Unforgiven, Open Range and the Dusty Trail to Redemption

by Christopher Barr

 

"It's a helluva thing, killin' a man. Take away all he's got, and all he's ever gonna have."

 

What is it about the Wild West that we love so much?  It could be that it’s the last pre-industrialized era in American history.  Which may make it the most relatable; Unforgiven (1992) is my favorite film of this genre.  Tombstone is up there as one of my favorites as well.  But Clint Eastwood’s now classic is a film about redemption and then retribution, it’s about a man that can’t outrun his past.

Open Range (2003) is a film by Kevin Costner that is my opinion is underrated.  This film is the only western since Unforgiven that could stand safely beside it.  Both films explore age old historical notions of man vs. nature, but both these films aside from their place in time are about man vs. himself.

That’s the real question; no matter what time you are in, what is it to be yourself?  How does one live with not only what they did but if placed, what they will do?  These films are about a man within a man, often a stranger, a shadow that surfaces when survival is all that lies between them and, oddly enough living with their memories of what that stranger inside executed.  Because of the prevalence of surface thought, people generally don’t consider what’s inside a person screaming to get out.  What is the struggle people go through to just live as themselves?  Plato said “Be kind for everyone is fighting a battle”, that is what people fight.  Conflicts are often internalized ones that become external, shifting the blame from oneself to an external force to relieve one’s own guilt.

William Munny was an old pig farmer with a couple of kids and a wife that passed away a few years prior.  He was brought into an assassination plot to avenge the mutilation of a prostitute.  Reluctantly he agrees and then enlists his old partner Ned to join in.  This film explores a journey into the darkness but yet a redux, being the man outlived the calamity only to be drawn back in.  The great thing about this film and Open Range is they are after thoughts of men that lived villainous lives and sought redemption.

Eastwood’s film is colored and scored like the wanted paper the younger William Munny’s bounty was printed on.  The film was brown and windy and dusty.  Everything about this film wasn’t modern and that’s where its poetry flourished.  The film was about a man that was drunk through most of the heinous crimes but met a woman that helped him change his ways.  Only after her death he’s brought back into this world of gun fighting and murder. 

"You better bury Ned right; and don't go cuttin' up... nor otherwise harm no whores, or I'll come back and kill every one of you sons-a-bitches."

What I love about Unforgiven, when pressed after Ned’s murder, was William Munny showing the devil, the shadow, he worked so hard to keep at bay, at the end of the film, killing Little Bill and anyone else involved.  The film was about a man that couldn’t escape his past, and I think that’s what philosophy is about.  It’s about recognizing where you come from and what you can change and what you cannot change.  In William Munny’s case he tried but who he was is who he became.  That’s the real tragedy of the film.  Not all the shooting and killing but the reality of who you are, naked, with all the scares and blood to follow.

Little Bill was a killer who counted on his killer instinct because in his case he enjoyed the power it brought.  He received fame and fortune for being good at killing people.  An author came to him and offered to write a book about his infamous kills, sort of glamorizing murder.  Bill got so use to it that he didn’t even see it as a bad thing. 

Which is the golden nugget of the film, what is it to be bad?  What is it to be regretful for past acts of violence?  Can a person be responsible for a horrible crime and later actually learn their lesson?  Where does redemption lie?

Open Range was about a man that simply didn’t want to get involved anymore.  So moving cattle from place to place seemed to be the lesser of two evils.  But when violence caught up to Kevin Costner’s character Charley Waite, he acted.  He is a man with a violent past but like in the case of William Munny, that violence in the world, crossed their respective paths.  Then shootouts ensued, guns a blazing and bad guys dying with both men leaving with their lives.

“You may not know this but….. there’s things that gnaw at a man worse than dyin.”

 

What I love about westerns is they erase all the modern bullshit and look at a man in his most naked form.  People shroud themselves in their things and their careers these days, complicating a simple way of looking at the world.  We are responsible for our actions and redemption doesn’t lie in God or the bible but in ourselves.  As hard as it is to except, we are responsible for all the other versions of ourselves that live within us.  Those immature and misguided times in our past that at the time we acted as we thought we should, for our own benefit.  Therein lies the redemption, you are responsible for your actions but you are more responsible for realization.  I think people are born good and it’s the world and the influence surrounding it, that changes people and it often takes many years of living, before a person realizes they must make a change within themselves, some don’t ever.

William Munny left us in Unforgiven as a villain, a righteous one, but never the less, a bad man.  Charlie Waite of Open Range left us as a man with hope, a man that doesn’t have to be the sum of all his parts, but a man with the right woman can hang up his guns and live a fulfilling life and build a family.  Hopefully, Charlie Waite isn’t a William Munny in the making only to later be Unforgiven.

“Told you I was wantin’ out of the cattle business.  Funny thing…there’s a saloon right back there just had its owner die.  Hopin’ you’d be my partner.”