REPERCUSSIONS OF VIOLENCE IN THE OF :

THE CHANGING PARADIGM

A Dissertation

by

CHARLES R. HAMILTON

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies Texas A&M University-Commerce in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2013 REPERCUSSIONS OF VIOLENCE IN THE FILMS OF CLINT EASTWOOD:

THE CHANGING PARADIGM

A Dissertation

by

CHARLES R. HAMILTON

Approved by:

Advisor: Gerald Duchovnay

Committee: Gerald Duchovnay, Chair Eric Gruver M. Hunter Hayes Karen Roggenkamp

Head of Department: Hunter Hayes

Dean of the College: Salvatore Attardo

Dean of Graduate Studies: Arlene Horne

iii

Copyright © 2013

Charles R. Hamilton

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ABSTRACT

REPERCUSSIONS OF VIOLENCE IN THE FILMS OF CLINT EASTWOOD: THE CHANGING PARADIGM

Charles R. Hamilton Texas A&M University-Commerce, 2013

Advisor: Gerald Duchovnay, PhD

This dissertation shows how Clint Eastwood, as actor and director, uses cinematic techniques and violence to emphasize the repercussions of violence and its effects on all who come in contact with it. After examining aspects of violence in history, I offer a brief sampling of the presentation of violence in Eastwood films prior to 1992, in particular his

Spaghetti Westerns and films. I then focus on how by the early Eastwood confronts how the violence in our culture is reflected in the lives of his characters in a way very different from his earlier films. With (1992), (1993), Mystic River

(2003), and (2008), films within different time periods, environments, and socio- cultural groups, Clint Eastwood demonstrates how violence holds no prejudices and impacts everyone who comes in contact with it.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

1. A CHARACTER STUDY IN VIOLENCE ...... 20

2. UNFORGIVEN ...... 42

3. A PERFECT WORLD ...... 63

4. MYSTIC RIVER ...... 87

5. GRAN TORINO ...... 108

CONCLUSION ...... 129

WORKS CITED ...... 134

VITA ...... 142

1

INTRODUCTION

As an actor, Clint Eastwood has had the attention of scholars and the media throughout his career. Following his critical acclaim as a director in Unforgiven (1992), some scholars

(Michael Henry Wilson, William Beard, Laurence Knapp) and journalistic (James

Berardinelli, , ) began to look more closely at the film and Eastwood from new perspectives, and began to see what they perceived as an addition to the film's violence--a concentration on the consequences, or repercussions, suffered by all involved. In a

1992 interview with John Tibbetts, Eastwood explains the introduction of this emphasis as the central theme he wants to portray: "I think it's a time in my life and a time in history that maybe violence should not be such a humorous thing. Or that it should be portrayed without its consequences" (173). As his comments from the 1992 Tibbetts interview indicate, he is trying to convey a central theme beyond the simplicity of killing, or violence, to silence the "bad guy," moving past the redemption/regeneration aspect and on to the idea of repercussions for all involved. The repercussions spread far beyond the events depicted on screen, to affect entire communities within their reach. Eastwood's films since Unforgiven are now more reflexive and complicate the idea of violence and its repercussions. In addition to Unforgiven, this new attitude is seen in A Perfect World (1993), Mystic River (2003), and Gran Torino (2008), films that are the focus of this study.

Eastwood's portrayal of repercussive violence begins to surface with White Hunter, Black

Heart (1990), showcasing the violence of and brutality in colonial Belgian Congo.

Although the story is about the events leading to the filming of The African Queen (1951), the acts of violence Eastwood chooses to highlight within the film emphasize the repercussions of violence through close-ups of the smug, snobbish expressions of the white ruling class versus the 2 close-ups of anger and resentment on the faces of the natives forced to work for them. Scenes of whites attacking blacks in a soccer game, a white maître d beating and ridiculing a black waiter for spilling a tray of drinks, the fight between that maître d and Eastwood's character John

Wilson (portraying director ) prompted by the maître d's actions, culminate with the film's final scenes of Wilson's native friend and guide Kivo being trampled by an elephant while trying to protect the narcissistic Wilson. The repercussions of the violence in these final scenes is apparent in the stunned facial expression and robotic movements of Wilson as he trudges toward his director's chair, and in the stunned, blank expressions on the faces of the native villagers, who, after hearing Kivo has been killed protecting Wilson, begin the chant "white hunter, black heart." Even the other white members of the hunting party stare in solemn disgust and sadness at Wilson.

Showing how violence affects everyone involved--not only the victims, but also the perpetrators--is something many critics, both scholarly and journalistic, have felt has been missing in Eastwood's films prior to 1990. In the 1970s his opinions on crime were fueled by the media's depiction of "America as a society besieged by violence," the increased level of fear in society, and the idea that crime is no longer someone else's problem. In "Violence and the

Media: A Psychological Analysis," authors Javier, Herron, and Primavera write that because of this "preoccupation with violence" and the crime figures of the time period, the nation is left with the fear that anyone could be the next victim, and a foreboding tension that keeps all "wondering if our children will survive to adulthood" (Javier, Herron, Primavera). Russell Covey in

"Criminal Madness: Cultural Iconography and Insanity" suggests that this is a constant theme in

Eastwood's films: "Like the Dirty Harry films, the -on-the-loose genre pointed an accusatory finger at the failure of social institutions to protect society" (1376). Eastwood 3 emphasized, in a 1984 interview with Michael Henry Wilson, what he saw as the frustrations of working class society during the and 1970s as their world became more complicated while the power of the bureaucracy grew: "There comes a time when you have to stop stalling. It's an extreme position, but that's where you get back to the : without it, the audience wouldn't go along. That's something I felt by instinct" (80). His "Dirty" Harry Callahan character stood for their rejection of that bureaucracy and a way to symbolically fight the system and bring order out of chaos. But, by the mid that character had begun to outlive his usefulness.

