I opened up this thread a couple days ago, stopped at
I watched Tombstone immediately after Unforgiven and it was aight.
and went to put on Unforgiven before reading the rest. I've heard Unforgiven was great, but never bothered to watch it. Tombstone is one of my favorite movies of all time though.
To be honest, I still prefer Tombstone, if not just for the memorable lines/scenes and especially Kilmer's Doc, but Unforgiven is great. When I finished watching it, I thought to myself, it was good, but the best ever? Then I finished reading the initial post and it really unlocked the movie for me. The subtext really does make the movie, and it is incredibly written. It makes up for the lack of spectacle or witty dialogue.
Adding to the original post, another layer to the way they depict the tall tales vs reality. There is so much obsession with killers, violence and death. The Schofield kid is sold on the morality on the bounty with an inflated story about the victim having her eyes and t*ts cut up, He's obsessed with the idea of committing the type of violence he hears about others doing, goes on to fabricate his own tall tales, and then when he gets the chance for the real thing he realizes the reality doesn't match the glamour of the stories.
Pair that with W.W. and his obsession with killers. He's fascinated by the men who could enact such violence and wants to spread stories about their acts. He fetishizes the witness accounts of these violent stories, and yet is scared to death of ending up as a part of the story himself. Literally pisses himself when he finds himself in the crosshairs. Then, later on when he is finally witness to the sloppy chaos of an actual killer in action, he has trouble parsing it against the way the stories are usually depicted, unable to make heads or tails of what happened, or why it happened in the way it did. Did Munny strategically shoot down the sheriff and his men in the order that would give him the best outcome by eliminating the best shooters first? Or did he just get lucky, with his shots landing while everyone elses missed?
The cut up whore, a victim of violence, has a timid nature and is never shows any actual desire for revenge, versus the rest of the whores who are bloodthirsty and ready to perpetuate more death and violence on her behalf. They chase out the cowboy when he offers his finest horse for the cut up whore, even though she showed more desire for the horse than seeing the bounty fulfilled.
Lots of great little parallels and shyt like that in such a simple story.
Solid stuff, thanks for the recommendation.
