Topic: Unforgiven

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Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Unforgiven

It's always tough to take a genre that's been thoroughly deconstructed for decades and have an interesting and useful conversation about the movie/novel/whatever that did the deconstructing in the first place. I think I ran across a page at the TV Tropes site one time — like you do — that was called "Seinfeld isn't funny" or something like that. The idea is that sometimes a work comes along that so thoroughly changes a genre or medium that it becomes hard to evaluate it fairly in retrospect, because if you look at it through a contemporary lens it just looks conventional or ordinary, or even derivative. But the whole point is it wasn't conventional or ordinary at the time; at the time, it was a big fucking deal. It's just that that work was so successful that the next morning sort of everybody woke up and collectively said "Oh, that's just how that genre is supposed to be," even though the day before it had been radically different.

That's sort of the role Unforgiven plays in the western genre. Somebody who's 25 today and who's only seen things like the Coen's True Grit remake or Deadwood on TV would likely find Unforgiven to be, well, unsurprising. The protagonist is an antihero who wrestles with the morality of his way of life, you say? Knock me over with a feather.

But in 1992, that was new. It was, at the time, a deeply postmodern take on the classic western, subverting every trope in the book and doing it with such subtlety that the audience might not realize at first that they've been tweaked. Take English Bob, for example. He's clearly the bad guy of the film. His introduction blasts his antagonist status across the screen in 50-foot-high letters of fire. He's even wearing a black hat, for chrissakes. Only what happens is that Bob gets humiliated and run out of town without doing a single thing that affects the plot in any way … and by whom? Why, the wise old town sheriff who's just doing his best to keep the town from eating itself. Little Bill — who is in many ways a through-a-glass-and-darkly reflection of Gary Cooper's character from High Noon would've been the protagonist of any other pre-1992 western, or at the very least a stakes-raising good-guy character whom the audience likes and with whom the audience sympathizes. But in Unforgiven he's the unequivocal bad guy of the movie … whom the audience likes and with whom the audience sympathizes. That alone is a complete inversion of one of the inviolable constants of the genre.

And now let's talk about the plot. I mean the actual sequence of events that unfolds. The inciting incident leads to a reward being posted; the Schofield kid knows of Munny's reputation and tries to recruit him to help collect on that reward. Munny agrees, eventually, because he needs the money to save his catastrophe of a hog farm and take care of his kids. Munny rustles up (ha) Ned and the three of them ride off to war.

So far, fairly standard, yeah? There's bad men out there, and good men must rise reluctantly from their beds to confront them. Nothing challenging there. In any other western, this would all be leading to a low-key confrontation with the well-meaning sheriff, the townsfolk boarding up their windows, and a gunfight in the thoroughfare in which the marked outlaws are killed, and Ned gets winged … but he'll be all right. Slugs of whiskey all 'round, then literally ride off into the sunset.

Oh but no.

What actually happens is that Munny shows up at the town sick with the flu, and Little Bill beats him up and runs him out of town. The nominal antagonists of the movie — the two outlaws with the price on their heads — never even appear in the sequence. Instead, Munny, Ned and the Kid leg it off into the wild to patch up and regroup.

Now, Munny, Ned and the Kid do eventually kill the marked men. But the way it plays out subverts western tropes twice. First, there's a case to be made that these two men do not deserve to die. Yes, they did a bad thing, but they attempted restitution and went on to mind their own business after that. I mean, these guys aren't Liberty Valance here, intimidating the townsfolk and shooting up the saloon. They're just ranchers. But the thing is, none of the protagonists ever stop to reflect on this fact. They don't invest any time in thinking about who these men are or why they're wanted dead. They just lie in wait and kill 'em. And how do they ever lie in wait and kill 'em. Two ambushes, one of which happens in an outhouse. And after it's all done — this happens at the end of the second act in the movie, it's worth mentioning, not the third act where it belongs in a traditional western — there's no triumph or catharsis. All three of the protagonists just make faces of distaste and decide this killin' business ain't fer them, and resolve to go back home and put all this ugliness behind them.