Eastwood continued to make statements mentioning his desire for a change in his use of violence during a variety of interviews throughout the mid to late 1980s, but they remained comments that were not fully addressed until the 1990s. As to what could have created this desire for change, a look at timelines of violence and soaring crime figures in the , which was led by an under 20-year-old age group, beginning during the latter part of the 1980s and continuing into the early 1990s provide some plausible causes for Eastwood's reconsideration of violence in his films. At the same time the remnants of the were still a concern in the US. Wilson, this time in a 1986 interview, referred to these lingering concerns as a "trauma for the American people," who were frustrated by what Eastwood called an un-effective, un-trustworthy, government bureaucracy (Wilson 70).

Born in 1930, Eastwood had grown up during the Great Depression and was too young for military service during World War II, but did serve his time in the army during the Korean

War. His military training, and the work ethic he had learned from his father, are partially responsible for his need for order in society, and in his business life. That order was broken by a series of events during the 1960s, including the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the assassination of

President Kennedy in 1963, and the first US combat troops on ground in the Vietnam War in 4

1965. The confusion and turmoil surrounding Kennedy's death, the chaos of the race riots in

Watts and , and demonstrations against the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 1970s, fueled his contempt for the bureaucracy within the US government, which he felt was responsible. His character of "Dirty" Harry Callahan was an example of that contempt that his working class audiences could identify with. During this phase of his career, and continuing into the 1980s, his clearly independent characters sometimes took the law into their own hands to solve the problems of society (symbolically doing what the government could not), creating the vigilante persona attached to him by movie critics Kael, Ebert, Canby, and even his future biographer Schickel.

In the late 1980s political and societal change began to take place in the US. The cold war between the USSR and the US, which had been a matter of concern since the 1940s, was winding down and officially ended with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This gave

Americans some relief from the fear that an attack with nuclear weapons might occur at any moment, but also fostered a feeling of disillusionment and a foreboding of what would happen next. The 1980s also brought the Iran-Contra scandal, an assassination attempt on President

Regan, and the Iran-Iraq war, but, although there was no longer an identifiable global enemy (a

"Red Menace") for the US to fear, another global crisis, the first Gulf War, was gearing up in

Kuwait in the early 1990s. At the same time, the crime rate in the US was reaching a record high. Our newest enemy was becoming our own citizens.

The dramatic increase in crime in the US was led by the rise in the rate of violence committed by under 20-year-olds beginning during the latter part of the 1980s and continuing into the early 1990s, much of it occurring on college campuses across the nation, and many of the incidents race related. That such violence came from this group may have influenced 5

Eastwood's to select films that featured the relationships of violence in society and culture to its consequences for children and the disintegration of the family unit, themes linking A Perfect

World with the other films in this study. Rather than choosing films in which the steps in to temporarily stop the chaos with more violence, then silently walks away, he may have decided audiences, and society in general, needed to see the consequences as a deterrent to that violence.

Another new method Eastwood uses to enhance his theme is his decision to have the characters in his films offer personal background information as insight into who they have become. Symbolically, these characters and their backgrounds also represent the culture and society of the US during a variety of time periods. Eastwood shows that the exposure of these socio-cultural symbols through the media of film is one way to combat the problems of violence within the under-20-age-group by bringing identifiable, even familiar, consequences of violent backgrounds before the viewing public. At the same time, this demonstrates to audiences that he has changed his attitude toward violence by illustrating an understanding of the problem, and making a statement against violence as seen in the films in this study. Although he has stated in interviews with Tibbetts and Papamichael that he wanted to show how the repercussions of lack of familial support or how the violence in a person's background can influence who that person may become, he is also very clear that using background as justification, alone, for everything that is wrong with society is not a valid excuse.

The chaos in America did not end as the country entered the , but intensified with the destruction of the World Trade Center towers in by Islamic militants in 2001, followed by concurrent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all having far-reaching global effects on the economy of the US and our relationship with other foreign governments. As global and local 6 violence continued to build, Eastwood continued to maintain his central theme through Mystic

River in 2003 and Gran Torino in 2008. For the latter film, the downturn in the economy during the mid-2000s, and the economic troubles in Detroit combined with the immigration controversy and gang violence there and in the rest of the nation, become plausible influences on Eastwood's decision to move the location for Gran Torino from to Detroit, and feature a failing auto industry within a deteriorating city. Having Walt live in a deteriorating, formerly all-white Polish neighborhood, surrounded by Hmong families, and terrorized by a Hmong gang, highlights all three problems, while symbolically applying to problems the rest of the country was also going through.

