Watching "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" takes stamina.

This isn't, obviously, a bit of lighthearted entertainment. The new HBO film based on Dee Brown's book is a gut-wrenching couple of hours that leaves a person drained. But it also leaves you with an important perspective on Western history.

HBO made the South Dakota premiere of "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" in Rapid City for obvious reasons. This is the place where the events of the film happened, and filmmakers told audience members they were honored to bring the story home.

Director Yves Simoneau told me in a phone interview last week that he hoped his movie would educate a new generation of people who might not know much about the events at Wounded Knee. With the series beginning its HBO run Sunday, May 27, I think Simoneau can rest assured this will happen.

"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" essentially takes the last two chapters of Brown's book, beginning after the American Indian victory over Lt. Col. George Custer at Little Big Horn.

Screenwriter Daniel Giat used the real-life Indian character of Charles Eastman, played by Adam Beach, to tell the complex story.

Eastman, whose real name was Ohiyesa, was born in Minnesota and taken as a young boy from his tribe. Sent to white schools, he eventually graduated from Dartmouth and became a doctor. To white culture, he was the perfect example of assimilation. Eastman spent his life writing about his Indian culture and helping his people.

Simoneau says Eastman did not actually have a relationship with both Sitting Bull and Sen. Henry Dawes, a Washington politician who drove governmental policy on Indian affairs. The filmmakers decided to use him in the film as a way to better tell the complex story of Wounded Knee and the attempted assimilation of the Indian people.

It's a technique that works well. As Eastman, Beach has an innocence about him that makes his character both likeable and relatable. As Eastman begins to grasp the devastation that governmental policy has wreaked on his people, his smooth Dartmouth-educated veneer begins to crack. You see this painful awakening in Beach's eyes.

Throughout "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," viewers are taken back and forth between Eastman, Dawes and Sitting Bull. The film also takes us back into Eastman's childhood.

Dawes, played by Aidan Quinn, is portrayed as a complex man. He's naïve and, at times, well meaning. But in the end, his dominating views drive him and Eastman apart.

Actor August Schellenberg portrays Sitting Bull as a real man facing a crisis for his people. As the governmental policies attempt to strip more and more away from the Indian people, Schellenberg shows the legendary Lakota leader as he struggles to maintain his people's dignity while managing to keep them alive.

One of the most important things the film does is to demonstrate the very deliberate attempt to emasculate the Indian leaders and the Indian warriors. The film is not subtle as it shows chiefs such as Sitting Bull forced to stand in line for a blanket and young warriors reduced to shooting fenced steers for their meat.

It's painful to watch and imagine, but important to remember.

"Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" is a violent depiction of this period in history. The battles for the West were bloody and gruesome and HBO pulls no punches on that historical fact.

During the Little Big Horn battle, Simoneau mixes gruesome scenes of hand-to-hand combat with beautiful sweeping images of the battle from above. It's an effective and unsettling combination.

HBO has clearly created an important film and done it very well. "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" will make you think long after the credits roll.

Lynn Taylor Rick can be reached at 394-8414 or lynn.taylorrick@rapidcityjournal.com.