Which is what the Kid does — rides off into the, well, conspicuously not the sunset anyway, having won nothing worth the price and having learned only how to feel regret. But Munny can't do the same because he has to go avenge Ned's death.

Oh, did we not mention? Yeah, Ned, the sidekick character you liked so much, was tortured to death. Off-screen. By the sheriff. Who was the good guy last time we saw this movie.

What follows is a quiet, thoughtful, deliberately paced rampage. The first person Munny kills is Skinny, who runs the saloon. Munny shoots him in cold blood. Then he kills half a dozen deputies, mortally wounds the sheriff, and sidles up to the bar for a drink before delivering the coup de grace. Then he intimidates the townsfolk, threatening to come back and murder them all, before riding off into the night.

Let's go over that again. A notorious killer of men rides into town to collect a bounty, gets run out of town by the sheriff, goes off to ambush and kill two men, then returns to town to shoot up the saloon, murder the saloon keeper, six other men, and the sheriff himself, then threatens the townsfolk and makes his escape. And this man is the hero of the film.

I want you now to imagine — any of those reading this who've seen The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance — what kind of movie this would've been if Eastwood had played Little Bill and Munny had been played by (let's say for the sake of argument, not dead) Lee Marvin. Completely different movie. Maybe a successful one and maybe not, but it would've been very much a stereotypical, by-the-numbers western with only the twist that it's told primarily from the point of view of the bad guy and not the good guy. But instead, in the film we got, Eastwood's character is very much the good guy! Despite all the things he's done in his backstory — which is a major thematic element in the movie — and all the things we actually get to see him do on screen, he's still the protagonist, and we still want him to win, even though his winning involves murder and loss.

Today we're used to that level of ambiguity in our entertainment. It's practically de rigueur. But in 1992, in a western, this was all very holy-shit. It was challenging. It got in your face. It was like "Oh, you want a good old-fashioned western? Here's your good old-fashioned western. Choke on it."

It's like George Lucas going back and making a Star Wars movie where we're supposed to feel like Darth fucking Vader is the hero, and feel bad for him when he loses at the end. I mean, it's that crazy.

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Re: Unforgiven

I've missed you so much.

clap

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Unforgiven

Aaaaaand Jeff is back with a vengeance! Bravo sir!

I've only seen Unforgiven once before, in film class no less, but I'm eagerly awaiting it's arrival from Netflix to re-visit it.  Enjoyed that commentary guys; very insightful.

Side note: as someone who grew up in an age when the western was well past its prime, I haven't ever gotten around to exploring the genre.  I think I also saw Stagecoach in film class, but growing up the closest I got was Back to the Future III, and I've never even gotten around to finding out which Eastwood movies they were cribbing from. 

So here's my question: what are the quintessential westerns one should see to get a good handle on what someone going into a theater in 1992 might have been expecting?  What are the "must see" westerns? 

I mean, I know names like John Ford, Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, etc., but looking at all the films they made, and being so distanced from the time and culture that made them, it's a bit overwhelming to say the least.

Where does one start?

Re: Unforgiven

This is off the top of my head, so it will be so very incomplete. Buuuut …

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Two Mules for Sister Sara

High Noon

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Searchers

Those'd probably be on my short list of essential westerns. Treasure of the Sierra Madre is not really a western in any meaningful sense, but it captures the aesthetic and the tone really well, I think. I mean, any sensible person would put the Man With No Name trilogy on the list, but I'm not doing that because mumblemumbleneverseenthemshutupmumblemumble.

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Re: Unforgiven

Cool man, that sounds like a good start.

Re: Unforgiven

I'll go ahead and recommend The Man With No Name trilogy, or the Dollars trilogy, or whatever one cares to call it. Referring to A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Not REALLY a trilogy in the strictest sense, for those who didn't know. Those were, personally, the movies that showed me I could actually enjoy Westerns, a genre which I had had no interest in up until then. I love Sergio Leone's visual style so much, and the way he's able to build tension in a scene is amazing.