Eastwood has emphasized, in a variety of interviews, how important it is to show the far- reaching effects of an act of violence, and James Gilligan, in his book, Violence, comments on how those consequences affect even those not directly involved with an incident, and sometimes

"purely by accident" (7). He also points out, as Eastwood shows in these four films, that violence affects the victimizer as well as the victim: "What we need to see--if we are to understand violence and to prevent it--is that human agency or action is not only individual; it is also, unavoidably, familial, societal, and institutional" (7). This is aptly illustrated by citing a scene involving the townspeople of Big Whiskey in Unforgiven, who are not directly involved in a violent event, but are affected by it as they watch the brutal beating their sheriff, Little Bill

Daggett (), gives English Bob (). Even though Little Bill is there to protect them, they also live in fear of him. Eastwood purposely cuts back and forth from the beating to shots of the horror in their facial reactions in order to make his point.

The repercussions of violence spread far beyond the events depicted on screen, to affect entire communities within their reach. As an example of this, Rand Cooper, in his article 7

"Unforgiven in Boston," discusses how Eastwood's Mystic River "complicates the idea of violence with which it is associated" (25). The focus is now the recipients of the violence, the layers of their suffering, and " . . . far from romancing the silence of the avenger, Mystic River is haunted by the silence of the victim: the letters in that stone square of sidewalk where Dave's name remains an unfinished DA, his identity forever interrupted, his innocent boyhood quashed .

. . " (Cooper 26). By showing the inner and outer conflicts of the individual and the community

(who now become victims) and how people deal with them, Eastwood's presentation of violence and its effects are substantially more complex than in his films prior to 1990.

Allen Redmon, in his article, "Mechanisms of Violence in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven and Mystic River," also notes the change in Eastwood's methods of the portrayal of violence from those of Eastwood's earlier films. He sees Eastwood's ambiguous ending as an example of the perpetual "chaos and anxiety that they say they can overcome" (328). This is when the concept that no one in the neighborhood is un-touched by the violence is realized. The circularity of the violence in this community is emphasized during the final scene, in which the sidewalks of the neighborhood are filled with residents and a parade makes its way through the streets, a scene that should provide restoration for the community, but works in the reverse with the appearance of Dave's wife Celeste and her son Michael (328).

Kent Jones sees this emphasis on the consequences of violence as Eastwood, "sparring with his audience's expectations, incrementally stretching the limits of the permissible, from film to film, laying the groundwork for moments like the profound shock at of A Perfect

World" (184). He believes, as does Stephen Prince (Classic Film Violence), that filmmakers have been reluctant to show audiences instances of reality, in favor of what they expect to see.

Influenced by the violence portrayed in the past film history of Clint Eastwood, as actor and 8 filmmaker (Chapter One), his audiences, both fans and critics, have formed expectations about his portrayals of violence used for revenge, or getting even, when his character felt law enforcement agencies were not able to bring about justice--in some cases, a justification of vigilantism (Dirty Harry).

The persona his character developed in the "spaghetti" Westerns with , the

Dirty Harry series with , and the other macho-posturing, -based films

Eastwood has become known for, portrayed a cold, distant figure. David Slocum, in Violence and American Cinema, calls this character an "automaton," void of animation, who takes the law into his own hands, even killing when he thinks it is necessary, allowing the audience to form their own opinions of his character's past history, but never opening up enough to develop that character (183-184). What was seen on screen, in present time, was the only information offered by his character throughout a variety of roles. Audiences who watched and became fans of

Eastwood as policeman, or even as post-1970 hero, according to Maynard, Kearney, and Guimond, had developed an attitude that violence can be redemptive, "because it is often performed by flawed individuals--rogue cops, alcoholic gunmen--who redeem themselves by risking their lives" (Maynard, Kearney, and Guimond 23). They suggest that the desired result of this audience is to destroy the guilty, "either physically or psychologically so that they are incapable of retaliating" (23), through vigilante or extralegal means. Rather than being considered "revenge," these types of endings provide "just closures . . . that are perceived as just"

(22). Their theory is that, because a "desirable result" has been achieved, the action taken is just, but still could be considered "revenge"--an eye for an eye . . . . Consequences were not a part of these pre-1990 Eastwood characters. The "restoration of order--justice done" rationale is a critical factor in an audience's acceptance of violence. 9

Eastwood's central theme becomes more apparent in Unforgiven (1992), and continues throughout the films I have chosen for this study. David Ansen calls

Unforgiven "a classical tale of the Old West that's a radical critique of Western-movie conventions [where Eastwood] reveals his disgust for the false mythology of the Western hero."

Tim Groves, writing in Senses of Cinema, calls Unforgiven a "harsh, brilliant culmination, indeed consummation, of themes, motifs, characterizations, and critical attitudes that have evolved in Clint Eastwood’s Westerns for more than thirty years." Eastwood, when asked "what would you say is the difference between this one (Unforgiven) and the others (Westerns), replied:

"As for what makes this Western different from the others, it seems to me that the film deals with violence and its consequences a lot more than those I've done before" (Jousse & Nevers 176).

Violence touches everyone in this film, and leaves audiences without the typical mythic Western hero they expect.

