Trollheart

True Western

If ever a movie was made that showed the stark, unalterable, unvarnished truth behind the tales of heroism, bravery and daring beloved of those who write about the “Wild West”, this is it. Munny may have once been a bad, evil, scary man who would shoot you as soon as look at you, and who inspired fear in everyone by the very mention of his name; a man whose fame and the tales of whose exploits would have drawn gunslinger after gunslinger into conflict with him, eager to dethrone the king, eager to prove themselves the next big thing, eager to take down the boss. He may have been all those things once, and perceived that way, but that was then and this is now. When The Kid asks him about some incident in the mythology that has grown up around his life, he tells him he doesn't recollect. He may be playing the event down, but it may also be true to say that he really doesn't remember. He's much older now, weaker and he would say a better man, or striving to be one, thanks to his late wife. He has hung up his gun and ridden his last horse (or so he thinks) into danger and adventure, and wants to put all his gun-toting days behind him. Maybe he makes himself forget, or tries to, or maybe it's just advancing age and the strain of too much whiskey and too many bullet wounds, but William Munny is no longer the man he was, much less the legend he has become, or that people have tried to make him, maybe even against his will.

This could not be demonstrated any more clearly or harshly than in the scene where Little Bill encounters him alone in the saloon, and proceeds to kick the living shit out of him. Conscious that the man is unarmed, and not caring who he is, the sheriff kicks him and sneers as Munny crawls along the floor, trying to avoid the blows. At one point, he grabs his whiskey bottle, intending to use it as a weapon to defend himself, but almost as if his erstwhile ally is turning on him, the bottle slips from his hand as he is knocked back to the floor, potential salvation --- which had been intent on being his damnation until his wife saw fit to try to change him --- snatched from his grasp.

The pathetic sight of the once-feared gunfighter cowering as he tries to evade the blows, and the somewhat shocked faces of Bill's men as they watch their boss sadistically lay into what they see to be an old drunk are telling, too: even they can see this is over the top, and perhpas some of them are seeing the real sadist in the sheriff, a man who enjoys beating defenceless people up and is no respecter of age.

But it's not just William Munny that's lying there, panting and gasping in the rain on the sodden ground outside the saloon, hoping he's not going to die. It's every gunfighter, every hero of the West, every pistolero and cowboy and rebel and desperado that ever walked, rode and fought his way through the pages of a western novel or whooped his way across the silver screen. In a very real way, this is Eastwood showing us the true West, where while a man's livelihood --- indeed, his very life --- and certainly his reputation could depend on his being faster on the draw than the other guy, every time, when old age crept up on him it gave no points for scores mounted up while the man was young: now he's old, and his past exploits don't matter a damn. In the same way as he, in his younger days, would pass by and narrow his eyes at some old-timer sitting on a bench or propping up a bar, he now is the old-timer, and the world is viewing him through the slit and narrowed eyes of the present, where his adventures years ago count for precisely nothing.

In the end, you can live on your legend --- real or built up by others --- for so long, but eventually time and age will claim you, and the harsh bitter truth comes home to roost like a dark raven alighting on your shoulder, and you know that your number is up. There will be no more heroic deeds, no more last-chance gunfights, no time to draw anymore. The other guy is finally quicker than you, and he's looking at you thoughtfully from behind a cowl as he leans on his scythe. All things pass, and so must even a legend pass into history, and the Old West must make way for the new.

Why do I love this movie?

I love the honesty in it. It's never once denied that Munny was a badass, but those days are long behind him now and he is a pale shadow of his former self. It's also almost a case of “Godfatherism” --- ”I keep tryin' to get out, they keep pullin' me back in!” --- where Munny has voluntarily, for the sake of his wife and his kids, left his old life behind, has quit drinking and settled down to the boring and unrewarding life of a farmer, but is denied this retirement when he is dragged back to his darker days, both to (I suppose) impress or at least not disappoint the youngster who seems to idolise him, and to make some decent money.

I love the way it's driven on three separate imperatives. Firstly, and most importantly of course, it's money. William is not making much of a living, scraping out an existence as a poor farmer, and a share of that rumoured thousand dollars would certainly help the lives of he and his kids. Then there's the outrage, the almost chivalrous need to ride to the ladies' defence. It's charming, but almost out of character with the West. In general, women --- especially whores --- were treated with almost contempt by the men, and the idea that anyone would seek to avenge an attack on one is pretty ludicrous by itself. Put it with a cash reward though, and suddenly everyone's Sir Lancelot. Given that, though, it's fair to say that for this trio there is certainly a sense of wounded chivarly at play. Munny, though he probably killed women and children, as he says himself later, is outraged and angry that anyone could treat a woman that way, perhaps because he himself did the same sort of thing, and wants now, at the end, to try to make up for it.

