For the first time since Cimarron in 1930/31, a Western would claim the Academy’s highest honor. Certainly, Dances With Wolves could be considered a Western, but I look at that film more as an historical drama/action film. Unforgiven, 1992’s Best Picture winner is a full on, no-holds-bard, full-fledged Western movie that starred and was directed by Clint Eastwood, one of the legends of the Western genre. In fact, the case could be made that this was Eastwood’s finest effort in any Western, which include the Man with No Name trilogy of Spaghetti Westerns directed by Sergio Leone, as well as his own High Planes Drifter, Pale Rider and my personal favorite, The Outlaw Josie Wales. Eastwood’s earlier Westerns were often about solitary figures who lived outside the law due to some tragedy or series of tragedies, and were then, over the course of the film, forced to reenter society and simultaneously avenge what they had lost. In Unforgiven, Eastwood took it a step further by presenting us with an aged and reformed outlaw who is tempted to come back outside the law after his wife had passed away and he needed the money to take care of his children.

From a thematic standpoint, Unforgiven is probably Eastwood’s strongest Western, although the messages that he’s trying to get across are very much on the nose. There isn’t a ton of subtext in this film. It’s a unique Western in that it has a clear message of anti-violence and that you cannot end violence with violence. It also speaks of temperance and forgiveness and how anyone is capable of receiving redemption as long as they’re willing to look for it. The film is fairly clear about what is right and what is wrong, but the characters don’t always have an easy time distinguishing between the two, and for that reason they often make the wrong choices. While that is sometimes bad for the characters in the story, it’s great for the audience because it helps stoke the drama and allows for a more dramatic storyline and provides depth for the characters.

The other thing that is unique in this film as it pertains to other Westerns is that there is ambiguity among the characters. In fact, I could probably spend this entire blog just on the complexities of all of the characters in this film. The way it is in Westerns is that we have good guys and bad guys and more often than not the audience will know who is who. In Unforgiven there are no good guys or bad guys. William Munny (Eastwood) is the protagonist of the story and Little Bill (Gene Hackman) is the antagonist, but which of them honestly is the hero and which is the villain? William Munny is an aging outlaw who was reformed of violence and alcohol by his late wife. For all appearances he seemed willing to live out his days on his pig farm with his children, even though he clearly was not a farmer. When we first meet him, he is approached by The Schofield Kid with an offer to collect half of the bounty on a couple of cowboys who cut up the face of a prostitute. Claiming to be a veteran killer and the nephew of one of Munny’s old riding buddies, the Schofield Kid provides Munny with the archetypal Call to Adventure to help him kill the two cowboys, which in archetypal fashion, Munny Refuses, claiming that he isn’t like that anymore. However as several of his hogs come down with fever, Munny senses that he might not be able to provide for his children by being a farmer, and he reluctantly calls on his friend Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) to partner up with him one more time. As though trying to convince himself, Munny continually tells Ned that he’s not like that anymore. He’s sworn off whiskey and has no desire for women and he has forsaken violence. And yet, here he is on his way to commit murder on a man who roughed up a prostitute.

Meanwhile, Little Bill Daggett is the sheriff of Big Whiskey, and he’s trying to keep the peace in town by not allowing anyone to carry firearms. Once he hears that the prostitutes have taken a bounty out on the cowboys that cut up Delilah, he figures that he’s going to have to make examples of anyone who comes to town looking to collect on that bounty. The first opportunity he has is when English Bob (Richard Harris) arrives in town. There is history between these two men, and English Bob is an elegant, sophisticated and debonair man who espouses the virtues of kings and queens over presidents (President Garfield has recently been shot, and English Bob opines that the mere presence of royalty would stifle a would-be assassin’s desire to do them harm, but “why not shoot a president?”) When English Bob initially denies that he’s carrying a gun, Little Bill proceeds to beat the hell out of him before throwing him in to jail. He then proceeds to regale W.W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek), the biographer accompanying English Bob on his adventures, the true (and less sensational) stories that were English Bob’s actual exploits.