Deborah Allison, in discussing Eastwood's directorial style, cites some other "defining features" of his work as the "theme of the triumphant underdog," his "obsession with characters that fight to achieve," and his need to be a voice for a working class she refers to as the "common man," and his films continue to follow these themes. Whether Eastwood wanted to make a political statement during the 1970s, or not, his "Dirty" Harry role of policeman as vigilante, and self-declared role of spokesman for the working class, framed him as a conservative who believed that the rights of the victim had been pushed aside. These early cop movies blatantly established his image. But, the method he now uses to implement his theme is much more complex (Klypchak 159).

As for the ambiguous endings in Unforgiven, A Perfect World, Mystic River, and Gran

Torino, the audience is waiting for a denouement, some form of resolution, but none is there. 10

Instead, they are left with ambiguity. They take with them visions of violence, victims, and victimization--the "instances of reality" without the redemption Jones talks about. This use of ambiguity began, for Eastwood, as an actor, during the filming of (1964), when he asked Sergio Leone if he could eliminate much of the dialogue and the background of his character, the "," because he wanted the audience to think for themselves, to form their own opinions about his character and his character's history. The audience does not know where he came from or where he is going. Thus begins his history, as actor and director, of establishing ambiguity in his characters and the open endings of his films.

Dennis Rothermel writes that Eastwood's choices of script interpretation and cinematographic technique enhance his cinematic result as an "unobtrusive element of the narrative" (Eastwood's 93), effective, but blended within the narrative so as to not detract from the story. But, it is more than this simple statement that defines Eastwood, the filmmaker. It is the collection of elements he assembles which create, or enhance, a perception of reality within the filmed narrative until it becomes (in some cases) almost a "suspension of dis-belief." What makes him unique is his unpredictability, his ability to be unidentifiable as the creator of a film, even across genres. He is able to concentrate on the narrative, use his cinematic talents and crew to the advantage of the film, and not have that film described as "just another Eastwood film." In order to clarify this statement, within each chapter I briefly discuss how the elements in each film I have chosen enhance Eastwood's attention to repercussive violence, illustrating how he selects specific elements based on his vision of each narrative. His cinematographic repertoire may be seen by some as purely mechanical, but the creativity in his choices of lighting, camera moves and angles, location, setting, backgrounds, and weather (elements also common to many other directors), and the ways in which they are unobtrusively blended into the narrative, add to 11 the esthetics and enhance the look of reality within each film. In Eastwood's case, each is chosen and highlighted subject to specific films, which, as noted by Maynard, Kearney, and Guimond, provides the variety that keeps audiences from easily identifying it as an Eastwood product.

The element of lighting is a complicated task, and is used, according to Eastwood, not only to provide a sense of historical accuracy, but also to help set or enhance the tone and mood of the narrative, as in Unforgiven and Mystic River (Tibbetts). The weather also becomes part of the lighting in both: the thunderstorm moving across snow-covered mountains, the darkness of the bedroom and saloon , the heavy rain storm and night entrance into Big Whiskey in

Unforgiven; the cold gray of a cloudy winter day, the visible breath of onlookers huddled in coats against the cold as they wait to see who the police have found dead, the coldness of the weather enhancing the frigidness of the mood and of the people throughout the film. Location, setting, physical backgrounds, and sets (interior and exterior) also figure into the element of lighting, each providing its own set of complications for the lighting director as well as the , but accomplished creatively, effectively enhancing the narrative and the message it contains.

Eastwood also associates camera moves and angles with enhancing the narrative, and, again, having a cinematographer who has been with him on numerous shoots (,

Jack Green, Tom Stern), and can anticipate what he wants, makes it easier for him to concentrate on the creative aspects of the film. Since cinematography and all the other elements Eastwood uses to carry his theme are linked together, they all become factors that must be considered by all his crew. Eastwood is known for hiring who can "shoot in the dark and still get an image," a phrase he has used in many interviews relating to the almost look of many of his films, especially certain scenes from Unforgiven and Mystic River. The three 12 cinematographers just mentioned define this style. Filmmaker Reinout van Schie notes that

Eastwood and his cinematographer start with a blank, but black frame and slowly fill it with light until they get just the right proportion, a technique van Schie describes as using darkness as part of the composition, while contributing to the narrative.

Connecting with the location and cinematography, camera movements and angles have been used to highlight distance and depth, as in the vast landscape scenes in Unforgiven and A

Perfect World, the location of the inner-city community in Mystic River, cut off from the city of

Boston by the Mystic River, and the makeup and decay of Walt's neighborhood and its relationship to the city of Detroit in Gran Torino. These camera positions, movements, and angles not only show the location or setting of the scene, they also place the actors, the action, and the narrative within a relationship with their surroundings, while locating, or grounding them in a specific place and time. The variety of camera moves, angles, and locations act to keep audience interest by breaking up the monotony of static shots, much as the variation in sentence length keeps an essay from becoming monotonous.

Shot choices also play a major role in Eastwood's creative vision, especially in A Perfect

World, as they are used to show Butch and Phillip's facial reactions to dialogue and situations. In the inside-the-car scenes, close-ups of their expressions enhance the understanding of the story with non-verbal responses--confusion, happiness, anger, thoughtfulness. Much of the tone and mood of the film is controlled by Butch's reactions to situations involving what he perceives as child abuse. Things said or actions taken by people they encounter provoke his anger, followed by changes in facial expressions, which give signals that something, usually some expression of anger, is about to erupt. The expressions of anger become more intense as the film continues, 13 almost resulting in murder near the end. The tight framing of these expressions enhances the narrative by emphasizing the anger Butch experiences.

