Dir. Clint Eastwood
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Gene
Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris
I don’t know about you, but just
reading the cast-list for Unforgiven
got my mouth-watering. Clint Eastwood (directing again, as he directed The Bridges of Madison County and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil)
and Gene Hackman (only seen this year in Best
Shot) facing off against each other? Supported by the Godlike Morgan
Freeman and notorious Irish hellraiser Richard Harris? In a Western? Sign me
up!
The danger sometimes is that you
can go into these things with expectations that are set too high. Some of the
films I have enjoyed most this year completely blindsided me – like In Cold Blood or October Sky. Some I was looking forward to – like High Noon or The Shining – left me a little disappointed. I am happy to say that
Unforgiven is a beautiful film with
an intelligent script and a good meaty story. Oh yeah – and the cast ain’t too
shabby either…
Like Shane, Unforgiven is a
story about not being able to escape ones past. William Munny (Clint) is a
widower struggling to raise two children on a farm that is failing. But once he
was the most feared cold-blooded killer in the West. The love of a woman turned
him away from violence and away from booze. But one day a youngster calling
himself the Smithfield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) arrives on his doorstep. He knows
of Munny’s reputation and wants him in on a job. In Big Whiskey, Wyoming
And so the three head off across
country. Munny is trying hard to cling on to the better man he became through
his dead wife’s love. Ned realises that he no longer has it in him to kill a
man. And the Kid is not the man he claims to be either; he is no five-time
killer – and he is chronically short-sighted to boot. All of them come to
appreciate that “It’s a hell of a thing,
killin’ a man. Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.”
But Munny and Ned are not the
only relics of the Old West. Little Bill Daggett (Hackman) is now Sheriff of
Big Whiskey. It’s a quiet place and that’s the way he’d like it to stay. He has
an ordinance that no guns are allowed in town. He wants to spend his time
building his house on the outskirts of town with a porch upon which he can sit
and watch the sun go down. The reward put up by the whores complicates the
matter. He preferred to deal with the attack his own way. As Delilah (Anna
Levine) had a contract with Skinny (Anthony James) it is a matter of damage to
property – the cowboys have to compensate Skinny, Delilah’s ‘owner’. Now he has
to prevent Big Wiskey becoming one big gunfight. He hopes that when he sends
the first would-be bounty-hunter, Richard Harris’s ‘English Bob’ packing that
would be an end of it. The arrival of Munny and Co threatens his authority.
 |
| The flasher was caught red-handed |
The problem is that the glamour
and mystique of the West remains. Just as Little Joey in Shane idolises gunslingers there is still a fascination with the
law of the West. Enter writer W. W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek). He arrives towed in
the wake of one glamorous legend, English Bob, the ‘Duke (or “Duck” as Little Bill calls him) of
Death’. When Little Bill takes glee in rubbishing his stories Beauchamp turns
his attention to the sheriff. At the end of the film we can see him, clearly
petrified, but still pumping Munny for information. He gazes after him in awe.
Munny dreamt of the Angel of Death. Munny is that Angel. There is no romance in
farming pigs or building a house; sadly, there is romance in shooting people
dead. Even if the truth is never the same as the myth. Daggett tells Beauchamp
the true story behind one of English Bob’s exploits. The actual killings of the
two cowboys are not glamorous – one is shot in the belly and bleeds to death in
a gulch, the other is shot on the crapper.
Like Shane, the moral is that you cannot change your past. In Shane the symbolic moment when the hero
accepts his role is when Shane puts his buckskins back on again. In Unforgiven that moment is when Munny
takes a swig of whiskey. Automatically that improves his aim. In vino veritas. What are we to make of
the Munny we see at the end? He is badass, standing up for his friend. He
unleashes an Old West hell on Big Whiskey – the sort of hell that Little Bill
wanted to keep the town safe from. Little Bill’s aims are laudable;
unfortunately, his methods are those of the Old West. He displays Ned’s body as
a warning to others – this just serves to get Munny riled. Little Bill wants a
clean village free of the wrath and violence he has lived through, but his reactions
breed them. Like Little Bill Munny commits an act for the right reasons - protecting his friend - but the only way he knows how to do that is all guns blazing. Who is the hero: the stone-cold killer or the gentle pig-farmer?
The film is beautifully acted and
shot. It deserves its four Oscars (Best Film, Director, Editing and Supporting
Actor for Hackman). Harris and Rubinek provide comic relief, Eastwood and
Freeman encapsulate the old timers back for one last job. I probably found
Hackman’s Daggett the most fascinating character, a lawman prepared to act
outide the law to keep the peace. All of the latter characters are struggling
to correlate the two aspects of their natures – the side that wants peace and
the side that is prepared to kill to get it. Altogether it is a
thought-provoking companionpiece to Shane.
It is the story of the men that made the West struggling to shape it in line
with their own ideals. And its moral is that you cannot hide from your past no
matter how hard you try.
What have I learnt about Wyoming?
Much like Shane Unforgiven is set
on the cusp of great changes in the West. The frontier was being tamed – unlike
Shane Big Whiskey has a Sheriff (with
many deputies) and is reachable by train. Yet elements of the Old West remain.
Sheriffs can give people extra-legal beatings. Taverns are stocked with whores who are treated as property.
A man can earn a living “shooting Chinese
for the Railroad”; the mystery is not that Chinese labourers can be shot
without repurcussions but that the Railroad would hire someone to do it for
them. Trying to forge one’s own path seems fraught with troubles – Munny’s pig
farm seems very marginal. Taking orders as a hired cowhand seems to be much
more profitable.
Can we go there?
Unlike Shane this film was not shot on location in Wyoming. Instead, like
so may other Westerns we have seen this year it was shot up in Alberta near
Calgary. The town of Big Whiskey and Little Bill’s cabin was constructed
specifically for the movie around Longview; the buildings were demolished after use. Spoil sports. Likewise the
Munny pigfarm around Brooks
and Ned’s farm in the vicinity of Drumheller (somewhat appropriately ‘The Dinosaur Capital of the World’). The only sequence shot in the U.S. was English
Bob’s train journey – this was filmed at the Railtown 1897 State Historic Park in Jamestown, California.
Overall Rating: 4/5
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