Review of White Hunter, Black Heart (1990) by Theodore F — 29 Nov 2008

You won't find many criticisms like this of a much too often celebrated tendency within art. This ambitious tendency is the the unwieldy beyond of Griffith's 'Intolerance" as well as Ahab's search for the death beyond death in seeking Moby Dick. Eastwood's uncharacteristic vocal affectation in his performance/impression of director John Huston offsets his own self-evident masculine charisma in order to give his critique of Huston's Hemingway informed artistic ideal an unmatched momentum of credibility. Eastwood's "John Wilson" thinks himself morally above the exploitive colonialists in Africa yet it's revealed to him, slowly and sublimely, that his own individualistic goals applied to the world around him indeed overlap with these colonialists.

An explicit argument for humility in art, as Christopher Mulrooney rightly observed, and humility is a central aspect of Eastwood's cinematic form (along with economy and poetry) of course. Highly recommended.