But here’s the thing about Little Bill. He’s a very likable character. In his spare time, he’s building himself a house outside of town, and he’s a terrible carpenter. What’s more is that he knows he’s a terrible carpenter, and yet is insulted when anyone else points that out. He has a big and gregarious personality, and is still an intimidating presence to those around him. That is because he too has a past that is a lot more notorious than his present and English Bob experiences first-hand what that past was like.

William Munny experiences it as well. After he and Ned and the Schofield Kid have been riding through the rain, they arrive at the saloon where the prostitutes work. Ned and Kid leave Munny, shivering and sick downstairs while they go upstairs to negotiate the bounty as well as some other “business”. In what is this film’s archetypal Supreme Ordeal, Little Bill is told of Munny’s presence and arrives at the saloon demanding that Munny turn over his guns. When Munny denies having any, he gets the same treatment that English Bob got, only Little Bill allows him to crawl out of the bar like a beaten dog, humiliated and near death. The Kid and Ned sneak out through a window and manage to get Munny to the safety of a barn outside of town where he can eventually be nursed back to health.

So on the one hand we have William Munny, a man who used to be a cold-blooded drunken killer who is clearly now uncomfortable in his own skin and has no idea who he is or what he wants other than to kill two men he’s never met and who have never wronged him so that he can collect on the bounty. And this is the protagonist of the story. Then on the other hand we have Little Bill Daggett, a gregarious, yet hot tempered man who is trying to keep the peace in his town and is indeed a metaphor for western expansion in that he’s building a home and trying to bring law to a lawless place. Yet, he is the film’s antagonist.

But this film is loaded with that type of duality. The film opens with one of the cowboys having sex with a prostitute and they stop when they hear screaming coming from the next room. They run in to see the other cowboy cutting up Delilah’s face. Skinny Dubois, the owner of the brothel breaks it up and while the prostitutes want the cowboys to hang, Skinny is more inclined to be compensated for his damaged property in Delilah. Little Bill brokers a deal that the cowboys will come back in the spring and give up some of their new ponies to Skinny, and they agree, much to the outrage of the prostitutes, especially their leader Strawberry Alice (Frances Fisher). When they return the following spring Delilah is still scarred, and one of the cowboys tries to make amends by offering the best pony that they have to Delilah. Strawberry Alice thanks him by throwing mud in his face. So we have this duality again. This cowboy isn’t a bad guy. His partner was the one who cut Delilah’s face, and yet he’s trying to make amends, and the whole thing could have ended right there. He certainly doesn’t deserve to die. In fact, Delilah looks touched by the gesture. Unfortunately Strawberry Alice and the others don’t even give her the chance to accept his offer, and their lust for revenge causes them to jump in to a world that they thought they could handle but then find out that they were not anywhere near ready for.

Then when that cowboy is killed, Ned has his own epiphany. Ned, while not enthusiastic at first about the job, looked like he was taking to it a lot better than Munny was. At least he was taken with the prostitutes. Being the best shot with the rifle, Ned took the first shot but it hit that cowboy’s horse, which landed on top of him and broke his leg. Realizing the gravity of what he’s doing, Ned is unable to finish the job and Munny has to take the shots before the cowboy can crawl to the rocks and get cover. Munny is unable to kill him right off, however, but does mortally wound the cowboy, and they have to listen to him call out in pain and suffer before he finally succumbs to his wounds. Not wanting anything more to do with this, Ned leaves the group before they can kill the second cowboy and rides south towards his home. Ned’s reward for doing the right thing is getting caught by the cowboy’s friends and brought the Little Bill for justice.

The second cowboy’s death leads to the second most powerful scene in the film. Munny and the Kid stake him out and wait for him to go unattended to the outhouse. The Kid, who we’ve discovered earlier in the film can’t see more the 50 yards away, runs up so that he can shoot him at close range. He opens up the door and hesitates for a moment while the cowboy puts up his hands and shouts, “No!” The the Kid shoots him and they get away in a hail of bullets.

