MovieChat Forums > Son of the Morning Star (1991) Discussion > Impossible to make a good movie about Cu...

Impossible to make a good movie about Custer

posted 15 years ago by SCmovieprof
6 replies | jump to latest

Simply put, it is impossible to find an "objective" point of view from which to start. There is also not enough extant text from primary sources to get at even the words, sentences, or thoughts, so modern writers will have to suplement that, they will add. And when they do, history stops and philosophy begins....all of course draped in the liberal fashion of political correctness. This movie, for example, is a joke. The Natives' voice is ALL good, all peaches and cream, all basking in the son of the eternal Garden of Eden. Custer is portrayed simplistically. This is the usual crap. Someone below posted that Oliver Stone was planning to remake this....really?? Why should he? This is already a leftist piece of drivel, would he add horns to Custer?? Stone is a brilliant filmmaker who knows nothing about history.

SMS is a silly film that imposes the leftist vision of the old "white man is evil" thesis. Nothing new to see here, folks....

If someone COULD actually make an objective film about Custer, he would have to wade through thousands of books, journal articles, and mss....and then what?? Whose words are right?? Sorry. All this movie illustrate is that nothing has changed....

[–] Nosferatu6979 15 years ago

I totally agree with your point of view regarding Oliver Stone doing a movie like this one. I just commented on that in another thread here. While he's a great filmmaker, he always has to throw his conspiracy theories and alternative points of view into any movie he directs. Definitely not the right guy for a historically accurate movie!

[–] Traianus 15 years ago

you have hit on some good fundamental points on the problems of telling history and revisionism, particularly those that were typical at the end of the 20th century and presented themselves in films like Dances with Wolves, etc. It was wrong the way early 20th century films stereotyped American Indians. It's also off the mark to present tribes and Native peoples as always good and always in the right. It dehumanizes them, because humans, by their nature, are imperfect.

However, that doesn't mean SMS is without value. It hits on a lot of correct points and is told from certain perspectives. As other posters have mentioned, I'd be hard-pressed - realistically - to expect a film to portray the Battle of Little Bighorn more accurately (going from what the evidence suggests) than this one does.

[–] SCmovieprof 15 years ago

I'm talking more (here, anyway) about the dialogue....we just don't understand the 19th C attitude toward things like honor and pride so we mock it with our stilted and ridiculous dialogue. Custer is portrayed like a small child, petulant; Benteen looks absolutely absurd with a barbie-like wig, and Reno is all but crying in the field! In point of fact, much of the 7th was comprised of immigrants, poorly nourished, etc., not the actors that swung into their saddles in the film.....Note how happy all the Indians looked, how "noble." Nothing more than the "noble savage" myth revisited (like you mentioned). No serious person can or should learn from stuff like this....

[–] nancyminpins-1 15 years ago

I think Custer was a great hero and I say this coming from an old time Virginia family (two carpenters at Jamestown and later Henricus - somebody had to build a fort LOL - they got sprung from a debtors prison ...)who fought against him all over Virginia under Stuart - the man changed the course of our history on the third day of Gettysburg - when he stopped Stuart. Had the South prevailed that day I think the North would let it go - people in the North were tired of the war and having their sons killed - then Custer prevailed....oh yeah, then he later captured Lee when he was trying to slip away at Appomattox. He was a great hero. I hope they will make a good film of his life.

[–] michaeljbachman 15 years ago

There's been a couple of great books (The Last Stand by Nataniel Philbrook, and A Terrible Glory by James Donovan) the last two years to base a new movie about The Little Big Horn. Not to mention the recent archaelogical findings of all the shells and bullets from the battlefield (Custers movements, command split into three groups and the Sioux and Cheyenne had some 200-300 sixteen shot Henry and Winchester repeating rifles). I agree Oliver Stone shouldn't do it, and if fact he dropped his SMS remake plans a year or so ago.

The Sioux and Cheyenne had every right to defend themselves against Custer. Custer attacked the village. Although his orders prevented him for doing so, he could have went peacefully into the village under a white flag and met with Sitting Bull to negotiate the return of the village to the reservation. The Sioux wouldn't have attacked him, Sitting Bull himself said that years later, and most would have returned with Custer to the reservation.

It was Custer who invaded illegally the Black Hills in 1874 which was Indian land given to them in the treaty of 1868. Custer found gold in a gulch during his illegal invasion and two years later Deadwood sprung up. All those miners,harlots and shop keepers in Deadwood in the spring and summer of 1876 were squatting illegally (without any law) on Sioux land and digging up Sioux gold.

[–] 15 years ago

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