"Unforgivable": If you are a prodigal son, please don't look back

Madonna 2022-03-23 09:01:10

In 1993, Clint Eastwood won four Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director for his self-directed and self-acted "Unforgivable".

At that time, westerns had already become the yellow flowers of tomorrow, no longer the glory of the past. As viewers, we have to rely on this film to get a glimpse of the last shining afterglow of westerns, but what we have seen is not the most primitive westerns. Fortunately, perhaps this is the most authentic Western.

The once infamous killer Will washes his hands for his beloved woman, Golden Basin, living in seclusion in the wilderness of Kansas and raising pigs for a living. After his wife's death, Will raised two children alone and led a hard life.

But the arrival of a cowboy disrupted the peaceful life of Will's family. The cowboy told Will about a business. In Big Whiskey Town, a cowboy drunkenly beat and disfigured a prostitute. The prostitute was willing to pay a high $1,000 bounty to seek revenge.

After hesitating Will thinking again and again, he finally accepted the offer. The purpose was to let the two children live a good life, so he found his former good partner Ned, and the three embarked on the road of revenge together.

What's obviously different from previous westerns is that there is no gratitude and enmity in "Unforgivable", there is no justice in black and white, and it even blurs the line between good people and bad people. The film only tells a story about killing people for money in the context of the west, but the story is clever enough and intriguing enough.

In the broad and rugged west, the desolate cowboy killed the peasants who were offered a reward, and the sheriff who was unscrupulous in order to maintain order. In the last rainy night, Will walked away with a white horse and disappeared.

Everyone who died in the film was not guilty of death, but whether it was killed for money or for righteousness, it showed us a shameless western region. Good people don't necessarily die well, and bad people don't necessarily get punished.

In other words, where are the good people and the bad people, in the primitive and fragile social order of the west, they all live as one person with different purposes. They are not necessarily noble or humble. Life is like an ant. Struggle in the collapse of the law of the jungle.

"Unforgivable" has largely subverted my understanding of past Westerns, and the reason why it has won unanimous recognition from audiences and awards is not only because the film is a generalization of past Westerns, but also a summary of past Westerns. A leap.

Although westerns still appeared after the film, I still stubbornly thought that "Unforgivable" was the last western film in the pure sense and the last cowboy in the pure sense.

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Extended Reading

Unforgiven quotes

  • Strawberry Alice: Just because we let them smelly fools ride us like horses don't mean we gotta let 'em brand us like horses. Maybe we ain't nothing but whores but we, by god, we ain't horses.

  • The Schofield Kid: Like I was saying, you don't look no meaner-than-hell, cold-blooded, damn killer.

    Will Munny: Maybe I ain't.

    The Schofield Kid: Yeah, well, Uncle Pete says you was the meanest goddamn son-of-a-bitch alive, and if I ever wanted a partner for a killin', you were the worst one. Meaning the best, on account as your's as cold as the snow and you don't have no weak nerve nor fear.

    Will Munny: Pete said that, huh?

    The Schofield Kid: Yeah, yeah he did. I'm a damn killer myself. 'Cept, uh, I ain't killed as many as you because of my youth.