Clint Eastwood has had one of the most remarkable careers out of any single person in all of Hollywood. Rarely does a prolific actor follow his acting career by becoming one of the greatest directors of all time. Eastwood's acting career reached its zenith with movies like The Good the Bad and the Ugly and Dirty Harry. These are among the coolest movies ever, but it is not by cool moments in his filmography that make him an important filmmaker. The moments which make Eastwood both respectable and fascinating are moment like the end of Grand Torino.
Many avoided this movie entirely (I only saw it on video), but this movie captures what Eastwood has spent the latter half of his career trying to do: Urging a change in the American Hero. The current version of the American Hero, is the one Eastwood is largely responsible for creating. He is the hero of the spaghetti western. A genre of movie which rejected the notion of white hatted good guy cowboys seen throughout the fifties and sixties (often played by John Wayne). The new cowboys wore dark hats, were perpetually covered in grime and beads of sweat, they kill men without much of a thought and break the law at their whim. They abide by a moral code, but one that is created by each character. The code is usually centered around violence and greed, yet these characters make for interesting protagonists.
Another film archetype Eastwood helped to create was in his Dirty Harry series. Here we have a similar character, one who lives outside the rules which normally govern detectives, and one who survives by his own morality. He, like the spaghetti western hero, is a violent man who takes care of criminals through horrific acts of mass murder and general ass kickery.
These two characters are the archetypes for nearly every tragic or troubled hero which followed them. All being violent, and horrible. Characters which we like to watch but would flee from in real life, because while these characters always have a scruffy charm, they also are trigger happy sociopathic killers
Eastwood, however, has attempted to show his disdain for this character most notably in two of his films. The first being Unforgiven, and the second is Gran Torino. Unforgiven is often regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, and is on the AFI's top 100 list. I think it is, however, something of a failure for Eastwood's first movie as a director, because it doesn't end like it should. Throughout the film, the retired gunman played by Eastwood is torn between the violent nature of his past, and the peaceful life of a struggling farmer and father he has grown into. Eastwood's path crosses a young boy(Jaimz Woolvett) who offers to split a bounty with him in exchange for his help killing the two men with bounties on their heads. After they pick up his old partner(Morgan Freeman) the group goes out to find and kill the men. The violence in the film (which is almost nonexistent with the exception of two parts) is brutal. The long, slow death of one of the targeted men stands is sharp contrast to the quick, clean deaths so often seen in movies.
Eastwood might on occasion lack subtlety, because if you see the clip above it's fairly plain that he is not glorifying this violence in the way movies so often do. Still, at the end of the film (Spoiler Alert!), after Freeman has been tortured and executed, Eastwood gives the moviegoers exactly what they want. He walks into the saloon and starts whoopin' ass. The characters who have never before seen violence are stand ins for the people watching the film, and, are horrified at the gruesome display. The movie glorifies that violence by this bloody ending, and though this marks the beginning of Eastwood's journey away from that kind of violence, it doesn't accomplish quite what it needs to.
Gran Torino in some ways feels like a triumphant rejection of that kind of hero, and it is appropriate for Eastwood to have made this film as his career reaches its end. These two films, Gran Torino and Unforgiven, have so much in common that it's hard not to compare the two, but if asked, I believe Eastwood would say Gran Torino is the superior film. Both contain an awful scene involving a rape and a torture. Both involve a retired man who used to live a life of violence, both share the same sort of loathing and glorification of violence, and both films slowly build towards a bloody climax. Gran Torino, however, triumphs in its ending where Unforgiven does not.* The first thing almost everyone says at the end of Gran Torino is, "Why didn't Eastwood shoot up all the gangsters?" It's disappointing to wait through a whole movie only to find Eastwood doesn't kick gook ass at the end, but it's hard not to appreciate a filmmaker who comes so close to giving his film the ending the viewers want, then utterly rejecting their desires to give the move the ending the film needs. Not using violence to end his film is in defiance to the moviegoer. Eastwood's self sacrificing gesture is a moral stand against a bulk of his previous work, and the ending still manages to feel sincere. In Gran Torino Eastwood is attempting to look past his previous roles and move towards something better. Most of the movie is spent on Eastwood growing away from the bitterness and hatred life gave him, and towards a kinder man. Shifting away from The Man With No Name, or Dirty Harry and becoming a more kind, accepting person. The end of the movies brings the gangsters to justice not through Eastwood's violence, but rather the police actually arrest them! It's unique for a film like this one, and it works wonderfully. Most of Eastwood's characters would have killed the gangsters. He did just that in Unforgiven, but this older, more mature Eastwood has found another way. He is not the violent mass murdering American Hero any longer, but rather a man who is more at peace with himself and the world around him.
I'll admit it sounds pretty wussy to write a whole essay about how Eastwood's coolest characters and best movies are bad because he plays mean people, but I don't think that. I consider many of his films to be great, but I also think that Eastwood doesn't think that those characters should be admired. Those characters might be entertaining to watch on a screen, but if we want a moral character, then the end of Gran Torino is where we should look.
*I seem to be judging Unforgiven quite harshly. I really do think it's a great movie, and a much better movie than Gran Torino. I'm judging it in a specific way so just roll with it.
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