#5: Unforgiven

The western is a dying genre, there doesn't seem to be much left to say with it, I think Clint Eastwood knew this when he made "Unforgiven", his last western and his best film as a director. Perhaps no other star other than John Wayne can be so associated with the western or what the western hero represents. Eastwood became a star working on the western tv show "Rawhide", and then went on to become a movie star in the films of Sergio Leone. When the 70s came, Eastwood was the biggest star in the world and made some of the most important westerns of the time like "High Plains Drifter", and "The Outlaw Josey Whales", both films he directed. When the script for "Unforgiven" came to him, he held on to it for ten years until he was old enough to play the part of outlaw William Munny, but the film is also a turning point in his career. The fact that Eastwood chose to play William Munny adds extra weight to the themes of the film. Munny is a man with a checkered past, he's a killer, but he's reformed, he owns a pig farm, he's widowed and has two children. But Munny is again asked to turn to his old ways as a gunfighter, and this draws the film towards Eastwood's own thoughts on violence, redemption, and how he perceives the old west.

The film opens in the town of Big Whiskey in a brothel where a prostitute is cut up by a violent cowboy and his partner. The local Sheriff Little Bill (Gene Hackman) gives the two men leniency by only making them pay the owner of the brothel in ponies. The head mistress (Frances Fisher) is outraged and gets all her girls together to raise money in order to bring in hired guns. William Munny enters the picture when he hears about the reward money from a young gunman calling himself the
Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvet) who wants to partner up with Munny to kill the cowboys. Munny agrees only to get the money for his kids, he brings his partner from the old days along Ned (Morgan Freeman)who we sense knows William better than anyone and who William tells that he is in fact a changed man and is only doing this for the money.

The set up of "Unforgiven" is very traditional like in all of Eastwood's films, he takes from old pros like Howard Hawks, and John Ford, there is even a very Fordian moment in "Unforgiven" when we see Munny sitting at the grave of his dead wife which evokes countless scenes similar in Ford films. However even though Eastwood's style is very old fashioned, his take on the old themes is very contemporary which is why his films remain interesting to this day. In "Unforgiven", Eastwood gives us a revisionist western, where nothing is glorified, and everything is real. Eastwood takes those famous lines from Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Here Eastwood prints the fact, but plays with the legend.

The legend of the west is represented in the arrival of another gunfight named English Bob (Richard Harris) who comes into Big Wiskey bent on getting the reward money himself. He comes into town with his own biographer (Saul Rubinek) who writes of English Bob's exploits. English Bob becomes part of his own little movie within this one, when he is confronted by Little Bill who knows him from the past. Bill humiliates Bob in front of his biographer and then proceeds to break down the legend and tell him a much less glamorous depiction of the man. Bob leaves a bruised and beaten man, and Eastwood it seems is telling us that there were no heroes in the west, they were pretty much all murderers.

There are really no heroes in this film at all, Little Bill is a corrupt sheriff who works in a class system, to him there is no justice for the prostitutes but only for the businessmen or land barons. William Munny isn't a hero either in the traditional sense, in the final act of the film, he comes for his revenge, but in the end Eastwood decides to go for moral ambiguity, we don't cheer when Munny gets his justice, he becomes a man transformed into the cold blooded killer he described himself as.

In the film's most poetic scene and one of the best Eastwood has ever directed, Munny and the Schofield Kid are waiting in a field for one of the women to deliver their money. It is revealed The Schofield Kid had just killed for the first time, he is full of remorse and regret, before he was arrogant and cocky, but now he knows what killing a person does to someone. In the film's most poignant line Munny says to him "it's a hell of a thing killing a man, you take away all he's got, and everything's he's ever going to have." This is the way Eastwood sees violence, just as it is something ugly and unnatural. Eastwood made a career out of violent films and characters who acted out with aggression, but with "Unforgiven", the violence has consequences.

When "Unforgiven" was released many people saw it as Eastwood's swan song, however he proved them wrong and it was in fact a turning point, he has now become one of the most prolific actor/directors of all time churning out a film a year. However Eastwood has said "Unforgiven" would be his final Western, it really did seem he had nothing left to say with the genre. For me it was the last great western film, although there have been others I greatly admire. The western is part of American movie history like the gangster film, but now with bigger action movies taking over, the quiet and reflective time of the western hero seems all but over with now, I think Eastwood knew that too. At least he left the genre with a perfect epitaph.