Of course the mistreatment of Native Americans should be por trayed again and again, in better and different ways, so that we never forget. And the movie does have some new kick, as a timely portrait of a country at its worst, as a reminder of how different cultures speak different spiritual languages, and as a history lesson about the dangers of American self-righteousness.
But those valuable contemporary resonances don't give this respectful adaptation much-needed freshness. The movie, so handsome in its grim sepia hues, comes off like a dutiful retelling for the sake of retelling. Director Yves Simoneau and writer Daniel Giat fail to wrest vital personal drama out of this tragic story, which covers the chunk of history from the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876 to Wounded Knee. They deliver the tale like a burned-out but conscientious schoolteacher might teach yet another semester of geography.
The "Bury My Heart" script revolves around three representative individuals -- a mixed-race Sioux, a white senator, and a Lakota chief -- as it moves through years of displacement and conflict. But the specifics of the narrative are jumpy and poorly defined, with photos of the characters inserted between segments as if to justify the overall rudderlessness.
Adam Beach , who was the alcoholic veteran in "Flags of Our Fathers," brings full-on moodiness to his portrayal of Charles Eastman , a Dartmouth- and B U -educated part-Sioux doctor struggling with racial identity issues. As a child, Eastman is forced to adopt a Christian name, and he owns it as proudly as he owns his assimilation until he can no longer deny the hypocrisy in the whites' treatment of his people. As Native Americans are pushed onto reservations and forced to plant and harvest food, Eastman turns his back on his mentor, Aidan Quinn's Senator Henry Dawes . Eastman, by the way, did exist, but Giat's script puts him in places such as Little Bighorn and with people such as Dawes for the sake of his plotting.
