Writers-Movies, Day 1: Unforgiven

On these five days before Christmas, let us, writers, turn our attention to happy things. What are the movies that you love and that inspire you to write? For each of these five days before Christmas, write a blog entry about a movie you find particularly ... 'something': makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you recognize yourself, makes you say: "Wow! I wish I could write like that!" makes you say: "Wow! That's a great idea!" and makes you go off and write.

These five movies (one a day): they can be about writing, or they can be particularly well-written, or they can be just so bad, but the actors inhabit the characters so well, that they transcend the original material (ahem! To Have and Have Not)

These movies can be great, and serious, and well-respected, but they don't have to be (ahem, Deadpool). What these movies are are movies that you like and have influenced your writing.

I'll go first. A writerly movie I love is in the Clint Eastwood-genre: Unforgiven.

Unforgiven is a reconstruction of a deconstructionist movie. It tears apart everything that a Western is, but then reassembles all these pieces into something new and whole and, in the end, good. What do I like about this movie?

It's brutal and it's real.

Watching Westerns (except Blazing Saddles) is painful. The acting is stilted, the dialog non-sensical, and the fight-scenes, such as they are, are totally unrealistic. Unforgiven's fight scenes don't allow this detachment from reality. In an Unforgiven fight-scene, you are put into it, yourself, and not only do you feel the blow, being punched, or whipped, or shot, but you feel these blows as you're delivering them. Throwing a punch hurts, and it's tiring! If you don't believe me, get into the ring with me for three rounds. You won't believe the feeling, just three rounds, of how exhausting that is! Unforgiven reintroduces the audience how hard life was there, and they don't tell you life is hard, they show you. Riding, drinking, shooting, fighting, everything takes a toll, and you feel it, every inch of the way through this movie.

It has no heroes.

What? No heroes? Yet another deconstruction. The sheriff isn't the bad guy (although he's shown unsympathetically), he's just the toughest guy in town who also is trying to settle down, build his house, and keep the peace in the town, that's all! The 'bad guys' are just a bunch of fools enticed by a large reward to kill two guys, who already paid their dues, who bumble into town, thinking they have a straightforward job to execute. The ... in fact, nobody is bad here. They are all doing what they can, given the circumstance they are in. That's not right! Right?

But, because there are no bad guys, you get to see the innate goodness in every character on screen. Sure, they are all have a role to play and they find themselves stuck in these roles, but we get to see, for example, hookers, just trying to save a little money and do the laundry and get some justice for one of their own, all cut up. We get to see a bunch of guys pull together and defend a couple of cowboys and see the utter futility of what they are doing, and the absolute boredom of it, too. We see an Indian wife see her man ride off, knowing she'll never see him again, and she was right. We see a young kid take out his gun and kill a man, and see he get to feel the cost of that. Which brings me to my next point.

It has no justice.

There is no justice in this movie. There is no right nor wrong, nor morality, nor anything. There is just the West, in all its natural brutality, and the men and the women living there, and their sense of justice being betrayed at every turn. The whores want justice for a little, young girl all cut up, so they start the wheels of this movie in motion, but the sheriff gave them justice already: three ponies and a whipping. The sheriff wants justice so he beats people senseless, just for riding into town. The assassins want justice, and the money, but they're on a noble quest to right a wrong, but they compound wrong with wrongs, so one of them leaves, and he's the one that's beat to death. There is no justice and no fairness here, and:

It has no happy ending.

In fact, every bit of happiness is drained from this movie. The young whore just wants to feel a little bit of love, but William Munny turns her down, politely, not because she's been cut up, but because he's faithful to his wife ... the memory of his wife. Or that's his excuse. Maybe he doesn't want to hurt this young woman, knowing he's too bad for her, or for anybody, but he only ends up desolating her heart. "Justice" is served with William cleans house, but now a bunch of men are dead, and those left in the town have to clean up, and he has to go back across the prairie and explain what he's done and why his friend is dead. The sheriff gets his justice, being killed in cold blood, but now he's waiting in Hell for William Munny, just to say: "See? I told you so!" And, in the end, we see William Munny ride, not off into the sunset

but into the pouring rain, with the poor girl looking after him, knowing his heroic heart, knowing she should be with him, but staying, why? Because she belongs here? No! Because she belongs with him, but how can she say that?

In the end Unforgiven is a 'writerly'-movie in not what it says, or what that it tells us, and especially not in satisfying our expectations and hopes, but in what it doesn't say, and in what it doesn't give us. It is a Western with no justice, no right and wrong, and no happy ending. It is a story where each of the characters is a fully-realized person, each of the characters is (deeply) flawed, and each of the characters is immediately relatable, and if not relatable, then at least understood. You know why each character is doing what they are doing, you know that each of the characters is doing the wrong thing, and you know how you can fix them. But they aren't fixed, they are all broken, and it's heartbreaking, watching them all be swept away by both the events but also by their choices. They are all caught in a trap of being themselves, they can walk out, but they don't.

Unforgiven has informed my writing in several ways:

• A character not only can be flawed, but is flawed, and unfixably so at that, and by choice, but that doesn't make them unlikeable. In fact, their flaws are what makes them them.
• A good story doesn't explain everything to you. In fact, a good story leaves out the explanation. It doesn't tell you what's going on and why: it shows you.
• There isn't a happy ending. There's people coming into conflict with each other, with themselves, and with nature, and they always lose, that's the gritty reality of it, and that's what makes a good story.

Unforgiven is directed by Clint Eastwood, himself, and written by David Peoples, the screen writer for Blade Runner.