Notes from the sketch book — Going West

Gene Hackman, in a performance that rightly earned him an Oscar, carves Little Bill Daggett into something far more unsettling than your run-of-the-mill villain. In fact it wouldn't be a stretch to see this movie as having two main protagonists akin to another 90s film ‘Heat’, Daggart fancies himself a keeper of the peace, a man who lays down the law – no guns allowed in his town and takes a certain gruff pride in wearing that sheriff’s badge. He’s even building a house, a solid, grounded thing, a symbol of settling down, of domesticity. Except, like the man himself,...

Clint Eastwood, grizzled and carrying the weight of a violent past like a worn saddle, plays William Munny, a widowed pig farmer coaxed out of retirement for one last, bloody job. Two cowboys have disfigured a prostitute, and her fellow women have pooled their meager earnings to hire someone to deliver justice – or rather, revenge.   The opening and closing images of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992) linger: a lone house, a solitary tree, silhouetted against a vast, indifferent sky, often bathed in the melancholic light of sunset or twilight. Most importantly there's a grave marker, Claudia’s name a constant...

It's the penultimate film in my Western series and this time we are looking at Eastwood's, The Outlaw Josey Wales. It's a tale that starts off with revenge through violence that morphs into one about survival. Josey Wales, a farmer and family man whose life is irrevocably shattered by the senseless violence of some Union forces in the waning days of the Civil War. His response is not one of reconciliation, it's a deep, simmering rage that propels him away from any notion of a negotiated peace. A sole outlaw, hunted. Initially we are dropped into Josey Wales's world in...