Unforgiven (1992)

'I’ll see you in hell William Munny' says little bill (Gene Hackman) as he stares down the barrel of William munny's gun 'yeah' says William munny and POW Little bill is dead. After "High Noon' and 'The Searchers' no other Western has given me such an eerie feeling as this masterpiece 'Unforgiven'. The film, for those who do not know, centres on Wiliam Munny (Clint Eastwood) a reformed gunslinger and outlaw who claims to be sobered up after he marries his wife of ten years who bears his two children. By the time the film opens in 1889 Wyoming his wife is dead and he has to struggle alone with his two children managing a hog farm which brings in little profit; they are destitute and need money. On comes along the Schoefield kid (Jaimz Woolvett) who says a reward of $1000 is being offered by prostitutes to the one who can kill the two exuberant youths, one in particular, that sliced up the face of one of their companions in a fit of rage. Now that the prostitute, Delilah,(the reference to the name Delilah should not be missed because her face is cut up after she tells the man that he has a ‘tiny pecker’ and she gives a giggle which is seen as an affront to the man. It is no surprise that she invokes the spirit of Delilah who emasculated Samson) has been defaced her manager also seeks compensation and receives a couple of horses in repayment however her companions feel that this is not enough compensation; the two boys deserve to die. Although William munny claims to be sobered up from the whiskey that helped to contribute to his frenzy of violence he still takes up the offer and gets one of his old partners, Ned Logan (Morgan freeman), to join him for one last ride. These men are now old and the glory of the Wild West is now foggy to most. it is now a time when people are writing pulp novels to heighten the extravaganza because they never truly understood it. The great cowboys or gunslingers always appeared so free in their ways and essentially rootless moving from town to town and tearing it down. The world seemed to revolve around them but now in the present setting of the film the world revolves only around their legends. As it stands most of them like William munny and his partner Ned are small farmers or most of them live among us. The opening and final shots truly capture the loss of these bygone days. There are narratives featured in those shots where the mother of the wife, it is said, could not understand how her daughter could marry such a ruthless man as William munny (not exact words). The final shot is basically the same and ends in the same quote. the main difference in these shots is that the opening one features a silhouette of William munny digging the grave of his wife at sunset whereas in the final shot the silhouette is more reflective and disappears as William munny has now  moved on, perhaps to sell dry goods in San Francisco. The imagery of those two shots are haunting where everything is silhouetted against the background of the sunset and there is a light one track note of strings (the instrument could be a harp or a guitar) which only heightens the ethereal quality of the shot.

I am sure everyone, or most people, are aware of the western in its heyday as they (Hollywood) seemed to reel out one after the other. They were fun morality tales which centred on gunslingers and we rarely took them seriously seeing them only at a distance. When have we really cared for the characters apart from the exceptions such as 'High Noon' and others I may not be aware of ( but it can’t be that many). The westerns took a nose dive however and people did not seem as interested in those days because all the violence was repetitive and mind numbing with no essential purpose. There were few that captured the harsh realities of the west. It was also the time of science fiction and fantasy : 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien,  Star Wars, Blade Runner E. T, and others that seemed more palatable to the viewers. The Wild West seemed archaic. Then in 1990 there came a resurgence with ‘Dances with Wolves’ but, although that was a western featuring a lieutenant who befriended the Sioux Indians, the visual textures of that film gave viewers a longing for that time when man was one with nature and the Americans were going through a transition to establish order out of the chaos that came with the settling of the west. ‘Unforgiven’, however, which is probably the greatest western examines or tries to examine the nature of man as he actually was in the west as sheriff little Bill Dagget, William munny's adversary played effectively by Gene hackman, shows, that maintaining order in that time was a hell of a thing because with the single release of a trigger everything seemed tenuous and capable of falling apart. This would explain some of the brutish tactics he employs to those who carry guns into his town despite the warning that says no guns are allowed. He is also responsible for the death of Ned and displays his dead body in a shameless manner which basically highlights that he has taken his actions too far and should be punished for it. (Oh! I forgot to mention that Ned is a black man and so you can read between the lines) ‘Unforgiven’ is a revisionist western so it has all the elements that made the old time westerns fun but with added depth since few people explored the implications that these characters' actions were having on the people around them. There is gun slinging but as one pertinent scene which occurs near the end shows, where the Schoefield kid kills one of the boys that were featured for the bounty money, it is not that simple to kill a man. When we first meet the Schoefield kid he gives the impression that he has killed many men but in reality he had never killed and the experience is traumatic. The veteran William munny tells him to hold a shot of whiskey for it will drown the grief if only for a time because as he explains when you kill a man ' you take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have'. This issue was never explored in any great detail by westerns of the past but here they try and flesh out in a poetic fashion the nature of violence and the consequences for choosing the route of violence. It has to be poetic because they are basically trying to overturn the values that once held the genre together and I am not sure that there is any true story that they could find and this is art after all. The film being revisionist it has to deal with characters as abstracts and not as real people and that explains the shots that open and close the film. The real character is the wild west as we thought we knew it but by the end realise that it was not as fun as we thought and in this film you realise that when the characters are sober they speak mostly of stories of long ago. William munny speaks with Ned of his past wrongdoings when he was under the influence of liquor and how he is trying to change and little Bill recounts endless tales with a pulp novelist who travels into his town with English Bob another gun slinging legend ( whom he incarcerates after his arrival into town after a public beating. This is one scene which shows off Gene hackman's greatness as an actor). The strength of the film is the performances of Clint Eastwood and Hackman for whereas the other characters deal with the legends of long ago the final scene gives us an eerie reminder of those days. It may be a classic shootout but before it begins but you realize that the days of the glorious west were probably terrifying days for the citizens. You know this because you feel the gloom that hangs over the saloon when William munny enters silently to exact revenge on little bill. When these two men interact on the final stage which ends with the quote mentioned at the beginning of this review they, of all the characters, seem closer to the heart of the violence or seem to understand it better than the rest since they were the ones who had to encounter the original character of the west when it was at its most brutal.

