UNFORGIVEN 20th ANNIVERSARY BLU-RAY Book Review
By: RAMA
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UNFORGIVEN 20th ANNIVERSARY BLU-RAY BOOK Own It On Blu-Ray. Street Date: February 21, 2012.
20 years since Clint Eastwood’s masterpiece captivated audience with its strikingly beautiful cinematography, a reflective and profound story and a group of monumental performances, and now UNFORGIVEN has arrived in blu-ray in all its glory. A packet that will sure engage fans of cinema and fans of western, specifically. The bonus features contain behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, and how this project came to be. Watching the film again on blu-ray , it hits me how similar some of the themes are to Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men…
Synopsis:
Helmed by Eastwood from a script by David Webb Peoples (Blade Runner, Twelve Monkeys), Unforgiven also won 1993 Oscars for Best Editing (awarded to long time Eastwood collaborator Joel Cox) and best supporting actor (Gene Hackman)
Unforgiven is a modern classic that “summarizes everything I feel about the western” said Eastwood. In this American Film Institute Top-100 American Movies selection, Eastwood and Morgan Freeman play retired outlaws who pick up their guns one last time to collect a bounty offered by the vengeful prostitutes of the remote Wyoming town of Big Whiskey. Richard Harris is an ill-fated killer-for-hire; Hackman is the sly and brutal local sheriff whose brand of law enforcement ranges from unconventional to ruthless.
The blu-ray packet’s design in itself is intriguing, it’s a book, they even call it the book edition. The cover and its insides carry tons of information about what attracted Eastwood to the script by Peoples and why the cameras didn’t start rolling til later on. It’s good to know that Eastwood never lost hope in the script and that he eventually gotten around to doing this film and convincing everyone involved that this was one story that needed to be told. Greatness takes its time, doesn’t it?!
It’s as if all the western movies Eastwood had done in the past have led him up to this point of UNFORGIVEN, and I can see why that is. The character William Munny has a deadly past, a reputation that precedes him, everybody had heard of his cruelty, his merciless, violent acts that did not discriminate. But he’s not that man anymore, he’s in his twilight years now, his wife who’d changed him for the better had died for the past 3 years and he lived his day to day sticking to his wife’s values, principals and philosophies, while working the farm and raising his two young children, the age difference is so distant, they look young enough to be his grandkids.
In a way, at least to me, UNFORGIVEN is Eastwood’s way of saying goodbye to his western past. But UNFORGIVEN is one of those one last job movies where the character reluctantly chooses to put on his old mantle just so he and his loved ones could survive. The rest of the film will show whether or not that old self is still in him all along.
There’s a line in the movie where Munny emphasized that whatever happens next, it’s not going to change the new man that he is. Easier said than done and the ambitious man who travels with them, embodies the act first think later philosophy until he faces his own consequences and doesn’t like the man he’s become. Does your actions change you or can you separate what you do from who you choose to be? That’s what I think is the underlying theme and the very essence that makes UNFORGIVEN a timeless, relatable film.
UNFORGIVEN doesn’t glorify violence, it emphasizes that when violence is the first and only option, everyone loses, The protagonist, the unlikely hero, Wiliam Munny gets to live to see tomorrow, that’s not even a spoiler anymore, but even he would have to live with the fact that he got his friend into this mess and indirectly led him to his violent death. That is something that would hang over Munny’s conscience for the rest of his days.
Everyone in this film thinks they do what they do because it’s right and necessary, so even the antagonist Little Bill, superbly played by the great Hackman, thinks that he’s on the right side, because he’s doing his job, his methods may seem questionable and initimidating to the rest of the townsfolk but in his head, end justifies the means, you do what must be done otherwise he’d lose all control he has on the town.
The three start out excited about going back on the saddle and killing again but once the reality hits them, the idea becomes rather disgusting and repulsive to them. The depth of UNFORGIVEN and its effort to champion the high road will stay with you for days.
UNFORGIVEN The Blu-Ray book contains 54 pages of behind-the-scenes filmmaking insight, rare Eastwood observations, photos, trivia, and more. The set’s bonus features include 4 documentaries, commentary, and a classic Maverick TV episode featuring Eastwood. It costs $34.99 to won it but trust me when I say you get your money’s worth.
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