MovieChat Forums > Into the West (2005) Discussion > Anybody know another good movie like thi...

Anybody know another good movie like this one?


One that tells the story of how America came to be wit the stories of the indians too? If you have great recommendations please list them.

reply

[deleted]

If your still interested I was really impressed with We Shall Remain. Its a 4 episode PBS documentary that was created for the series The American Experience.

Just search for Wes Studi, its a good place to start. It seems like he is in all the good Native American shows.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/weshallremain/

reply

Thank you I shall.

reply

My favorite miniseries was Centennial (1978) which was more about settlers and pioneers in Centennial, CO than Native Americans. Based on James Michener's novel I was spellbound by the beauty of this series. I remember it had a lackluster final episode - which was present day CO - but I enjoyed the scenery/production and fell in love with the characters, especially in the initial episodes. I looked forward to it every week even though the network moved the shows around. There were a total of 12 episodes which aired between Oct. '78 & the beginning of Feb. '79 and it was a joy to watch!

reply

Centennial is my favorite also .. it's something that I will never forget .. but I must say Into THE West is even better .. I wish I could go back and change things for the Native Americans .. it just breaks my heart to see what was done to them .. if only .

reply

Are you looking for fiction or non-fiction? Since Into the West is fiction, do you want more of that?

reply

Both, if you know any that is just as great at this then please let me know and some of the stories on the series were true. Least some of it. What I'd like to see is the stories about the indian captives both the good stories like Naomi and the bad ones where the women are often beaten and raped and so on.

reply

"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" (2007) based on the book by Dee Brown is an Indian history of the settling of the west. Some of the same actors from "Into the West", among them Wes Studi(as Wovoka/Jack Wilson, the Paiute Messiah), are in this film. The book was my introduction to the subject of the Indian viewpoint, and Dee Brown, a white author, writes with sympathy about the Indian protagonists. My sister married a man who was part Indian, so my nieces and nephew are also. Once I got involved in genealogy, I discovered that my mother's story about our having an Apache in our lineage proved true: he's way back there in the mists of time (the late 1700s.)
This film tells only a part of the story in the book,which is epic, and the director had to make some choices. When I read the book years ago, I couldn't have imagined that the story, which is so many stories would be filmable.

reply

I have seen that too and loved it, I also saw Geronimo and loved that too. Sounds to me like Hollywood needs to get back with the history of our country and given to what we are having with political candidates.

reply

I am reading this book now .. I didn't know that there was a movie .. the book is wonderful .. I can't count the many times that I have sat and cried .. I so hope that I can find the movie .. but to be honest , I'm not really sure that I could even watch it .. it's so so sad .. I just don't understand why our government didn't do the things that they said they would do .. The Indians were always willing to do what they said they would do .. but our government did nothing but take their land .

reply

The mini series " Centennial " is a good one .. I put it up there with this series .. I hope that you watch it .. I think you would love it .. I saw from another poster about the movie " Bury Me At Wounded Knee " .. I have not seen it yet but I am reading the book right now .. if you can't find the movie , please read the book .. it's amazing how it goes right alone with " Into The West " .. and it will break your heart .. many times over .

reply

Right now I am reading "Empire of the Summer Moon" by S.C Gwynne. It is a book about Quanah Parker and his times. I hate to say it, but it does change my sentimental view of the Indians, particularly the Commanche, but others as well, romanticized in books such as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and movies such as "Into the West". The description of the tortures inflicted on enemies (other Indians, especially the Apache, whom the Commanche almost exterminated) before the white incursions and white enemies-even women and children in settlements they raided are horrendous in the extreme. Before the white man, the Indians fought each other for land and plunder, especially horses, which were their standard of wealth, and and it seems that most were vicious to the adult males, women, and infants they took. Children past infancy were sometimes adopted and treated well.
The author is not anti-Indian, but he does present a more balanced view, taken from accounts of white captives who were eventually ransomed, some of whom came to love Indian ways, even though they had witnessed the rape of adult female relatives and the torture and killing of adult males and infants. He is in awe of the fighting skills of the mounted Commanche whose ability to fight on horseback the whites and most other Indians could not match for a long time, even with guns, which in the beginning the Commanche did not have. He also presents Quanah as in many ways admirable, walking the white man's road after his surrender, prospering, but refusing to give up his culture or care for his less fortunate brethren. Indeed he impoverished himself because he fed everyone who showed up at the door of the large house he built, and he even adopted white children. His speech over the reburial of his white mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, taken captive at the age of 9 and eventually married to Peta Nacona, Quanah's father, then unwillingly ransomed and returned to her white relatives (hers is indeed a sad story), is very poignant.
What the whites did to the Indians is equally horrendous, but the Indians were not peaceful noble peoples before their coming.There was little unity even within a single tribe, much less among all the aboriginal peoples, one of the reasons treaties did not work. Those Indians who signed them were not representative of an entire tribe or even an entire band, as the white treaty makers seem to have thought; the treaties only bound the actual people signing them. Most groups did not have elected representatives with the power to bind all to aa treaty.
It seems mankind is a savage, aquisitive animal, because in all times and civilizations he seems to always covet what is his neighbor's. What happened here has happened to all races in history who fell to conquerors.

reply