You have to hand it to the Coen Brothers for making 2010’s “True Grit” into such a well made and entertaining movie, because as far as I’m concerned, Clint Eastwood gave the Western genre its victorious last stand in “Unforgiven.”
“Unforgiven” is brilliant for being the last truly old fashioned Western and yet also a modern elegy of it. Eastwood starred in enough Westerns in his career to know how the genre ticked, and his characters in “Unforgiven” display unsuspected depth that expand on all the themes common to the genre without harming its integrity. It’s a film from the early ’90s but fits into the canon of Westerns as well as any.
Beyond that, “Unforgiven” is an important landmark in the career of a great actor and director. It’s an imperfect masterpiece; a human mark on the face of a titan.
Eastwood plays William Munny, a former killer in the West who has now grown old and tame as he started a family. Three years after the death of his wife, he’s a lonely and hopeless pig farmer. The new bounty hunter on the block is the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett), and he needs a partner. Will however hasn’t pointed a gun at a man in 10 years. The cowboys they aim to kill mutilated a prostitute, and the other girls in the brothel have put a $1000 price tag on the cowboys’ heads. But protecting the town from any bounty hunters is the corrupt and ruthless Sheriff Little Bill (Gene Hackman).
The world in “Unforgiven” is cold and dangerous, where even the law is heartless and scary. But the stunning horizons and bright blue skies paint a pastoral picture that is not “glamorous,” but still beautiful. Nobility remains in this world, however dated it may seem.
Another film would have taken most of these characters and made them one dimensional. Most Westerns were very good about delineating good and evil, but Eastwood is more ambiguous. In just about all these people, we can see regret, loss and remorse in all of their hearts. Consider a scene where the men who cut up the prostitute try to show their apologies by offering a pretty young pony to their victim. The head girl shouts at them and claims nothing could justify their deeds, least of all an animal, but even she has a hint of regret in her voice. Now in 1880, there is more to this society than simple norms of right and wrong, hate and honor or good and bad.
It’s fitting then that the most disturbed about his past is Will himself. One night under the stars he tells his companion Ned (Morgan Freeman) that he still remembers a man whose teeth came out the back of his head when Will shot him through the mouth. He says he can’t remember how any man could’ve deserved such a thing.
The pasts and scars that these men carry creates so much gripping tension. The reunion between Little Bill and the bounty hunter English Bob (Richard Harris) is one for the books in the way it harbors all these unexpected depths, fears and weaknesses in these hardened men. Watching it, if Gene Hackman isn’t one of the best, most badass actors who ever walked the face of the Earth, I don’t know who is.
Well, scratch that. Clint is. Eastwood could probably still make “Unforgiven” today. He still has the sneer and that unmatched look in his eye he’s had since working with Sergio Leone. Here he flashes it in Ned’s doorway as he’s about to relive the past that’s behind him. It’s as if now that gesture symbolizes weakness, not strength.
“Unforgiven’s” final shoot out is one for the books. It’s indoors, not in one of Leone’s stunning vistas, but Eastwood makes use of the space. The action is quick, but clear. Will’s victims are visibly clumsy as they try to get a shot off, and it’s almost sad. Here, death is slow, painful. It hurts. One character is writing a biography on English Bob. He has poetic pulp tales of an old fashioned vision of a cowboy in the Old West, but Little Bill appropriately says how much of it is horse dung. His monologue removes the Western of its natural embellishment, and yet his new story, a darkly funny tale of sneaky backstabbing that is anything but noble, replaces it with a new kind of fantasy that feels appropriately modern.
We feel so much pathos for Will, and through him we realize that this is not a film about killing but about the conviction and strength of character that killing requires. As “Unforgiven” reaches its climactic shootout, what’s shocking isn’t that Will had the ability in him all along to kill, but of how sure he was of doing it. Little Bill proves as much when he tests the biographer to hold him at gunpoint, and we realize that there are only so few men in this world with as much strength.
By the time Eastwood made “Unforgiven,” he was already an established filmmaker and star. He had transcended the burden of just being a TV star to become a bona fide movie star and before long, a legend. It’s so fascinating then that he chose to rewrite that legend with a film that almost discredited his invincible legacy. Never before would you have imagined the Man with No Name or Dirty Harry to look so silly as he struggled to mount a horse, but there you are.
Now in the 2000s, Eastwood has reinvented himself yet again. He makes films largely about loss, all of them steeped with melodrama another director would crumble under (even him at times). And yet Eastwood still maintains this aura of an unstoppable force; a hard-nosed bad boy with a snarky attitude who at 82-years-old can do it all. Consider the persona he puts forth in “Gran Torino,” a seething black ball of racist hate with a diamond in the middle. His demeanor is familiar, but it’s a drastically different character than the one we see in “Million Dollar Baby” or in “Unforgiven.” Like the prostitute who was attacked, these characters have scars all their own.
“Unforgiven” is so important because it marks that transition. Legends are boring. Eastwood’s films have something more: humanity.