American Myth - Unforgiven (1992)

"We all got it coming, kid."

We have come a long way. Or I have. Or, the western has. I've been watching westerns all month, from each decade dating back to the 40s. When Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch dropped in '69, the western was left gutshot, and it staggered through the seventies, and fell on its face in the eighties. But it would be given a hand-up in the nineties from one of its former star actors: Clint Eastwood. Eastwood had been directing films since parting ways with Leone after the Dollars Trilogy. By 1992, he was getting older, and decided he was going to have one more go at the genre that made him famous. He dropped Unforgiven on the world like a bomb, and helped define the western's newer, more modern form.

Summary:

William Munny was a man of violence. But his wife broke him of those ways. But she died, and left him with two kids and a failing hog farm. When a young gun rides up, offering Munny an opportunity to go kill some men who "cut up a lady," Munny can't resist and joins on. But he can't know that where he's going, there's a man as bad as he ever was, only this one wears a star.

Pros:

Revisionist With a Capital "R:" Revisionist westerns are so called because they attempt to revise the grandiose mythic quality that the genre was known for in its heyday. They strip the gilded gold and reveal the rotting wood beneath. Unforgiven doesn't just dismantle old west myths, it walks into the house, scatters kerosene on the floor boards, and burns the whole thing down. There are no good people in this movie: William Munny (Eastwood), is an infamous murderer; Little Bill (Gene Hackman) is cruel and perhaps a little power hungry; English Bob (Richard Harris) is a puffed up peacock with a pistol, whose legend, while bloody, may not be as romantic as he'd like it made out to be; even Bob's biographer switches sides, multiple times, whenever he thinks a better story is unfolding, vulture-like. There is no glory in killing. There is no glory in death. Stories have painted us a picture of a west that never was. What's real is brutal violence, lawlessness replaced by men who had to be equally brutal to keep the peace. Everything here is muddy and grey.

Great Cast: Eastwood calls in a great crew of actors to bring this film to life. Morgan Freeman plays Munny's reluctant former partner in crime, Ned, with the slow-burn realization that he isn't cut out for this any more, and maybe he never was. Gene Hackman is that Nietzsche argument made flesh: this is a monster who hunts monsters, and it is sometimes hard to draw the line on whether or not he is actually a good man or not. Richard Harris has a small role as English Bob, one of my favorite parts: Bob is a notorious gunfighter, and is spending his twilight years immortalizing his legacy with a traveling biographer, and trying to make that cool thousand dollar bounty in the offing. He mocks those he sees as less than himself, which is everyone, ever under the constant threat of impeding violence. Hackman would win a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his troubles, and Eastwood would be nominated in the lead role. This movie is a powerhouse.

You Can't Escape the Past: The past always comes calling, you see, and it wants its due. Munny sinned, quite dreadfully as a young man. He tried to get away, and even managed to have a small life for a time. But he was never very good at it. And he returns to his old life for one last score, to take care of his children. And, over the course of the film, he settles back into that life despite his constant protestations that his wife changed him. No, William is good with a gun, has no qualms about taking life, and, by the end, realizes that a life of violence was the only thing he was ever good at. It is a depressing, but powerful message.

Tear Down Myths: Like I said earlier, this is a revisionist western. But this revisionist western is specifically about deconstructing mythology. English Bob gets the shit beaten out of him, his stories of glory undone, and loses his biographer. The Schofield Kid is a walking lie: he can't see, has lied about killing men, and struts like a cartoon of what everyone THOUGHT the old west was; he guiltily admits his sham at the end, only after sullying his eternal soul by actually killing someone, and not liking it. It was on this viewing that I actually questioned whether or not Little Bill himself is full of shit: He woos the biographer with tales of "how it all really happened" in regards to English Bob, but he begins to savor the spotlight himself. He adopts the biographer, and can't help but tell tall tales all through the night, before sending Bob back wherever he came from. It is entirely possible that Little Bill is spinning bullshit, too. But that's part of the message of this movie: the winner writes history, and you can't always trust a man's word, and legacy can be a lie.

Cons:

Too Long: This movie didn't need to be 130 minutes long. It could have told its story quickly, been meaner and leaner.

Eastwood: I know that Eastwood is a legend, and I know that he's essentially playing an older version of his former Hollywood persona, but he is the least compelling thing in the movie. I found his performance lacking: not like a man who has no emotion, but a man who couldn't BOTHER to have emotion. There's a difference.

In Conclusion:

Unforgiven has been looming on the horizon since I set my list in stone. It's a brutal movie with few cares for "good" and "evil." It is not just a revisionist western: it's like an antiwestern. It simultaneously rejuvenated the genre in '92, but also redefined how modern westerns would be made. It will take quite some time for Hollywood to shake off Clint Eastwood's final word on the genre.

Should You Watch It?

Consider this a necessary western. It plays with tropes, wallows in the mud, and attempts to say something new. Yes, you should watch it, but be prepared: it's a doozy.

Miscellany:

- This movie was nominated for nine academy awards. It won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Best Film Editing.

- Eastwood originally got this script in the seventies, but decided he had other things to do first.
- It is one of only three westerns to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The others are Dances With Wolves (1990) and Cimarron (1931).
- Ranked 4th on the American Film Institute's list of greatest westerns in 2008.
- It was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2004.