I like Clint Eastwood and I like Westerns. Yet, I don’t think Unforgiven is a very good movie. Unforgiven won a Best Picture Oscar. Why?
Is there something I’m missing?
Because it was a brilliant re-examination of the entire Western genre. Possibly Eastwood’s masterpiece, although *Bird *is up there too.
I’ve seen almost every Eastwood movie. I think the following are better:
For a Few Dollars More
A Fistful of Dollars
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Play Misty for Me
The Bridges of Madison County
Escape from Alcatraz
In the Line of Fire
Outlaw Josey Wales
*Million Dollar Baby *wasn’t my type of movie either.
If, as you say, you love Westerns and Clint Eastwood’s other work, it would be a matter of comparing the values demonstrated in his earlier work and those displayed in Unforgiven. The heavy dosage of irony in what Munny says and what he does is intended (as I see it) to lay the whole premise of Westerns as “morality tales” into stark focus as so much bullshit. To show the world that Eastwood has been making good money off a blatant lie is (again as I see it) what his main point was. The Academy saw the irony and gave him a prize for it (along with the not quite too late recognition for a lot more excellent work than just this one movie).
The other nominees for Best Picture 1992 were:
The Crying Game
A Few Good Men
Howard’s End
Scent of a Woman
The Crying Game was a better movie than Unforgiven. Unforgiven is better than the other 3. Fairly weak year.
I also thought it was a very weak winner. He lost me when he left the kids.
I would not put it anywhere near the classic Westerns such as Shane or the Searchers. Heck, I think Silverado is a better movie than Unforgiven 
IIRC, it was also the first one where Eastwood showed his obsession with aging, which has permeated all of his work ever since.
Good basic point, but have you seen The Crying Game more than that once?
When you say Unforgiven isn’t good, what aspects of it were a disappointment for you?
I loved A Few Good Men. It was an old school style classic.
Industry awards like the Oscars are only rarely about who was “Best of Show” that year. There are political considerations. Eastwood wasn’t just being awarded for the one movie, but for a body of work that was otherwise unlikely to get him the degree of recognition he deserved.
The award was actually for “Being Freakin’ Clint Eastwood in an Industry Full of Tom Arnolds and Eugene Levys.” And it was long overdue.
But John Ford (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) and Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch) got there way first. Unforgiven was hardly either the first or best of revisionist Westerns; if not for the outstanding performances by Francis Fisher, Morgan Freeman, and Gene Hackman (“I guess you think I’m kicking you, Bob. But it ain’t so. What I’m doing is talking, you hear?”) it wouldn’t be half the movie it is. Eastwood does fine at deconstructing his own image as a fearless, unstoppable gunfighter, but the reason it won, methinks, is that it was a commercially and critically successful Western after everyone though Westerns were dead and buried. (Irionically, perhaps, it came along after a string of mediocre, hack-genre Westerns like The Young Guns and Silverado.)
I still think Eastwood’s best Western was High Plains Drifter. Eastwood has done some great work as a director (his recent Oscar-bait films notwithstanding), but both Bird and White Hunter Black Heart were better films than Unforgiven.
Stranger
I think Unforgiven was the first film that really showed what Eastwood can do as a director – and in my opinion he’s a much better director than he ever was an actor – he’s one of the great contemporary American directors.
I think both the Best Picture and Best Director wins for Unforgiven were well-deserved.
Of course it’s totally subjective, but I think The Crying Game is the only other nominated picture that comes close to Unforgiven – and it’s actually pretty uneven. Unforgiven is a damned-near perfect movie.
There’s no question the Oscars are about politics and popularity at LEAST as much as they are about quality. I can’t for the life of me think of a year when the Best Picture winner was anywhere near being the actual best picture made that year. Still, I think *Unforgiven *was far and away the best picture among the five nominees that year. Howard’s End is a good movie; The Crying Game is an OK movie; A Few Good Men is a bad movie; Scent of a Woman is a wretched, wretched movie. *Unforgiven *is the only movie among the bunch that approaches greatness.
