The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015. Remaining movies: 91 Days to go: 61
Movie #349: Unforgiven
Unforgiven won the 1992 Academy Award for Best Picture (among others) and I have been avoiding seeing it for all that time. Generally I like to see all the Best Picture nominees, but in this case I just happen to know that when it comes to Clint Eastwood, AMPAS and I simply do not see eye-to-eye.
The movie opens with some text, apropos of nothing, about a woman who married a no-good villain named William Munny (who we’ll find out later is played by Eastwood), but to the surprise of her mother, died of smallpox in 1878, instead of at the hands of her evil husband. A while later we meet up with old Munny on his pig farm. He’s raising his two children by himself, he misses his dear departed wife, and he’s not a great farmer. A kid shows up (Jaimz Woolvett), calling himself The Schofield Kid, after his preferred weapon. Despite Munny having forsaken his old ways, The Kid knows him by reputation through family, and offers him a partner opportunity to kill a couple of cowboys who cut up a prostitute in Big Whiskey, Wyoming. There’s a reward, see, being offered by the assaulted woman and her friends — led by Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher) — of $1000 to anyone who kills the cowboys.
Before any of that happens, though, we see the assault on the woman and we see the refusal of Sheriff Little Bill (Gene Hackman) to mete out any real punishment on the cowboys. Instead of hanging them as the women insist, he intends to whip them, but winds up only “fining” them a few ponies, paid to the owner of the brothel instead of the victim. It is at this injustice that the women decide to come up with the promise of a reward. Little Bill finds out about their offer, though, and proceeds to tell people far and wide not to seek retribution on the cowboys. He publicly beats a notorious assassin named English Bob (Richard Harris) who has come to seek the bounty as a message to other criminals, and he wins the admiration of English Bob’s biographer (Saul Rubinek), who then decides to write about Little Bill’s exploits instead.
When the two narrative threads finally come together, Little Bill tries to make an example of Munny as well, but Munny gets away (along with the kid and Munny’s longtime friend and partner Ned Logan, played by Morgan Freeman). The trio track down one of the cowboys, but find that killing him isn’t as easy as they thought. Ned bows out and tries to head home, while Munny and the Kid seek out the second cowboy. However, Ned gets caught by Little Bill’s posse and winds up beaten and tortured for information before his body gives out and he dies. When Munny finds out about Ned’s fate, he has the Kid (who’s sworn off gunfighting after being sick over killing the cowboy) return the reward to Munny’s farm, while Munny goes to seek revenge on Little Bill. He does, and it’s all very macho and badass, and the biographer is probably going to write about Munny now, and that’s it.
Except there’s also an epilogue, also apropos of nothing, about how Munny’s mother-in-law came to see her daughter’s grave once after Munny and the kids moved to San Francisco, and she still couldn’t figure out why her angelic daughter would marry such a miscreant. The end.
The movie seems to be about unrealized expectations, about nothing really living up to its reputation — be it revenge or notoriety or even how badly injured the prostitute was in the first place — and honestly, that’s exactly the experience I had in watching it. Or it would’ve been, if I hadn’t gone into the thing knowing I find Clint Eastwood’s particular brand of squinty gruffness tiresome, at best. If you dig him (and the Academy obviously — OBVIOUSLY — does), and if you dig Westerns, then the movie probably satisfies. I don’t, so I’ll just have to go about my life content with that fact. Me and Clint Eastwood don’t mix. It’s just one of those things.
Viable Option 