|
A recomposition of High Plains Drifter, with Tourneur rather than Leone as the formal bedrock. The collective is barely a settlement, tin pans huddled on the side of a mountain, intercutting with a thunderous raid makes it tremble. The teenage lass (Sydney Penny) has an incantation, Biblical verses recited and contradicted ("Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil. But I am afraid") as overlap dissolves give the incoming stranger, "just one miracle." The rider (Clint Eastwood) materializes to protect the stubborn prospector (Michael Moriarty) and vanquishes a quartet of ruffians with a hickory staff, when he appears to the miner's beloved (Carrie Snodgress) he wears a preacher's collar. The self-made tycoon (Richard Dysart) wants their land, "what's mine is mine," his toppled colossus (Richard Kiel) is replaced by a skull-faced marshal (John Russell) with murderous deputies and unfinished business with the protagonist. "A voice from the past..." Personal and corporate enterprises, the price of a clear conscience, in other words the Western in the Eighties. The spectral side of Eastwood's persona, the gothic phantom behind the craggy hero. A characteristic attention to light and darkness throughout, to unwarming sunlight with icy Anthony Mann sierras in the distance and to visages delicately masked in shadow by a campfire. "Maybe somethin' spiritual..." "Well, that spirit ain't worth spit without a little exercise." The violation of the land by strip mining is mirrored by the baron's son (Chris Penn) forcing himself on the maiden, promptly answered by the symbolic castration of his perforated hand. Community's fragile grace, the limbo of myth. "The bullets kept hitting him. Forever." The arena of snow and dust purposefully turns to mud in Unforgiven. Cinematography by Bruce Surtees. With Doug McGrath, Charles Hallahan, Marvin J. McIntyre, Fran Ryan, Richard Hamilton, and Billy Drago.
--- Fernando F. Croce |