My 100 Favorite Films of All Time #98: Unforgiven

 I find most modern westerns to be frightfully boring, though they are our version of the samurai movie.  As a child, however, I enjoyed Clint Eastwood in his Sergio Leone films.  I was introduced to them by my father, and while the complexities of the stories and characters never entered into my young mind, watching them again as an adult made me realize that my younger self was onto something.  Those films stand apart from other westerns and my admiration for them did not carry over to other films in the genre.  Then came Unforgiven.

I’ve written about this film before.  If you’ve seen it, you know it is one amazing piece of work.  It is a bit slow in places, but this is purposeful.  What you are witnessing is a slow boiling pot, and these days audiences aren’t used to that sort of thing.  When this movie reaches its boiling point it becomes a harrowing and very realistic portrayal of the nature of violence and man.  In that sense, this film becomes almost an extension, a natural progression even, of the Leone works.  Eastwood’s character has a name now, though that doesn’t matter.  The life he is leading at the beginning of the film is the one he could easily be leading after those Italian masterpieces.  The place he ends up, though, puts him right back to where he started, and it is amazing.  He may not be as comfortable on a horse, but he knows his way around a gun.

Eastwood’s film, which won multiple Oscars, is dedicated to Leone.  That dedication couldn’t be more fitting, and if no other western were ever made, this would be an excellent last word on the genre both symbolically and artistically.  After viewing it I had to ask myself, “Where else does this genre have to go?”  Nowhere.  Unforgiven was the journey and the destination.   It almost makes you feel bad for anyone foolish enough to even try making a western now.  Maybe in another few decades something will come along to challenge this, but I think it is highly unlikely this will be unseated as the king of westerns any time soon.

Mandatory FTC Disclaimer: I did not receive this film for review purposes.  Clicking on a link could earn me a fistful of dollars.

I Dub Thee Unforgiven

I recently watched Unforgiven for the first time.  No excuse as to why it took so long, especially since a character (Saint of Killers) in one of my favorite stories of all time (the Preacher series) is based on director/star Clint Eastwood's character and I love the actor's old Westerns.  I just never got around to it.  Maybe it was because of Morgan Freeman.  Sure, he's talented, but he rubs me the wrong way.

I was wrong in waiting, as this film, which moves slowly but deliberately, was an incredible meditation on the nature of violence and whether or not you can ever truly let go of your past.  Taken on it's own, that is what it is.  Taken as part of Eastwood's cinematic history and it becomes a reflection on his career.

The Western is America's samurai story, though the "cowboy" in real life was far less of a honorable person than the samurai.  It is the closest thing we have to those warriors, and because of that we romanticize it.  The rugged individual riding out on the prairie gunning down inhuman savages -- it all makes for a great story, but really does little to speak of for the history of racism and moral corruption (and let's not even speak of the commonplace homosexuality) that accompanied all that.  It is part of America's history, but like most of America's history, it has been twisted into something it's not.  Eastwood doesn't address that here ... at least not fully.  Instead, he concentrates on what violence does to people, and in that sense this film is a thing of beauty.

When you first meet Eastwood's Will Munny, he is a widowed, bumbling pig farmer with two children.  He also has a history.  He was a crazed killer who gunned down men, women and children with no remorse.  Life is different now, though.  He had met a woman who changed him, and he plans on sticking to that.  Without giving away the film's plot, he is presented with a situation that calls on part of that past he can't seem to call up until something horrible happens to his friend.  Munny is responsible for his friend's fate, and that is when Munny calls upon whatever drove him in the past to help him wield a horrible vengeance.  It is here that Eastwood returns to the man-with-no-name of his past movies.  He becomes the good, the bad, and the ugly all rolled into one.  If you haven't seen those previous films, you will still be moved by what is presented in Unforgiven, but if will mean more if you've followed Eastwood throughout the years.

My dad, rest his soul, was the one who introduced me to horror movies and to Eastwood.  We would watch Sergio Leone's take on the myth of the West on Saturday afternoons.  The Spaghetti Westerns would inevitably lead to some Dirty Harry movies.  It was a good education for me, and it is something that has never really left me.  While watching Kill Bill Vol. 2 I could see exactly where Tarantino got his inspiration.  It was with this same sense of film history that I watched Unforgiven.  It was like watching the culmination of years of contemplation, and it was unlike anything I ever expected out of a genre I pay little attention to, and for that I was pleased.