Review of Unforgiven (1992) by Meritcoba — 23 Sep 2015

Eastwood is a something of a chronicler of the American mind and nothing is so typical American as the western and perhaps nothing has changed so much over the decades as the western. And Eastwood was not only there to witness it, but in a way he was part of the change and might have even had a certain influence on it. For as the western changed, so did the roles Eastwood played in them. From the young impetuous Rowdy Yates in Rawhide, to the cynical anti-hero Nobody in the movies of Sergio Leone, to the even darker William "Will" Munn in Unforgiven. Munn might even been seen as a kind of aged Nobody, as Nobody might be seen as cynical version of the Rowdy Yates character.

Unforgiven is a movie where black and white have melted together into a kind of muck color. The classical conflict between good and bad that was at the heart of the early westerns, where order was established out of the chaos by a single good man, never really occurs here because there is no such conflict and there is no such man.

The story starts when a lady of the night giggles at a man's small pecker, in return he cuts her up with a knife. The owner of the establishment gets reimbursed for the damaged goods and loss of income, for a hooker with a ruined face doesn't sell, but the victim herself gets nothing for her pains. The sheriff, played by Gene Hackman, deems reimbursing to be good enough and leaves it at that.

The prostitutes hit back by putting out a sum of a thousand dollars on the heads of the cowboy and his friend. The money is the macguffin that makes the story go.

Enter various gunmen who want to collect on the bounty. One of them is Munn. Munn at first refused to go when asked by the Schofield Kid, but destitute as he is, and with two kids to feed and no wife to help out, he teams up with his old friend Ned and the Schofield Kid, a young man that boast of being deadly killer, for something that is basically an assassination job.

The sheriff doesn't hold kindly to the murders that drift into town and makes a point of getting this across by disarming them and beating them senseless.

Nothing is neat and nice.The sheriff is hardly any better than the killers, roughing up any who defy his rules, even unwittingly, and he isn't even above killing to make clear who is the law.

Dying has lost all nobility. In the spaghetti western most people conveniently die with a shot or two, in this one cowboy gets it in the gut causing a prolonged anguished death struggle.

Alcohol is the sign here.

When the movie starts Munn has been sober for ten years. When the Schofield Kid ask Munn how it was in the old days, he answers that he wouldn't know because he was drunk all the time. The sheriff tells to a writer how a famous gun fight was actually nothing but an exchange of shots fired between totally pissed gunmen, one of whom shot his own toe off before being finished off by the winner, who ambled so close to his target that he couldn't possibly miss.

The killing gets to everyone and alcohol makes it possible: it is the sedater of choice.

Perhaps this is as it was or perhaps not, but Eastwood never moralizes or explains. The movie is introduced by a voice reading out a text that scrolls over the screen at the same time. It feels like a page from a history book. The movie ends that way as well.

With Unforgiven the western has probably hit rock bottom.

It is the darkest of westerns.

This might be closer to history than any of the other westerns he played in.

Who knows.

It might not be.