This is a outstanding movie with enough drama,gripping plotline and terrific acting by all the lead actors.
I fail to get the anti violence theme in this …
If the movie has to have the anti-violence tone, there should be characters who can get violent, but resists it and gets over the temptation, gradually…
Here Munny and co gets sucked into the vortex of violence easily and they fall for the lure of the gun. It shows that ultimately, humans cannot correct their actions, and a sort of higher power controls it…
In the final shootout scene, it comes out so clearly that violence wins…
I know I am missing something, since it is hailed for its’ anti violence message…
It takes a realistic view (more realistic than most Westerns) of violence. It shows just how ugly violence really is in life. There are no clean beatings or deaths in the movie like in the typical Western. We see the toll that violence has had on Eastwood’s character. But at the same time the movie does not deny that violence works.
The real anti-violence message in the movie is not that violence is just bad and should be totally avoided. It is that violence has costs. Eastwood is a shell of man. Hackman and Freeman are dead.
The character to pay attention to is the reporter. He is kind of a stand in the audience. He comes in wanting the typical Western story with all the fun violence that solves all the problems. And he gets way more. Or watch how the scenes do not cut like in a typical Western. They continue on to allow the violence to get uglier and uglier.
To me, it shows how horrible violence really is. Munny only lets ‘true violence’ out at the very last confrontation. Everyone in that bar thinks they are the shit for killing his friend Ned and displaying the body like a trophy. Munny knows that killing is nothing to brag about and he teaches them that lesson.
You also have the character of the nearsighted wannabe gunslinger. He is so upset when he actually kills one of the men he is supposed to that he quits the qun slinger game right then.
There’s also an anti-violence message in the development of the young would-be gunslinger’s character: Just one real-life kill, a clean kill from which he gets away free, and he’s ready to give up on the whole idea of a career in assassination.
Munny is so tightly wrapped for most of the film, that when he finally takes that slow drink after learning of Ned’s murder, you can actually see the change take place on his face. It’s very scary, as it shows you exactly what’s coming.
But it’s also a very realistic portrait of violent people. No one in this film is “all bad” or a cartoon villain or “good guy.” Each has good and bad, right and wrong, violence and mercy, existing together. Little Bill is a sincere man, even when he’s kicking the shit out of you. But seriously, he sees himself as a good man who has to do bad things to maintain order.
There’s also the scene where they shoot the first target, and he’s screaming and crying while he’s bleeding to death. He’s begging for water, and Munny even yells down “Bring him some water for Chrissakes! We ain’t gonna shoot ya!” Very tough scene to watch, and very different from the standard Western where you shoot someone, he falls over dead, move on.
Here’s the text of (IMHO) one of the movie’s most important exchanges:
The message is that the consequences of violence are dire and permanent. Even though there may be cases where violence is an appropriate response, it is not to be undertaken lightly.
The thing is, Muny killing Little Bill in the bar isn’t a victory for him. It’s a defeat. it means he has gone back to being the guy he was before, and he hates that guy.
I would ask the OP what he think the title means. To be Unforgiven, one must have (a) someone doing the forgiving in the first place, and (b) someone doing something past forgivness. I think if you ask yourself these questions, you’ll find some answers as to how the anti-violence expressed in the film works.
For all his condemnation of violent men, Little Bill proudly considers himself one. He brags about how most violent guys are just a bunch of drunks with no character. He says how there are so few real dangerous men like himself and English Bob.
The film also takes an anti-alcohol stand. Munny says that “drinkin’ did most of it” and “I was drunk most of the time.” He says that the drover he shot didn’t do anything to deserve it, at least nothing he could remember after sobering up. Little Bill emphasizes English Bob’s drunkeness when he shot Two-Gun McCorcoran. And Munny’s reversion to a killer coincides with a draught of hard licquor.
The ambiguities of the film make for a hell of a story. All the hurts and misunderstandings that go unresolved are so realistic. The first cowboy to get shot tried to make good on his buddy’s assault and was met with anger and hostility. The same guy who actually tried to pull Big Mike off of Delilah ends up dying for his relationship to a brutal asshole with inadequacy issues.
Can you imagine the outrage if that film was shown to a 1930’s crowd right after a Roy Rogers flick? They’d shit their pants in the first 10 minutes.
That’s the sad truth. They’d be uspet about cussin’ and sex but not about men shooting, whipping and assaulting each other. Hell, they’d be more upset about Delilah throwing piss on Big Mike than Big Mike slicing up her face.
The graphic nature of the violence would have been extremely upsetting to a movie audience in the 1930s. Then, when a cowboy shot someone, he grimaced, went “urrgh,” and fell down. You didn’t see him screaming for mercy while sitting on the shitter and then have blood explode out of his chest when he was shot.
Another important point in the film is that Munny knows exactly what he is doing when he takes that drink. Earlier in the film he’s totally yucked out with a cold and, even tho’ encouraged, refuses a drink to feel better.
When he takes a shot after Ned’s murder, it’s on purpose. Not because he’s upset, not because he doesn’t have control of himself, but for the specific purpose of showing the townspeople exactly how mean he can be.
Then he goes home and stops drinking (we assume) again.
Right, modern directors like to have it both ways. Condemn violence while at the same time laying it all out on the screen as graphically as possible for the entertainment of the audience. It’s a neat trick, it enables them to pack as much violence in as possible and yet still claim the moral high ground.
And that’s one of the things I think I liked most about it, when I reflected after first viewing (caught it in the theater way back when): there are no good characters. Everyone’s dirty in some way.
Unforgiven is on my list of the 10 best movies of all time.
I always felt that this movie was about human nature, not about anti-violence. What I took away from this is that human nature will always revert to type in stressful situations; that man can’t change, only his observable symptoms may be modified to mask his innate nature. Munny was a pig-farmer of necessity, but a killer and a sociopath at heart. The Scofield Kid put on a tough veneer, but when it came down to it, violence sickened him and the act of killing someone else killed a part of him.
The whole film turns the standard Hollywood western on it’s head. For starters, the “bounty” being offered was a flat-out murder for hire contract (as in fact many real-life “bounties” actually were in the real West.) Far from embracing the idea of the wide open frontier town, the sheriff actually enforces a gun ban. The protagonists aren’t heroes (except to the extent that they think they’re avenging the “mutilation” of a woman), yet they aren’t black-hat gloating villains either- they basically are just men willing to kill someone they don’t know to escape poverty. The saloon girls are harlots who live sordid lives with no respect or social standing. Munny finally “wins” to whatever extent it can be said he does, by pretending to be the nigh-invincible bad man of the penny dreadfuls, only to give up life on the frontier altogether and moving his family back east.
But seriously, he sees himself as a good man who has to do bad things to maintain order.