William munny as played by Clint is obviously haunted by the days when he was a gunslinger and we hear this in his conversations with Ned and when he is attacked by fever after an early encounter with little bill. He claims, after his recovery, that he saw the angel of death. Eastwood plays him as a man weighed down by the years although he is silent in some shots while others speak; he also seems afraid to drink whiskey which he fears will bring back the dirty harry that he is famous for. He wants to move on but he can’t and it seems that he will always be tormented by his deeds and with the death of ned, the only one it seems he could share anything of his past with, we will never know how he comes to terms with who he is. His heart is a boiling pot of despair and corruption and you realize, when he transforms (aided by drinking a whole bottle of whiskey) and comes after little bill, that his wife never changed him as he claims but only offered him a path. He chose the path but I am not sure that he really did change but he recognized after his ten year hiatus that values change and his children will remind him of that although he himself will never be able to truly share in those values. When little bill says he will see him in hell I am pretty sure that William munny knows he is right because how can he be forgiven and this is who he is? How is a man like that ever forgiven when he can’t even forgive himself? Little Bill is a man who, like William munny, has seen it all; he has seen the famous gunslingers and the rest and I am sure that his experience serves him well when William munny enters that salon seeking him out. His outbursts suggest a man who also has not come to terms with who he is and a man incapable of dealing with gunslingers any other way than with brute force since he is probably aware of their crude nature so an eye for an eye is probably the way to see it. He could have been a famous gunslinger himself so that urge to overpower other gunslingers in his town seems only natural since now he actually has the authority to do what he does. The question with him is: How do you rise above the filth and despair that has characterized the formation of the west? Can you really be kind with vicious people such as this? By placing a label on him stating that he is a villain does not seem very convincing for you have to look at what he himself thinks of his measures.

The movie is highlighted by a gloomy/melancholy atmosphere which is the grounding element of most of our lives although we try to deny it. The other westerns were like great parties but when they are done you have to come home to some form of mundane existence. This is the atmosphere in ‘Unforgiven’. There are shades and there are shots that try and immerse us in the natural character of the west that has not changed although the people have come and gone. You are fully aware that William munny, Ned Logan, little Bill, and English bob are on their way out but you get the sense that they were pioneers in a sense that they helped to construct a system of values that are still rooted in the everyday life of America and that will ensure the film's timeless quality. The west still has an eternal beauty about it that disappears only when humans come and tarnish it with chaos and their settlements to encourage commerce. There are scenes that feature a lot of rain which heighten this atmosphere for it helps to shroud these legends in everyday life and to highlight that their days of glory are gone. In the final scene, for instance, when William munny kills almost everyone it is witnessed by only a few who remain in fear of him as he looms larger than life in the rain still shrouded as a legend, not a real man, since the values of the west have changed or are changing since he graced the scene in the prime of his youth. They will never see his face but you will hear his chilling voice, in the morning the people of the town will be in for a shocking reminder and the bloody scene will remind them of the fermenting pot of harsh truths that characterized the development of the wild west; showing exactly what was required to get justice on your side for as William munny says they had better bury his friend right or else he will come back and he better not hear of them cutting up no whores or he’ll be back. That was how order had to be gotten in the west and William munny and little Bill are both aware of that although their tactics seem a bit incongruous with the present day so it was all shrouded in rain. The people of the town did not have to be shown but they had to be reminded and I am sure that even now the populace of America is reminded time and time again. That final scene is not a scene of glory it is a ghost of the past.

Although little bill was disappointed at the way he died, because he honestly thought he escaped those violent days, I am pretty sure that his final statement which is featured at the beginning of this review brought him closer to the truth of what his actions in the past brought on himself. I am sure William munny knew the same might happen to him someday.

See you in hell

this is a great film.