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30 Great Westerns
“Deserve’s got nothing to do with it."
Clint Eastwood’s William Munny spits out these words as he prepares to kill Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman), and no finer epitaph was ever spoken.
Unforgiven is dark, depressing, and full of failed figures. Munny’s failure as a pig farmer mirrors his failure at reformation through the love of a good Christian woman. In discussing the virtues of his dead wife to Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman) and the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolnett), Munny lacks sincerity. He dismisses his past--"I ain’t like that anymore, kid . . . My wife, she cured me of that, cured me of drink and wickedness." But his pleas sound more like memorized denials than truthful convictions and as the film evolves, Munny’s past darkness reemerges (reminiscent of Gary Cooper’s past demons in Anthony Mann’s Man of the West), tainting his usual avenging angel figure.
Eastwood’s two partners also come to realize that "deserve’s got nothing to do with it." The Schofield Kid wanted to become a famed outlaw, but after shooting a man sitting in an outhouse, he laughs while crying, "Three shots and he was taking a shit." There’s no glory in killing and justifications don’t fit. "Well, I guess he had it coming," the Kid says, fighting back emotion. Munny refuses to absolve him. "We all have it coming, kid." Ned, too, can’t stomach the killing, because it seems undeserved. He rides along to help out his old friend, Will, but when they shoot an unarmed kid off a horse, hit him in the belly and watch him slowly die while complaining of an unquenchable thirst, Ned, speechless, looks at Munny and shortly thereafter abandons the quest.
And sheriff Gene Hackman (Academy Award winner for best supporting actor), too, is a failure. His characterization echoes the Ahab-like hubris of Tom Dunson in Red River, representing another monarch who rules poorly. Little Bill doesn’t justly punish the men who cut-up Delilah (played with fragile vulnerability by Anna Thomson), a prostitute. Instead, he treats her like property, demanding that Quick Mike and his sidekick bring in some good horses from the T-Bar ranch as reparations. The other prostitutes aren’t pleased with this decision and place a bounty on the two men’s heads. Their actions aren’t deserved either (should the men be killed for what they did?). Later Bill further rules poorly, sadistically whupping an unarmed English Bob (Richard Harris) in the middle of the street, and after capturing Ned, another bounty hunter, he whips him and threatens, "I’m going to hurt you . . . not gentle like before, but bad," and he does.
Little Bill’s flawed, unfinished house becomes a metaphor for his and all of the characters’ shortcomings. Similar to the home’s odd angles and leaking holes, nothing in this film fits, nothing seems deserved. But of course, all of this chaos and these Western-myth revisions set-up the much deserved ending as Munny becomes the Clint Eastwood of High Plains Drifter (1972), doing another star turn with classic lines such as "Who’s the fella that owns this shithole," and actions that explode with sudden avenging violence.
--by Grant Tracey
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