The thing I like about those in relation to Unforgiven is that Eastwood is pretty much playing the same character as he was in those three films. Munny is very much the natural progression of... I'll go with Blondie, because that's my favorite of Eastwood's no names.

I'll also second the recommendation of High Noon and Two Mules For Sister Sara, because why not?

Last edited by C-Spin (2012-02-21 06:25:02)

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Re: Unforgiven

I'd make your second to last western "Once Upon a Time in the West".  This was the last Sergio Leone Western.  It sorta turns the genre on it's thumb a bit.  Not as far as Unforgiven does, but it's a nice slow yarn of a western.

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Re: Unforgiven

The western that I know of that sticks out in my mind the most is The Quick and the Dead, because next to Shawshank Redemption, it was on TNT ALL the time.  It has Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crow, and Leonardo DiCaprio.  It's very cheesy, and I really like it.  And some of other people you may have heard of appear in it, like Lance Henrikson, and Tobin Bell. Big time black hat vs. white hat movie.  I surprised you guys didn't mention it.

"Back to the Future is great, and if you disagree then you're Hitler." -Dorkman
"You sucking is canon!" -Brian

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Re: Unforgiven

I have to admit I'm really surprised that so few of the forum members appear to have watched many westerns. Mainly because as a kid, one of the most obvious toy or roleplaying games was to play cowboys and indians and movies of that genre were the inspiration for new characters and stories etc. Like others, I was born long after the genre's heyday but I was still able to watch a fair amount of them due to the fact that they were often shown on daytime TV here in the UK. The afternoon film on one of the 4 terrestial TV channels over here would invariably be an old movie - either a WW2 film, a Western or perhaps a black and white adventure film.

It's tempting to think of Unforgiven as a landmark but it wasn't entirely a new approach - the Western genre has always had 'darker' revisions over the decades. The Searchers for example was not a typical Western at the time (compare and contrast to Stagecoach), and others like Little Big Man, Soldier Blue and the Wild Bunch have all had different takes on the genre. Even Eastwood himself had been in several movies which were far removed from the typical John Wayne adventure long before Unforgiven came around (Pale Rider, Outlaw Josey Wales), and the Spagetti Westerns are a very different take on the standard set of tropes. Young Guns and Dances with Wolves both preceded Unforgiven as well.

Good Westerns worth a watch (no particular order):
Wild Bunch
The Searchers
Young Guns
Tombstone
True Grit
Geronimo (both Wes Studi and 1962 versions)
Gunfight at the OK Corral
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Last Outlaw
The Quick and the Dead
Maverick
Silverado
A Man Called Horse
Broken Arrow

And then there's Deadwood, which is a fantastic series.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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Re: Unforgiven

Oh, I can't believe I forgot to mention Pale Rider. It's a very interesting one. I don't want to spoil anything, but if you get the reference, the title is a big clue.

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Re: Unforgiven

There's another one I'd like to mention, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. It seems a fairly divisive movie, weirdly enough. People either love it or hate it. I fell under the love side of things. Great cast, engaging story, beautiful cinematography. It is long and slowly paced, which seems one of the most common criticisms, but I don't think it's a detriment in this case. In my mind it's one of the best films of the last decade.

That may just be because I'm really captivated by Casey Affleck, for some reason. I don't know what it is, but I love that guy.

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Re: Unforgiven

Seconding the vote for Man with No Name trilogy. That was my gateway drug into westerns and showed me I could love the genre, I really think that's a great starting point for people unfamiliar with the genre. If you're a fan of Inglourious Basterds, then it's really an easy jump from there into something like The Good the Bad and the Ugly, though I'd recommend starting with a Fistful of Dollars.

Once Upon a Time in the West is a goddamned masterpiece, but you can't watch it as your first Western, you need to work up to it to be able to appreciate it's brilliance (and tolerate the running time, Sergio Leone's movies grew exponentially in length as he got older).