Waiting by the lone tree out on the prairie for their payment, the Kid admits to Munny that he’d never in fact killed anyone before. He takes swig after swig of whiskey trying to numb the pain. Munny looks at this scared kid who has now faced mortality and sees the faces of everyone that he’s ever hurt before, and yet, he finally looks comfortable in his own skin. He’s back in his element and he’s doing something that he knows how to do, and he imparts what wisdom he can on the Kid. He tells him, “It’s a hell of thing killing a man. You take away all he’s got and everything he’s ever gonna have.” When the Kid replies that they had it coming, Munny replies with the best line of the film, and one of my favorite lines in cinema with, “We all have it comin, Kid.” What a powerful moment that is, and here is a link to it if you’d like to see it for yourself.

Little Sue then arrives with the bounty and tells them that Little Bill killed Ned. Munny doesn’t believe her at first, but then when she explains in detail, Munny takes the whiskey bottle from the Kid and starts to drink. He goes into town and confronts Little Bill in a scene that is filled with tension and drama, and ends with the film’s great conundrum when Little Bill tells Munny, “I don’t deserve to die like this. I was building a house!” That’s a great example of how the villain is always the hero in his own story, and in this film especially, who is the villain and who is the hero is ambiguous at best.

For me what truly makes this a great film is that you can realize how good it is when you’re watching it, but then you realize its greatness on reflection. Westerns are sometimes looked down by cinema connoisseurs as shallow popcorn flicks that were essentially the action films of their day. However a deeper look at Westerns reveals that they’re usually films that are filled with pathos, heavy themes and complex life lessons. Unforgiven is such a film. It’s a film that makes you think and it’s a film that leaves you thinking about it long after you see it. It’s a violent film that preaches an anti-violent message. It’s a film where people who are both good and bad do things that are both good and bad, and yet we still root for or against them because we’re able to relate to them on an emotional and human level.

Overall this is an outstanding film, and I highly recommend a viewing if you haven’t seen it recently.

Did the Academy get it right?

This was a year for thematically strong films that tackled important issues, sometimes with characters with ambiguous intentions. The Crying Game was a powerful and shocking film that had a twist at the end that had everyone talking. It’s a terrific film with a strong and clear message, but I think it falls behind Unforgiven because its characters aren’t as relatable or as complex. Howard’s End was also one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year, and I’m a little surprised that it didn’t win, as this is the type of film that the Academy usually favors, especially over Westerns. I don’t think it’s as good as Unforgiven for similar reasons as The Crying Game in that this is a film about relationships but the characters aren’t as complex or as engaging as the characters in Unforgiven, so I think that separated those films as well. Scent of a Woman was one of the most popular films of the year and was also driven by a relationship, namely the relationship between the curmudgeonly Lt. Col. Frank Slade and the young and timid Charlie Simms. To be brutally honest, this isn’t a great film to me, and what saves it is that it has possibly one of the best endings a film ever had when Slade goes to Charlie’s boarding school and puts them all in their respective places. Actually, my favorite film of 1992 was A Few Good Men. This is an outstanding, dramatic and riveting film with incredible performances by Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore, among many others like Kevin Bacon and Keifer Sutherland. The problem from the Academy’s point of view is that it’s a courtroom drama, and if you’ve been following this blog for a while, then here is the familiar refrain that courtroom dramas are mostly bridesmaids and rarely brides. It’s unfortunate because I think that A Few Good Men was quite worthy of winning the award, with its entertaining story and brilliant screenplay. That said, I think that the Academy did get it right in 1992 with Unforgiven. It’s a brilliant film with some of the most complex and best developed characters that I’ve ever seen, and it is also one of the strongest films that I know from a thematic standpoint. It’s hard to argue that Unforgiven was the best film of 1992.