LAST CHAPTER: The Remorse of the Man From Malpaso
“Did Pa used to kill folks?”
-Penny Munny, daughter of known thief and killer William Munny.
In the 25 years since the American release of the Dollars Trilogy, Clint Eastwood managed to carve out a career that spanned many genres and levels of quality. He experimented and tinkered as much as many person in his position could without tarnishing an image that could easily be seen as a hindrance in expanding the mind and heart. Despite the aggressive and machismo tone his work possessed, there was never a lack of reckoning or self awareness. Still… he must’ve been wanting to send a much clearer message.
So when he finally picked up a script from David Webb Peoples that had been sitting in his possession since the 80’s un-read, he saw a better chance to do so than others that had presented themselves before.
The result of picking up that script was UNFORGIVEN. It is perhaps the most known of Clint’s work outside of the Leone work, the Dirty Harry films, and….. his work with Clyde. It operates as the ultimate mark in Clint’s thematic style, a style that he continues to work with to this day: a world of regret and reckoning. Nearly every film Clint has directed since UNFORGIVEN has tackled this topic and has led him to some of the most interesting and even baffling directing choices one could expect from just some tough guy leading man. What makes UNFORGIVEN the most prevalent is that it is a bold and unabashed attempt to dismantle a legacy he has in cinema.
Let’s get that rating out of the way first.
UNFORGIVEN
4 OUTTA 4 WAYS TO SPLIT THE REWARD.
We open on a short description of the known thief and murderer, William Munny (Eastwood), and how his late wife had reformed him from vice and sin. Living alone with his children on a pig farm that is barely making ends meet, a young man aware of Munny’s reputation asks him to accompany him on a mission of vengeance and reward. The job in question deals with gunning down two men who had slashed a prostitutes face at a saloon in the town of Big Whiskey. Reluctantly, Munny ventures off to claim the life and reward with the additional help of his old partner Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), where all three will reckon their views on violence as they face off against the myth of the West and the violently flawed arm of the law that is Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman). The story of UNFORGIVEN has a lot to unpack not just for Eastwood and his mythos, but the way we view the Western as a whole. The term Revisionist and Post Modern is thrown around as a label. Personally, I offer it up as simple and savage Realism (though frankly, all labels are appropriate and dependent on preference).
Clint, through his direction and People’s script, offers a true reckoning for men who were our unabashed heroes. It puts them (and the audience) in the uncomfortable position on facing our blood lust and its consequences. Nearly every moment of the film contains an intelligent and emotionally mature crack at answering questions many never bothered to ask of the genre. How does a man who leads a life like Blondie, Manco, or Joe live with their frequency in taking lives for personal gain? More importantly, are they even able to find peace? And even if they do, what is the price of keeping that peace? The story possess a dual sword of Eastwood’s character being free from alcohol since his wife saved him on the whole, which gives his performance an extra thematic heft that more than delivers despite being on the nose. It’s probably the point, as Eastwood clearly wants to make sure his audience is understanding that this isn’t a fun romp.
A major note in this whole affair is the absolute destruction of mythos. While it is strewn throughout, it is virtually at it’s most fascinating when Eastwood is off-screen and our attention is drawn to Hackman’s Little Bill and his encounter with English Bob (Richard Harris). Harris’ braggart gunslinger rolls into a town where he is forced to reckon with his own gloating to a biographer that has been dictating his story of ‘heroism’. It is swiftly and brutally kicked in mercilessly by Little Bill, and Eastwood’s staging of that brutal beating is a man clearly expressing his contempt for these ideal myths that ignore the essential truths. Yes, there are many other ways to read this entire film, and that scene in particular from societal perspective, but from a purely cinematic perspective it is a direct statement on what happens when myth goes too far without actual understanding. It’s a premise that has been further examined in various ways since UNFORGIVEN, most eloquently since by Joel and Ethan Coen’s more current body of work (No Country For Old Men, True Grit, The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs).
The last, and possibly most important, is how Munny comes to terms with who he is. The finale of UNFORGIVEN is very much a man who becomes unhinged from the thing that kept him on the straight and narrow. For all the good he thought he could do by staying away from drink and vice in order to carry out one simple killing, he very much is aware that when he chose to ride to the job that he chose to break his moral high ground. He not only gives into drink by the time he goes back for a final stand off with Little Bill, he has changed completely. He has ceased to be kind and timid in speech, unleashes a slew of cursing, and is not above from playing games with the people on the other end of his gun. Does he realize he will never truly reform? Are the stories about him the definition of him as an actual person? Is his existence solely based on the hearsay and recollections of others? By the time he has blown away Little Bill and rode off from the town of Big Whiskey in the rain and mud, we are only hoping that it can’t be all true. That he is all bad. That he must feel pain for what he does.
The films post script is a final ambiguity while addressing the late wife of William Munny. It reads:
“Some years later, Mrs. Ansonia Feathers made the arduous journey to Hodgeman County, Kansas to visit the last resting place of her only daughter. William Munny had long since disappeared with the children… some said to San Francisco where it was rumored he prospered in dry goods. And there was nothing on the marker to explain to Mrs. Feathers why her only daughter had married a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition.“
In the end, UNFORGIVEN never asks you to refuse and throw away these Western archetypes, instead it does ask us to not confuse heroism with virtue.
A more apt way to tie the ribbon on Clints archetype (and this series as a whole) is an exchange between Munny and the about to be deceased Little Bill.
Little Bill: I’ll see you in hell, William Munny.
Munny cocks the Spencer Rifle pointed at Little Bill
William Munny (nodding his head slightly): …. Yeah.
———–
Next Time: Where are we now and where can we possibly go from here.