The more light-hearted scenes in the film revolve around conversations between Butch and Phillip inside the car, as they travel north through the Texas countryside. They are isolated within their own small world, with Butch giving Phillip lectures on life--Butch's ideas of what defines a good man and father, and things he cautions Phillip to be aware of that can cause trouble. Without the tight, over the shoulder shots from inside the back seat of the car, there would be the feeling of an outsider looking in. But, seeing things from the back seat, looking out the side windows and windshield, creates the feeling of being a passenger "along for the ride," understood listening to a conversation between Butch and Phillip. When they step out of the car, they are immediately placed within a vast, exaggerated, landscape, no longer isolated from the outside world. This exaggerated emphasis on the distance between them is accomplished partly with camera angles and placement, and partly with the use of an anamorphic lens--the specific effects will be explained through examples in the discussion of A Perfect

World in Chapter Three.

Another defining element of Eastwood, the filmmaker, is what Dennis Rothermel refers to as his "one-shot style" (Eastwood's 91). According to Rothermel, Eastwood explains what he wants in a scene to his crew before rehearsal. The crew knows how he wants it lit, what set dressings are needed, and where he wants to position the camera before the actors are in place.

The camera is rolling as the actors, not knowing the camera is rolling, begin a formal rehearsal.

Much of the time Eastwood gets what he wants then, as he would in a first take, because, he says, the energy and spontaneity of the actors are best the first time. 14

The elements of Eastwood's cinematic vision, tied together with his emphasis on recursive violence, only generally touched on here, work together to set him apart from other directors and filmmakers, but this has not always been the case. He has not always received the critical acclaim he enjoys today, nor did it come easily or quickly. But, following the release of

Unforgiven (1992) and its four (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a

Supporting Role, and Best Editing), he became a person of interest in the , with scholars and critics anxiously awaiting his next project.

Unforgiven, and the notoriety it received, signaled a new phase in his (then) more than

45-year career. He has since added even more critically acclaimed films to his directing repertoire (A Perfect World, , Mystic River, Gran Torino, and others). In order to put Eastwood's long career in perspective, this dissertation begins with a short look at his filmography, as actor, director, and filmmaker, leading up to the release of White Hunter,

Black Heart (1990), and continuing through Gran Torino.

While some critics still believe Eastwood is following out-moded themes of redemption

(or regeneration), through violence, or of killing to restore social order, common in many

Western genre films and action-adventure films (Slotkin, Slocum, & Breskin), in the chapters that follow I show that Clint Eastwood's portrayal of violence since 1990 conveys a central theme with socio-cultural significance: violence brings with it repercussions, both for the perpetrator and the victim, emphasizing the reality that all who come in contact with violence become victims. Through the four films chosen for this study, and an examination of the elements of Eastwood's choices of stories, his interpretation of the script, his cinematography, and his style of directing during the period of 1992-2008, I will explain how viewers get a fuller picture of his emphasis on repercussive violence, and how he presents it cinematically. 15

In Chapter One, I take a selective look at Eastwood's film career as it relates to historical events of each era to show how those events may have contributed to the violence used by

Eastwood and his characters, and what (if any) control he had in the way violence was portrayed in the films he starred in and directed during the 1960s - 1980s. I also give an overview of early film violence, using films of the 1930s through the 1950s, including some of the films Eastwood watched as a teenager and young man. His early exposure to violence in film, the ways violence is depicted in some of the prominent gangster, war, and Western films he watched growing up, made an impression on him, and may have influenced his cinematographic techniques and style.

In Chapter Two, the study of repercussive violence begins with the film Unforgiven

(1992), which Michael Henry Wilson describes as involving an extremely chilling depiction of violence, an absolute debunking of the Western heroic myth (no Western hero kills in cold blood), and an ambiguous ending that has left critics divided (90-99). Through script interpretation, direction, and cinematographic techniques, Eastwood enhances the feelings of fear, terror, and disgust that emphasize his main area of concern: the consequences of violence.

There are no "good guys" and no winners in Unforgiven, only revenge through death. Unforgiven contains multiple lessons taught by experiencing the reality of violence shown through the creative filmmaking techniques of Eastwood--in this case, cold-blooded murder--in which all characters in the film suffer the repercussions of the violence. The darkly lit scenes involving the whores, and their desire for justice for a crime against one of their own, serves as the catalyst for the horrible violence that follows. Eastwood's use of what he considers historically realistic indoor lighting conditions, and the treatment of the whores as "non-people" in these early scenes, serve to set a mood or tone, and add a historical reality which intensifies and exaggerates the disparity between future acts of violence and their repercussions. 16

Chapter Three examines A Perfect World, which tells a story common in current society, and existing across cultures and generations, this time emphasizing repercussive violence through studying the effects of victimization on individuals, rather than only depicting acts of violence. Again, as in the Dirty Harry series, Eastwood emphasizes the lack of ability of law enforcement agencies to gain control of what seems like a very passive situation, an underlying theme that he has used in multiple films throughout his career. While all the stories within this film seem to be related (the commonality of fatherless sons and family situations gone bad), they are also separate and intimate character studies dealing with specific broken families, and the loss of specific father figures, set within the context of Texas in November of 1963, just days before the country it own father figure with the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas.