And I also agree that to a certain extent–a great extent–Eastwood’s award was something of a “lifetime achievement” award. It was given in recognition that Eastwood had established himself as a Serious Director; a director of lasting works that reflect well on Hollywood as a whole.
I don’t think it is so much an obsession as he is playing characters that are his actual age. In In The Line Of Fire he is 63, playing a SS agent getting near the point of having to retire. In Absolute Power, an aging crook wanting to connect with his daughter. These are the kinds of things that people do worry about and deal with as they get older. The fact that his characters are doing them makes the characters more real.
What would really be interesting would be to see how one of his old characters dealt with aging. Can you imagine Harry Callahan at 76? He could only be a cop, but he can’t do that anymore. :dubious:
See also: Paul Newman winning best actor for “The Color of Money”. It was a decent performance in a pretty good movie, but Newman probably had 20 other performances that were better, for which he won nothing. And since he was getting up there in years, it wasn’t clear how many more opportunities the Academy would have to give him an Oscar.
That said, I think ‘Unforgiven’ is a classic, and was certainly the most deserving movie of that year. I think ‘The Crying Game’ was overrated.
The real outlier in that group of movies was “Scent of a Woman”. It was an okay movie, bust best picture of the year nominee?
Okay, having looked at a list of Notable Releases for 2002, maybe it did belong on the list. What a sucky year for movies. This was also the year that Marisa Tomei won best actress for “My Cousin Vinny”.
Of course. But *Unforgiven *is its own movie; it does not simply rehash those two previous masterpieces.
I never said it was. The Western can stand up to a LOT of revisionism. It won’t be the last revisionist Western either; maybe there will be greater examples still to be made in the future. I’m not grading on a scale here: I’m responding to the value of a single work.
This puzzles me. “Without the good stuff, it wouldn’t be as good.” Um, OK.
This suggests that any successful Western that came along would automatically win an Oscar. I think there’s a great deal more to it than that.
Young Guns sucked. *Silverado *is a hoot; what’s his name’s best movie.
I think *High Plains Drifter *is among Eastwood’s weakest; goes to show. I agree that his grand-master Oscar lunges are embarrassing. I agree that *Bird *and White Hunter Black Heart are masterpieces.
I think Eastwood’s greatest masterpiece is still to come, if I can only find a way to talk him into starring Gene Hackman in a biopic of John Ford. The time is now. The title will be Print the Legend.
Consider this year’s nominations. All the movie buffs I’ve heard say that Capote deserves to be Best Picture. Most of these same people, however, are sure that Brokeback Mountain is the one that’s going to win.
What was meant by that statement is that Eastwood’s performance is capable but not great, and neither the story nor dialog are particularly strong; thematically, the first two films are much richer. One can imagine The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with someone else in the lead role–indeed, his ingenue personality aside, Stewart wasn’t particularly great in the role–and it would still carry the same weight.
I agree with Krokodil and you that the Oscar was basically a sop thrown to Eastwood for his body of work in a year of otherwise mediocre candidates. Whether that credible entitles Eastwood to the statuette or not, I don’t really have an opinion. But if Unforgiven is a masterpiece, it’s a very minor one.
As for the Oscars themselves…meh. Self-congratulatory fellatio of, by, and for the studios. That anyone takes the Oscars seriously is a demonstration of the pervasiveness and effectiveness of marketing over taste and critical thought. Occasionally they get it right with their selections, but then, so does a broken clock.
Stranger
**Unforgiven ** was the best of the 5 nominated movies as others have said, but why the slamming of Silverado, I am watching it right now on HBO and it was a good, fun movie. No oscar contender but a solid piece of entertainment with a lot of big actors before they were big yet.
Great support from the likes of Cleese & Goldblum & Whitfield.
Back to Unforgiven, the talk of the pre-oscars that year was that it was a weak field and they could hand out some life-time achievement awards.
Jim
I think lissener nailed it on the head. It was a great movie, quite possibly one of the best westerns since Rustler’s Rhapsody starring Tom Berenger and Andy Griffith, and one of Clint’s finest movies ever.
Marc