Red Sun is one I'd recommend that not a lot of people have seen. It's like a combination of a Western and a Samurai movie. Charles Bronson teams up with a visiting Samurai (Toshiro Mifune) to recover a sacred artifact stolen from the Japanese ambassador's train. The bad guy is played by Alain Delon, so its like a big badass trifecta. It plays almost like a buddy cop movie, think Rush Hour as a Western.

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Re: Unforgiven

redxavier said a lot of what I was thinking.

I definitely recommend Wild Bunch, the Searchers, High Plains Drifter (an almost supernatural style Eastwood western. very non-traditional - note the rape of a crazy nympho by the hero scene. Also an interesting exploration of certain High Noon themes), Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks and John Wayne literally showing Fred Zinnemann and Gary Cooper how a real sheriff should act), and the original True Grit (great performance by Wayne). I also really like Young Guns, Dances With Wolves (which came out two years before Unforgiven), and the remake of 3:10 to Yuma for more "contemporary" examples.

I remember seeing Unforgiven in the theater and being bored to tears (and yes, I did understand what it was trying to do. I had heard it hyped as such). I had already seen most of the classic genre twisters people have mentioned here and there was really nothing too new to keep me interested. It just seemed overly slow paced, awkwardly acted, and forced. It felt the same when I watched it recently. There is a good non-traditional western in there, but it just fell flat with me. I think a lot of the praise it received at the time may have been due to people not being as familiar with many of the movies that have been mentioned. 
For years afterward me and my brother would say "but I don't do that any more" anytime someone spoke of doing something interesting.

PS. Teague. Given the context of the Citizen Kane clapping picture, it makes me wonder what you really think of Harrell. Hmmmm?  hmm

Last edited by fardawg (2012-02-22 14:03:12)

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Re: Unforgiven

Get outta here with your context.

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Re: Unforgiven

"Those who exchange cookies for safety deserve neither!"
-Michael "Dorkman" Scott

This needs to be a DiF shirt. Kinda now. smile

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Re: Unforgiven

So I let my Western boner control me, and I posted before I'd listened to the second half of the commentary. Where you guys both mentioned Assassination of Jesse James and asked about a self-aware Western, the equivalent of Galaxy Quest or Shaun of the Dead, after realizing you couldn't think of one off the top of your heads.

To which I offer up a tentative, Shanghai Noon? I haven't seen it in about a decade, so I'm a little fuzzy on the details. But as I recall, it treats its story fairly straight-faced while simultaneously poking fun at the genre tropes, usually with the Owen Wilson character. It's not on the same level of quality as Galaxy Quest and Shaun of the Dead, but I think it's trying to do the same kind of thing. I remember it being reasonably amusing, if totally disposable. But again... ten years. This is an attempt to answer the question, not a recommendation.

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Re: Unforgiven

http://hollywoodandswine.com/president- … n-on-ebay/

not long to go now...

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Re: Unforgiven

Just listened to this. Nice work.

Regarding Frances Fisher, I think the relevant resemblance is to Sondra Locke.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: Unforgiven

http://bitcast-a-sm.bitgravity.com/slashfilm/wp/wp-content/images/unforgivenposters-header-550x398.jpg

Japanese remake of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. Ken Watanabe plays Eastwood's part.

---------------------------------------------
I would never lie. I willfully participate in a campaign of misinformation.

Re: Unforgiven

That's awesome.

Re: Unforgiven

Unforgiven didn't do much for me, but this could warrant a rewatch-along when it's released. I haven't seen much japanese film outside of Kurosawa, they don't seem to have a movie making presence in the rest of the world besides their celebrated animation and ridiculed kaiju movies. I've heard somewhere that their movies generally aren't very good, but this certainly looks promising.

The Low Frequenter

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Re: Unforgiven

I just listened to the commentary again. The "Galaxy Quest equivalent for Westerns" you were looking for is Three Amigos by John Landis. It's literally the same premise as Galaxy Quest.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092086/

So honor the valiant who die 'neath your sword
But pity the warrior who slays all his foes...

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Re: Unforgiven

....you just blew my mind, Marty

Witness me!

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Re: Unforgiven

"Goodnight Ned"

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