Unforgiven is a great western movie.
But the more I re-watch the more I sympathize with the hero. Little Bill.
Sure he is a flawed hero. Very. But his is just trying to maintain order in a wild cow town with a handful of nigh incompetent deputies. Can't be easy. He is hard. Too hard, obviously, with the criminal element. But this hardness serves as a deterrent. Or so he hope.
The whole point of the cruelty is to communicate. To others The prostitutes may have been wronged, but they have gone outside the system now. As flawed as their little society it, it is still civilizatiom. With rules they enjoy. To go outside it is to invite worse terrors to descend upon them. And they do.
It's not that Little Bill is an asshole. He's more of a son of a bitch. Far from help. In fact TOO far, as William Munny proves. Just trying to survive and thrive and maintain order.
William Munny isn't the hero. And here is the thing. He knows it. He's the bad guy. Dastardly and cowardly. Just trying to finally get past it. His redemption. Given him by his dead wife.
I have to say, this was my 2nd favorite movie of all time. Both Gene Hackman and Clint Eastwood seemed to play their parts in this movie in a different way than they would normally play it. It is like they felt like they could go all out and dive into the role in the weakness of the characters and let it show, and they not only succeeded, they succeeded to such an extent that they took a movie which normally should not have been such a success, and made it one of the top 10 movies of all time, up there with Jaws, the 1st two Godfather movies, and my number movie of all time. That is The Shootist. The last movie of John Wayne, and featuring Lauren Bacall, along with Ron Howard, James Stewart, and a whole back lot of well known actors, it was both a well written, but mostly formulaic western, made special mostly when John Wayne and Lauren Bacall shared the screen. In fact, their screen time could be used in film school as a demonstration of how to both act, and how to direct and film great movie scenes. From the plain dialog, made extraordinary only because of the special delivery and interaction of the two fantastic actors, plus the filming, which normally is unseen, but if you go back and look at it, you can see how it really helps to bring the two characters and make them and their chemistry come alive.
ReplyDeleteI seldom if ever, go to movies anymore. I just cannot justify spending as much money as it costs now to go, yet alone giving my money to Hollywood. If they put out decent films, I would not make a point to not spend my money on them. It is like Samuel Jackson just said. He said that he didn't care if someone went or didn't. Or if they liked or didn't like him or what he said. He still got his check. And I figure that he is right, that it doesn't make a difference if I go to a movie or not, it has no effect or not on the bottom line of Hollywood. And so I just don't go simply because I don't see anything I want to watch. I get Hulu at my home, and can watch movies from all over the world. I go to youtube and watch college students movies from 5 minutes to 30 minutes in length, that are both well made, and intelligent, and daring, because they are trying to get a good grade in their film school.
Plus, I can type in full concert in the question box on youtube and find any concert from just about any band I want to watch for free. I know, I am the product. I can't justify paying 100$ to go to a concert when, again, I can sit at home, with my headphones on, and listen to a concert, by Chicago and Earth, Wind,and Fire together from 1985 or from 2015, for free. Or Candy Dulfer, the sax player, who I have watched for years, or Mindy Abig, also a sax player, who I also like. I am a sax player, and I have followed them, just because at one time I was trying to play with a more sensual tone, and that was the best way to learn, listen to female players, who had some of that sound that I wanted.
Have a great week.