't supposed to be something you're concentrating on when you watch this. And I read an article about the making that said KC wanted a woman who had "lines" on her face and didn't look like an LA city teen, fresh and young. A woman facing a life that rough out there would age significantly. Besides, women were subservient to men in those days. I think Mary Mc was perfect in the role.

[–] cyberwoff 8 years ago

Now with the stupid women were treated like slaves bullcrap.....Indian men and women were equal...Idiot pay attention to the movie or read a book. Lots of white women raised by the Indians, did not want to go back to the whites. Among the idians women also I believe were allowed to vote and such. At least with some tribes. You liberal idiot.

[–] anroab 8 years ago

Maybe he was young himself when he found her. His other children (the biologic ones) are much younger than she is. We can guess that he was young when he found her (let's assume 16 years old) but he was responsible for her as he was the one who found her and brought her to the tribe.

I even assumed (maybe I'm assuming way too much) that he was maybe not even married when he found her. Otherwise we can think that Black Shawl, as her "mother", would have standed for her when this mean woman was screaming at her when she was a child. It seemed that no woman was responsible for her back then and that she had to defend herself on her own. After she punched the woman, no other woman ever bothered her.