re: Discussion on Unforgiven

quote:

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Remember when Little Bill was explaining to Beauchamp about how an experienced gunman enters a fight like he's planned it all out or there's a science behind it? After the fight at the bar Munny says he was just lucky, like it was nothing. He didn't think about it, he just reacted. That's who he was, a killer. He had been trying to deny it the whole movie saying he was a family man now but that was false. Killing is just second nature to him whether he wants to admit it or not.

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What I love about the movie is that it is a deconstruction of the deconstruction. the spaghetti western rose in popularity in the late 60s and early 70s, and they exploded the myths of the Old West. Clint was at the forefront of that, destroying the myth of the white and black hats. He ushered in an era of morally ambiguous and self-interested characters.

By 1991, THAT was the standard western, not the standard John Wayne western. Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name was what people thought of as the Old West, and here, he burns it to the ground again. He says that we've turned that lonesome gunman into a hero or at least a larger-than-life superman, and that's no more correct than the old westerns the New Westerns pushed off the stage. Life was violent and random. William Munny is a killer, but he's just "always lucky when it comes to killing." the writer thinks he sees the truth, but he's just creating a new myth to replace the old one.

Watch JOSEY WALES with it for a perfect double feature on myth creation and deconstruction. Clint is taking the piss out of his own legend.