The Kid is idealistic and really does think he's riding to the rescue. For him, the money is secondary, although he goes on about it a lot. He's not really that interested. He's young, after all. Plenty of time to make his fortune. But to ride with William Munny, the legendary gunslinger, and to take on those cowboys in the name of revenge and the settlement of honour, that's far more important and it will make his name from one state to another if he can pull it off. Ned, of course, really just comes out of boredom and a sense of loyalty to his friend.

So there's chivalrous intentions, the greed for money and the need to prove themselves. Even Munny, old now and well past this sort of thing, must feel that he has still something to show the world, one last hurrah before the end, one more time before he really does this time hang up his gun. Once more unto the breach, pardners, once more! He probably realises fairly soon that he has bitten off more than he can chew, but he is not a man to back away from something once he has undertaken it. Even when Ned quits after they shoot the first cowboy, and Munny probably wants to follow him, he holds true to his promise, perhaps one of the few things he can continue to hold on to, the only real proof he still can offer that he is a man.

Then there's the downbeat tone of the movie. There's no whoopin' and hollerin' and shootin' up the town. When men are killed, it's shown to be a dark, gritty, unpleasant business. There's no honour in it. There's no joy in it. It's a job, simple as that. You kill them or they kill you. And wehn Munny is being beaten up in the bar, every moment you keep expecting him to whirl and take on Bill, his familar sneer and growl coming back, a six-shooter, carefully concealed, coming into play as he blasts away. But it never happens. The “old” Munny does not resurface, and the properly old Munny is all that's left; he must take the beating and then drag himself out into the wet streets like a dog, because he literally has nothing left that he can fight back with. To a degree, too, he may see and feel in the flying boots of Little Bill as they impact his body every cowboy and rancher, every farmer and banker, every man and woman he ever wronged screaming their dark delight and their delight as his battered body is subjected to their long-delayed revenge. All the anger, all the pride, all the cocksureness has been leeched from him, both by time and by a patient wife who has tried her best to turn him onto the road of salvation, little realising that this could in fact lead him to his death.

In fact, the first time we see the old Eastwood character surface is when he's told that Ned has been killed. Then we see the spark return to those tired eyes, the fires light behind them. Now there's really something to avenge: now real life has kicked the adventure into the dust and he's staring at a woman sorrowfully telling him his best friend --- who was not even supposed to be coming on the quest and who had quit and was heading home --- has been murdered by Little Bill. Now, let the whole world beware, cos The Man With No Name is comin', and Hell's about three paces behind him!

Even the confrontation is kind of low-key, in keeping with the overall non-exciting, non-sensationalist tone of the movie. There's no two men facing each other in the street to see who's quicker on the draw. There's no prolonged battle or chase. Munny's rifle jams but he quickly produces his pistol and shoots all around him dead. Bill goes down easily, though he doesn't die right away, and Munny has the satisfaction of looking into his eyes before ending his life forever. He then leaves, unopposed, like an avenging wind blowing in from across the desert, or a cleansing fire sweeping all before it. At this point he's no longer a broken-down old man: he has regained something of his old self, spurred by the unnecessary and ignominous death of his friend, and he is once again a force to be reckoned with, an irresistable power against which nobody can stand. But when the job is done --- and he seems to take little pleasure in it --- he rides out of town and back to his farm, returning to the life he was leading before The Schofield Kid crossed his path.

I even love the music. Far from being the uptempo, exciting, stirring music of adventure that used to colour westerns, this is a far more downbeat, laidback and slow score --- when it's there: much of the movie has no music soundtrack at all --- and is almost more suitable to a lazy day on the river than to the taking of men's lives. The entire thing can almost be taken as a metaphor for a man sleeping in the sun, waking for a moment to fire off a shot that kills someone he needs to kill, and then tipping his hat back over his eyes to ward off the bright light, slipping back into a doze.

Message in the movie

Well it couldn't be clearer, could it? It is not cool to kill people and murder, even in the old West, was murder no matter how you dressed it up. But lying beneath this very simple premise is a much deeper one. Munny wants to leave his former life behind, but does he really? When he gets the chance to go hunting down these cowboys he originally declines, but then changes his mind. Why? Is it purely the money that has attracted his interest? Or is it something more? Does he, at the back of it all, yearn for the old days of adventure and excitement, and though he would never admit it to the spirit of his dead wife, chafe to be back in the saddle and feel a gun in his hand again? Has he, really, changed at all, or is he just pretending, to himself most of all?

So the message then might be: to thine own self be true. Munny knows he's a killer: he says it near the end --- “I killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time” --- and those sort of sins can't be blotted out by a few years of honest living. Does he in fact think that perhaps he's not worthy of salvation, that he is after all damned? Does he go to meet his fate, thinking, perhaps hoping, that he will meet his maker, and that in so doing he can make up for all the lives he has taken by offering his own? If not, then why is it that he allows himself to be beaten and kicked in the saloon, but later rides into town like an avenging angel? If this was within him all along, why did he not use it then? Does he, on some deep and subconscious level, want to be punished?

