As a filmmaker, Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Western Unforgiven is arguably the Hollywood legend’s crowning achievement, winning Best Picture and Best Director at the 65th Academy Awards. Unforgiven focuses on Eastwood in the movie’s central role as William Munny, an aging outlaw who takes on one final bounty hunter assignment to support his young children and their struggling homestead. At 62 years old when Unforgiven was released, Eastwood directly confronts his own mortality and that of Munny’s character, whose years are starting to affect his ability to care for his family, directly subverting classic representations of machismo heroes across the Western genre, as well as Clintwood’s lore as one of the genre’s most notable figures. While revisionist westerns have been rising in vogue among arthouse filmmakers since the 1970s, Unforgiven’s take on the revisionist western carried the subgenre to the forefront of film culture, paving the way for others, including The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and The Power of the Dog. Let’s look into how Unforgiven ended the sweeping cinematic Western in favor of upending the traditions of the genre that audiences have come to expect.
What Is ‘Unforgiven’ About?
Unforgiven takes place in 1878, approximately the middle of the “Wild West” period. As mentioned, Eastwood’s character William Munny is the film’s heart, a struggling pig farmer and widower left alone to raise his two young children. Near Munny’s ranch, in the growing outpost of Big Whiskey, a young sex worker suffers a gruesome knife attack by two cowboy clients after sniggering at the size of one of their members. When Big Whiskey’s shady Sheriff “Little” Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman) fails to penalize the wrongdoers, the sex workers of Big Whiskey decide to put up a $1000 bounty for their cowboy assailants. A young wannabe outlaw self-monikered the “Schofield Kid,” played by Jaimz Woolvett, chooses to pursue the bounty hunting gig, turning to Munny for assistance based on the violently valiant tales he has heard about Munny’s past. At first, Munny is reluctant to take the Kid up on his partnership offer –– referring back to his late wife’s reformation of his morality and spirit –– but the chance is too lucrative for the stumbling Munny to pass up. So, he recruits his old friend, Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), and the trio set out to collect the bounty together, which Munny swears to be the last he will ever pursue.
Eastwood Confronts His Own Myth in ‘Unforgiven’
Eastwood’s career became established thanks to parts in Westerns during the 1950s and 1960s, becoming a household name in the United States in the television classic Rawhide and a known figure in European cinema as “Man with No Name” in Sergio Leone’s iconic “Dollars Trilogy;” these Western roles aided in launching Eastwood’s career to the forefront of cinema and solidified him as the exemplary hyper-masculine character typically featured as protagonists in the Western genre. However, Unforgiven and its subversions of the traditional Western allow Eastwood to question the legend of his machismo persona as one of Hollywood’s most notable men of many decades.
Munny’s character detours from the virile, burly vision of men commonly portrayed in Westerns; the pigs he raises on his ranch drag him through the mud, he falls off his horse after many attempts to mount it, and opts to use a shotgun on his bounty hunt instead of a pistol, which requires much more precise handling and accuracy. This “gone to seed” image of Eastwood in the role of Munny diverts drastically from his early performances in Westerns, shattering the ideas that audiences harbor for the actor before viewing Unforgiven. Munny’s character bears serious regrets for his past deeds, carrying the guilt from his violent history instead of using it to glorify his legendary position as a gunslinging outlaw.
Notably, storytelling and myth-making are significant themes throughout Unforgiven, with rumors of Munny’s past feats told through unconfirmed hearsay and even The Kid’s marveling mythology of Munny being based on second-hand accounts and gossip, far from the reality of truth. As learned from the movie’s epilogue, Munny chooses to abandon his life as a farmer and relocates his family to San Francisco, where he becomes a business merchant. This rejection of a life in the Wild West that he once desired displays Munny’s understanding of the depravity of his former existence as an outlaw, a consideration that would never be accepted within romantic traditions of early Westerns. Through Eastwood’s composition of Munny’s character, he can create an emotionally complex antihero, allowing viewers to revise their concepts of traditional heroes within the Western genre.
‘Unforgiven’ Subverts Norms of the Western Genre
Unforgiven works powerfully to scrutinize the concept of heroes versus villains, along with the fetishization of violence found in classic Westerns. While conventional examples from the genre clearly demarcate the good guys from the bad guys with a straightforward black-and-white approach, Unforgiven is a film that portrays the moral ambiguity in all its characters, reflecting a more naturalistic approach to character development and real life. In addition, Sheriff Daggett’s suspicious power trips subvert the ethical conventions typically used to depict the law’s keepers across Westerns in film and television. The movie’s climactic shootout scenes are far from impressive, but purposely so; dishonorable ambushes and messy, drawn-out confrontations are employed to further confirm the nefarious violence taken out by Unforgiven’s virtuously corrupt personalities. While traditional Westerns commonly find methods of justifying violence as intrinsically integral to the structure of the work, Unforgiven operates with intriguing ways to portray violence while including contemporary criticisms.
Unforgiven’s overthrow of conventional masculinity is clearly pronounced through its male characters and their actions. The inciting incident with the assault of the young sex worker in the bordello at the movie’s opening explicitly depicts masculine insecurity; the cowboy utilizes a knife as a violent phallic when he fails to impress with his own physique. This early moment is crucial in understanding the film’s condemnation of the traditions of the Western genre and its adherence to idealizing men as macho killing machines. Another intriguing anatomical presentation of male uncertainty in Unforgiven is portrayed through the discovery of the Kid’s near-sightedness, which keeps him from having an accurate shot in most situations. This insecurity places a massive weight on the character, keeping him from becoming the worshiped gunslinger he aspires to be, and also leads him to his most debatable ethical moment when he chooses to assail an outlaw while he is using the outhouse.
‘Unforgiven’ Puts Women at the Center of the Story
Female characters often exist on the periphery of the Western genre, but in Unforgiven, their actions are what ultimately drive the narrative of the film. Although the sex workers in Big Whiskey are treated like the property of their male employers, they are ultimately the party that decides to seek justice for their misfortunes, pulling together the bounty that is taken on by Munny and his compatriots and initiating the action of the movie. Even as prostitutes –– a profession often used in Westerns to devalue women –– these ladies have a much more decisive concept of what is virtuously just in comparison to the male characters, making them the unlikely moral compass of Unforgiven. Although she passed away before the film’s start, Munny’s late wife still serves as the savoir of his spirit, helping him to leave his life as an outlaw behind in favor of a more uncorrupted existence. The movie begins and ends at her grave site, and Munny frequently refers to her pure essence when making his own choices. When the Kid first appeals to Munny to do one last bounty-hunting job, he mentions his wife, saying, “I ain’t touched a drop in ten years. My wife, she cured me of it… cured me of drink an’ wickedness.” This presence of his late love in all of his choice-making is a nuanced disruption of the traditional male heroic figure in Westerns, separating Munny from the idea of a rugged, independent-thinking man
Many would agree that Unforgiven is the greatest triumph for Eastwood as a filmmaker, even when looking at the entirety of his 40+ works as a director. The movie takes familiar tropes and flips them upside down, shattering traditional Westerns and popularizing concepts of the Revisionist Western in film culture; ideas that would go on to inspire many other takes on the genre, which has fascinated film lovers since the inception of the art form. In addition, the film’s unique self-reflexivity allows Eastwood to investigate his own mythical status as one of the silver screen’s most influential figures.
Audiences in the United States can find Unforgiven streaming on HBO Max.