There are a variety of stories, or layers, going on here, but the interest is in the specifics--the father/son Butch as he discusses the situations of life with his captive Phillip, Phillip's loss of innocence and reactions to a reality he has never experienced, and a Texas Ranger's overwhelming regret for a long ago act of decency that backfired and created the criminal he is now chasing. Although these personal situations carry the narrative, Eastwood's interpretation of the script, choices of shot angles, composition, location, direction, and choice of actors enhance them, making them symbolically real.

In Chapter Four, the depictions of the events in Mystic River show how recent acts of violence, as well as within a closed community, create an inter- connectedness and cyclical violence that affects an entire community. Violence occurs--the cops come, no one talks to them, they go away, everything returns to their version of normal--and nothing seems to change. 17

In Mystic River all the violent acts are specifically connected. There is partial resolution here, but the events that go unchallenged tell the real story of the repercussive violence in this community. As with the other films in this study, there is no resolution for any of the featured characters, except maybe Dave, who, with his death, is free from the nightmares of the past. It seems all will never escape the violence around them. Eastwood also emphasizes the child- molestation controversy taking place in Boston Diocese of the Roman at the time of the film's release (2003), by linking it to the story through the insertion of shots of crosses--a close-up of a ring with a shiny gold cross on the finger of one of the pedophiles, and seeing the cross tattoo that covers Jimmy Markum's back as he gets what Maynard, Kearney, and

Guimond describe as "Sexual absolution for murder from his wife" (16). He also changed the opening scene of the novel from boys having a fistfight to boys playing street hockey, giving them more of a perceived innocence. Adding to the impact of the narrative, in production,

Eastwood had the film's color de-saturated to emphasize the coldness and indifference of the reactions within the community to the violence. Script interpretation, camera angles, and lighting, again, set the mood and enhance Eastwood's central theme. The violence of the story, as in Unforgiven and A Perfect World, is shown to touch the entire community, partly because of their closeness as a society closed off from the outside world of Boston, but also because of their detachment from the violent acts carried out by others.

In Chapter Five I discuss Gran Torino, and its place in the recent Eastwood compendium of violence. Gran Torino, though, is the completion of this altered "circle of violence" for

Eastwood that began to take shape with the 1990 film White Hunter, Black Heart, and continues through Gran Torino. 18

In Gran Torino Eastwood chooses yet another socio-cultural setting for a case study of repercussive violence--a deteriorating, formerly all-white, working-class neighborhood in

Detroit, --to look closely at timely topics ranging from America's economic slow-down, hatred and racism, old age and death, ethnicity and gang pressure, organized religion and the validity of the church, but mainly, to study an old man confronting the demons brought on by the violence he experienced in the . Critics Roger Ebert, Claudia Puig, C.J. Laurence, and Jack Sullivan agree that Eastwood's character, retired autoworker , eventually begins to see past his hatred of the immigrants who have taken over his neighborhood. As if on cue (and a little too quickly to be realistic), the built-in personal moral code Walt and former

Eastwood characters have exhibited takes over, and Walt, in the end, makes the ultimate violent sacrifice designed to stop the violence. and Antonio Manchuco both see Gran

Torino as a chance for Eastwood's characters to come full circle, with the character of Walt, who, this time, is the victim, and in the end, the main recipient of the violence. René Girard's theory of violence as sacrifice and sacrifice as violence is appropriately fitting as the sacrifice (Walt's death) becomes the surrogate and accepts the violence rather than the intended victim(s)--Sue,

Thao, and their family and neighbors (Girard 13).

Using Unforgiven, A Perfect World, Mystic River, and Gran Torino, with glances at other related films, I will show that Clint Eastwood's combination of the elements of script interpretation, cinematographic technique, direction, collaboration with his long-time crew, choice of actors, and editing has successfully established a pattern which makes a social comment emphasizing the repercussions of violence on all those it touches. Eastwood's emphasis on repercussive violence and his cinematic vision mark on the films selected for this study. The films used in this study would not be as effective in expressing his central theme 19 without Eastwood's command of all the elements within his cinematic vision. It is his command of these elements combined with his emphasis on recursive violence that make each of his films unique.

20

Chapter 1

A CHARACTER STUDY IN VIOLENCE

Clint Eastwood's characters have long been associated with violence, beginning with a few minor film and television roles, and a stint on the Western genre TV series Rawhide (1959-

1965). With his starring role in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), he created an on-screen persona that has gotten him both rave and disparaging reviews, in many cases because of his character's use of violence and also because of the critical perception of the societal and cultural views his characters represent. In the mid-1980s, however, he began to show audiences a different way to look at violence, this time emphasizing the effects it has on all it touches: nothing happens without consequences. That this was an extreme change in Eastwood's portrayal of violence is evidenced by the confusion, and even frustration, of many of his fans (a drop in box office revenue on certain films), and in the reviews of professional film critics (e.g., ,

Roger Ebert, , David Ansen). Although much of that confusion and frustration has ceased to exist following his critical successes of the 1990s (and even more with his films of ), some still lingers. This chapter will present a selective look at Eastwood's early roles dealing with violence and at points in his career where he went against the expectations of studios, audiences, and critics, showing his independence, and his ability to work well in a variety of genres, some far removed from violence.

