Clint Eastwood’s 1992 revisionist Western Unforgiven not only swept up major prizes, including Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director (Eastwood) and Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman), but it acknowledged what an impressive filmmaker Eastwood had become. (Just think of his films that followed—Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, and Flags of Our Fathers among them.) What made Unforgiven revisionist? Yes, the film was still ultra-violent, with plenty of gun battle—but there were consequences to the violence, with characters haunted by their past actions as gunslingers, and threatening to destroy the futures of those who follow in their footsteps.
The film opens with a violent scene of a cowboy slashing a prostitute’s face over and over. The sheriff in town “Little Bill” (the fantastic Gene Hackman) lets the cowboy and his buddy go with nary a lashing; just the restitution of paying for their crimes with a few horses. The community of prostitutes is furious. If there is one rule in the Old West, you don’t hurt a woman. They put out a reward for the murder of the two men who hurt one of their own.
Meanwhile, Will Munny (Eastwood) is a widower pig farmer with two young children. He seems rather hopeless, so it comes as a surprise when he is approached by a young gun who calls himself The Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett). The kid is jittery and a lot of talk, and hears that Will used to be the baddest bad-ass of gunfighters, killing men, women and children mercilessly. Is he up for joining the kid to score the reward on the heads of the two cowboys?
As the Kid and Munny are joined by Munny’s friend and old partner (literally) in crime Ned (Morgan Freeman), you sense that Unforgiven is not only a tale of violent and regret, but it is a tale of tall tales. There is an overexcited writer (Saul Rubinek) that follows first English Bob (Richard Harris) a cocky old bastard that may not be the righteous gunfighter he claims, then later falls under the spell of Little Bill. Some of these men over-inflate their importance, as their tales of exploits gets bigger and bigger, others, like Munny and Ned, downplay their past out of shame and remorse, so you are never quite sure what their past truths are.
Overall, there is a feeling of sadness to Unforgiven. It is the first Western I remember seeing where there were consequences to actions, some deserved, some seemingly not. This could be just as well a war movie, or a movie about modern gang violence. The young romanticize the killing, the elders regret it. “It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he’s got, and all he’s ever gonna have.”
BLU-RAY NOTES
It’s been 20 years since Unforgiven won Best Picture, and now it is available in a handsome Blu-Ray Book set. Unlike other sets like this, Unforgiven actually uses the book portion to top effect in its 54 pages, including an essay about the film’s production by film critic Schickel (who also offers a commentary track with Eastwood), as well as photos from the set, production notes, set design sketches, and a strangely fascinating pre-production itinerary details a day in the life of a movie production. From what I can tell, the Special Features includes the same extras as the 10th anniversary Special Edition DVD: four documentaries (“All on Accounta Pullin’ a Trigger”, “Eastwood & Co.: Making Unforgiven”, “Eastwood… A Star”, and Schickel’s one-hour doc “Eastwood on Eastwood”), plus an episode of James Garner’s TV gunslinger show “Maverick” and a theatrical trailer.