There's also the Kid: he wants to make his name, and at first pretends --- boasts --- that he has killed five men, when in fact he has never even taken one life. When he does kill, it affects him so badly that he never wants to handle a gun again. He tells Munny “I ain't like you” and it's with a certain amount of horror that he could have become like his erstwhile hero, and thankfulness that he has not. So The Schofield Kid finds his own kind of salvation, almost despite himself, by seeing what sort of man he could end up being. He discovers that despite his bravado, he has not really got the stomach for killing.

So the message returns to being one of forbearance: murder is wrong, no matter in whose name or under what banner you fly it. When Munny shoots Little Bill down, he doesn't care that the sheriff isn't armed. To him, at this point, honour means nothing. It's just an excuse, and he doesn't need any excuse to kill the man who has murdered his best friend. He kills Skinny for the same reason, though it's fair to assume that the owner of the saloon probably had little choice in whether or not Ned was displayed outside his business. Munny doesn't care: to him, they're all tarred with the one brush and he will extract his cold vengeance from them all.

But if there's one clear message that stands out above all of these, it's this: the “Wild Wild West” was not the easy-going, goodies-and-baddies, go-fer-yer-gun rough and ready utopia that Hollywood spoonfed us through the early and later part of the twentieth century. It was a hard place, a tough place, unforgiving and relentless, bleak and pitiless and cold and life could be short and if it wasn't then it damn well was hard. All these smiling cowboys twirling their Colt 45s and tipping their hats to the ladies are nothing more than the construct of film-makers and the writers of western novels, and in the same way that movies such as “Schindler's list”, “Saving Private Ryan” and “Apocalypse now” showed the true, harsh, cold and bloody face of war, “Unforgiven” shows us the unvarnished, drooling, snarling, spittle-faced, shit-caking-your-pants and blood congealing on dusty streets that must really have been the West as it was carved out of the bones of America. Men --- and women --- died to tame that land, and this movie, while it doesn't completely pay homage to them, reminds us that they were real people, not actors and movie props and amalgamations of legends, stories and often outright lies.

It's the real West here compadre, and if you don't like it, then you best just ride on out of town. This here place's called Truth, and it don't have too much of a population.

THE STARS OF THE SHOW

Morgan Freeman has never been a favourite actor of mine, and here I feel he does his usual, the quiet, low-key character who talks a lot but doesn't do a whole lot. If anything, he's little more than a catalyst to set the real William Munny free by his violent death. Hackman is good in the part of Little Bill, but does not really have enough screen time to make his presence felt properly, in my opinion. No, for me, there are only two real stars here.

Clint Eastwood (duh!) as William Munny.
There could, really, be only one man who could have pulled this off without making it seem like some sort of parody, or overblown. Both acting in and directing the movie, the man with whom westerns became as synonymous in the sixties and seventies as they did with Wayne and Cooper in the forties and fifties makes this a triumph. Not because it showcases him, his character, or even to be fair his acting, which really is nothing terribly great. But because he was the spokesman for the western, the original nameless stranger, the drifter who appeared out of the dust and blew into town, usually killed a lot of people and drifted out almost with as little fuss as he blew in. If anyone was going to hammer in the final nail to the coffin of a genre that had been overexploited, lampooned, copied and bastardised for far too long, Eastwood was the man.

Almost sneering at his own roles in movies such as “For a few dollars more”, “Pale rider” and “The good, the bad and the ugly”, Eastwood presents us with a man who has blazed a trail across the West, a trail of blood and fire, a trail of dead bodies and crying widows, and laced no doubt with gold bullion from many robberies. A trail seeded with treachery and betrayal, perhaps with some kind of love and certainly with a lot of hate, and all deeply drowned in almost bottomless barrels of cheap whiskey. He rides his horse almost like a man in a dream, or a daze, kind of unable to believe he's doing what he's doing at his age, and perhaps slightly amused by the turn fate has taken for him. But he also may --- subconsciously or not --- want to impress the young kid, or indeed, he may want to not impress him, to show him, rather like Cagney at the end of “Angels with dirty faces”, that he is no hero, no god, no legend, but just a man, and a bad man at that. Not someone to emulate, not someone to venerate and certainly not someone in whose footsteps the Kid should try to walk.

He surely sees something of himself in the brash young Schofield Kid, who brags about the men he has killed and keeps pestering Ned for stories of Munny's exploits. As I've already said, he may also want to prove to himself that he can still do this, or even that he cannot, and should he survive, he will be happy to (as he does) return to his life on the farm and take care of his children, although the end lines of the movie hint that he may have moved to San Francisco, no doubt on the back of his newfound wealth after receiving the reward.

Eastwood is perfect in the role of the man who has been more or less constrained to go back to his own life, knows he is not really up to the task, and is anxious to get the job done and go back home. However, his almost absent-minded amusement disappears like ice under boiling water when he has to man up and avenge his friend, when the reality of their situation makes itself plain to him, and he must once again don the cloak of vengeance, this time righteous, and for once, as he says himself, sobre.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018