This chapter also serves as preparation for understanding the change in Eastwood's central theme and portrayal of violence, and as an introduction to the four films--Unforgiven, A

Perfect World, Mystic River, and Gran Torino--that serve as the focus of this study. These films are only a small sample of the more than 20 films Eastwood has either starred in, directed, or produced since 1990, but they are representative of his central theme--that violence adversely 21 affects everyone it touches. If he wanted to show the inner and outer conflicts of the individual and the community as repercussions of violence and how people deal with them, he does so in these four films.

In analyzing the changing role of violence in Eastwood's films, it is first helpful to understand, "how revenge and the violence it encourages can be a seductive but ultimately self- destructive force," according to Maynard, Kearney, and Guimond. In discussing the myth of

"redemptive violence," a concept discussed by theologian Walter Wink, they suggest it

"originated mainly in the popular mass media, [and] has furnished America with a vision of itself as a nation of vigilante superheroes" who can bring justice by attacking with more force than the attackers (xii). Using Unforgiven, Mystic River, and Gran Torino as examples, they now cite

Eastwood as a "chief critic" of vigilante justice on screen, noting how, "Vigilante violence in particular is portrayed in [Mystic River and Gran Torino] as being deeply flawed, and how torture in Unforgiven is unequivocally evil" (xiii).

Eastwood has often been questioned concerning how he feels about violence in his films, both as a director and in the characters he portrays. He is quick to point out the difference between film and reality, using as examples the "gangster" films he watched that were popular in his youth. He comments that he didn't take the violence seriously then, saying he knew it was fantasy. Eastwood discusses the screen violence he witnessed watching these films in a 1992 interview with David Breskin about Dirty Harry, while refuting the idea that screen violence can promote actual violence in those watching. He says he does not understand the connection between screen violence and the real violence in society, or the up-roar from critics concerning the violence in his past films, noting that he realized what he watched growing up was not real:

"everybody knew the difference between a movie and reality" (402). 22

Although he may have been watching films in those days just for the entertainment, some of the cinematic techniques used to portray the violence he saw then seem to have influenced his current cinematic style. Eastwood is fascinated by the reality of the scene, using on-location shooting as one of his trademarks, but he is also conscious of controlling or using the natural lighting of each scene to enhance the film's realism, and at other times what David Kehr calls an

"Eastwood noir" mode that accents the tone and mood of his films. One of the techniques of those early films Eastwood saw and speaks of is the importance of lighting for the situation, and how it either fits the historical context of the situation, increasing the sense of reality, or is over- lit only for the camera, when, as he says, in the time period of those early Westerns all they had burning were gas or oil lamps (Wilson 94). To Eastwood, the appropriate lighting for each scene not only adds to the sense of realism, it helps set the tone or mood. "You don't tell a story with actors and words only. You have to set the right atmosphere" (94). Over lighting is distracting and pulls him out of the movie, making him wonder, "Where did all that light come from?" (94).

Concerning those early cinematic styles Eastwood witnessed, Stephen Prince notes the artistry of filmmakers in the 1930s in creating cinematic techniques that represented violence without really seeing it--an ability to "work around" the regulations of the Production Code

Administration (PCA) in order to show the violence necessary to carry the theme of the film.

Prince notes how filmmakers were creatively intimating violent acts without actually showing the violence--using the imagination of the audience to complete the action of a scene (Classic

100).

Filmmakers photographed the silhouette of smoke rising from a gun barrel, created by the use of backlighting, or the shadows of the violence cast onto a wall to replace the direct image, which in some cases made the violent act more interesting cinematically. The "reverse axis" shot 23 in which someone is seen shooting a gun in one direction, and then someone else is seen (from the perspective of the shooter) getting hit by the bullet and falling, was developed because the

PCA had outlawed scenes in which the person shooting and the person getting shot were both seen in the same frame. According to Prince, "The PCA's great ideological struggle with the genre lay in trying to balance the sociopathic charisma of the gangster with the moral voice of legal authority" (91). These types of techniques were used extensively in the early "gangster" movies Eastwood watched (Little Cesar, White Heat, Public Enemy, Scarface, and others) in which filmmakers felt they must find a way to include the violence or lose the impact of the story.

While the PCA was concerned with the portrayal of violence enacted by the criminal elements in film, they seemed less concerned with violence enacted against those criminals by law enforcement officials. Prince recounts the concerns of Pennsylvania censors with gangster violence and their leniency with the reactionary violence of the police in Little Cesar. It seems the censors had no problem with the audience watching gangsters being shot to death because it showed the triumph of the police over evil. When Rico is executed by the police, Prince says the

Pennsylvania censors saw this as, "asserting the moral voice for legal authority" (Classic 91).

