http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/82992.html

COMMENTARY
Pergament: HBO’s ‘Wounded Knee’ is deserving of kudos

Alan Pergament
Updated: 05/24/07 8:16 AM

Tony Soprano takes a respite from his spree of violence Sunday night, but
that doesn’t mean there won’t be a story on HBO about another group of
violent, deceitful men involved in a power struggle — the U.S. government.

After a 36-year wait, HBO Films has adapted the late Dee Brown’s 1971
best-selling nonfiction book, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.” However, the
cable network is airing it at 9 p.m. Sunday — during a low-viewing Memorial
Day weekend when much of America may be out barbecuing or celebrating the
unofficial start of summer.

The story of “Wounded Knee,” which depicts the government’s claim to sacred
Native American land and its political attempts to assimilate the Native
American, is hardly a cause for celebration.

The U.S. government is the bad guy in this drama, which may be one reason
it took so long for the book to be made into a film. In an interview last
January in Pasadena, Calif., producer Tom Thayer said he asked the book’s
literary agent why it hadn’t been made into a film when he sought the
rights.

“Well, my dear boy,” Thayer said he was told, “if you’ve read the book,
it’s all told from their point of view, so who would you cast?”

The bigger question is whether an American audience will embrace a movie
that makes its government look so heartless, greedy and unsympathetic as it
broke treaties, promises and hearts to open the American West.

The casting isn’t a problem. Adam Beach, who played a Native American
serviceman who was exploited in Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers,” is
exceptional as the centerpiece of the movie. He plays Charles Eastman, the
Christian name given a Sioux who was forced to assimilate and came to
question whether his success as a Dartmouth- educated doctor made him an
example “of anything.”

Eastman isn’t in Brown’s book, but screenwriter Daniel Giat said he was a
muchneeded character. “Everyone felt very strongly that we needed a white
character or a part-white, part- Indian character to carry a contemporary,
mostly white audience through this project,” he said in Pasadena.

Indeed, Beach’s sympathetic performance as a man who understood both worlds
and eventually came to question his decisions is the emotional strength of
a movie that begins with the Sioux victory over General Custer at Little
Big Horn and climaxes with the assassination of Sitting Bull and the
massacre at Wounded Knee Creek on Dec. 29, 1890.

August Schellenberg also has a strong voice as the proud Lakota chief,
Sitting Bull, who is angry at the government for taking his people’s sacred
land, dignity and identity. After a period of being disgraced, he
rediscovers the passion to fight for his way of life.

Several of Beach’s scenes are played with Aidan Quinn, who plays the
well-meaning, emotionally stunted Massachusetts politician, Sen. Henry
Dawes, who believes the assimilation of Native Americans is the key to
their survival. In other words, it is Dawes’ political position that the
U.S. government knows what is best for Native Americans. The position has
some obvious relevance today. The most obvious comparison is to Iraq, but
producer Dick Wolf (best known for his “Law & Order” trilogy) didn’t want
that to be the only one.

“I think what you take away from the film, what is the most important
message, and it’s not limited to the United States, is when any society
says to another group . . . that our way of life will be better for you and
we have a better plan than you have, you get into real trouble,” said Wolf.

Like the Dawes depicted in this troubling film, “Wounded Knee” is a
well-meaning film that tries so hard to do the right thing by its story
that it too frequently falls short on emotion. Still, it is a
beautiful-looking film about an ugly period in American history that HBO
should be proud of.

Television Review

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

Rating: ***; 9 p. m. Sunday on HBO

apergament@...