These are just some of the films Eastwood watched, and, since he continues to use and refine some of the cinematic techniques and methods of representing violence (rather than actually seeing it happen) used by early filmmakers, he must have seen some techniques that intrigued him. The development of a cinematic style, or the way a director like Eastwood creatively puts his "mark" on a film, becomes something acquired over time, and, more than just an identifying mark, it also becomes something of a source of pride. Prince suggests that what fascinated filmmakers was trying to find creative ways to represent the violence of the scene, 24 what he calls "the stylistic transfiguration of the act," and not the violent act (100), something with which Eastwood has become very proficient. The development of his cinematic vision has evolved into what is now a creative method of emphasizing a central theme that becomes an element of the narrative in many of his films.

Eastwood's cinematic vision began to develop between the last seasons of filming for

Rawhide and when he starred in A Fistful of Dollars (1964), the first in a series of what have become known as "spaghetti" Westerns. It is in this first Sergio Leone film that Eastwood begins to form his screen persona of the "Man with No Name," in which he portrays an unknown stranger who just happens to ride into town and into the middle of trouble between two rival gangs who are fighting for control. Here, a physical screen persona begins to take shape that will be used many times in his future Western films. Audiences get their first glimpse of him riding slowly into town on a mule, head slightly tipped down, ragged beard, with a short black cigar in his mouth, paying no attention to anyone. He is wearing a beat up black hat pulled low over his eyes, worn boots and jeans, and a Mexican serape.

The first impression is of a broke trail bum, a loner wandering from town to town--no reason to be noticed--no one to worry about, but the Eastwood character's motivation is money.

The audience is unsure of his intentions until he decides to pit two rival gangs against each other in order to steal a shipment of gold each gang is also plotting to steal. Eastwood's only socially redeeming act in this film is to release a woman hostage captured earlier by the Rojo Gang, and when she asks "Why?" he responds: "Why? Because I knew someone like you once. There was no one there to help. Now get moving." Other than that one act of kindness, his character is out only for himself. This loner with no name and no history becomes the replacement for the traditional Western mythical hero, in fact, becoming the antithesis of that myth. Gourlie and 25

Engel describe what they see as the ideology of Eastwood's character: "self-interest and self- preservation" (2).

There was an unusual fascination with, and attraction to, this anti-hero by audiences. He was a bad man, seemingly responding to some sort of personal moral code he lived by, but audiences judged him to be not as bad as most of those around him. And when he killed, the audience view was that he killed someone worse than him, bringing justice through extreme violence (Frayling 281-286). Gourlie and Engel suggest the popularity of traditional film genres

(in this case the Western) in the late 1960s and early 1970s were affected by events and attitudes in society and culture, including the effects of the Vietnam War, that "rendered the traditional

Western hero increasingly outmoded" (3). They write that the ideology of "No Name" fit the changes taking place in American society at the time and created a new version of an old genre, noting that his character set the stage for Penn, Peckinpah, and Altman: "portraying the individual pitted against authority figures, impersonal institutions, and corporate corruption, by dramatizing amoral characters, seething with violence, in a nihilistic setting" (4).

The "Man with No Name's" background was explained completely in the original script, along with pages of dialogue for the character, but Eastwood convinced Leone to remove the history, cut down on the dialogue, and rely more on the body language of his character to get the message across. To Eastwood "What he didn’t say was much more interesting than what he does say, creating the whole mystique thing. That was more important to me" (Nelson 28). This lack of dialogue, along with a concentration on Eastwood's development and use of the gaze, a tight close-up of his wrinkled forehead, and his eyes as they slightly squint into a focused stare, became an iconic part of his new screen persona that he continues to bring to his characters.

Although Eastwood the actor followed director Sergio Leone's lead in the early "spaghetti" 26

Westerns, his creation of a persona of violence then has now become familiar to audiences and has helped create a fan base some refer to as the "common man" or "working class." His "Man with No Name," or "Joe," visually created an independent tough-guy character that extends beyond Leone's Westerns and into the Dirty Harry series and beyond. Eastwood's portrayal of these characters, and their use of violence to bring order, created a non-typical hero who was fiercely independent, while giving audiences the appearance of working solely for himself. The appeal of his characters, although extremely violent, sometimes working outside the law, was in their ability to accomplish what law enforcement officials, or citizens within a western town, could not--restoration of order.

Gourlie and Engel write that "Leone claimed credit for 'an historic break with the conventions of the genre,'" noting his use of what he called a more realistic view of the old West and the type of people who inhabited it (quoted in Frayling, Sergio Leone 15).

Most of the main characters in these Leone and Peckinpah Western films of the 1960s are killers, robbers, bounty hunters, and other anonymous players in a game that mimics the traditional

Western genre film, but overplays violence to the extreme, signifying the beginning of the end of the Western heroic myth created by the dime novelists of the 1800s, and magnified by

Hollywood. writes that Sergio Leone created his own set of Western codes, with money as the central motivation of his characters--money as a prize to possess and spend, not to invest in a cattle ranch or buy livestock for future gains. He says Leone also shows his vision of the social character of the American West of the 1800s by explaining their seeming acceptance of violence as common because of the environment they lived in (Frayling, Spaghetti

160). 27

The "detached calm" Frayling talks about has also become an identifying characteristic of

Eastwood's characters. Frayling also says that the popularity of Leone's Westerns, and Clint

Eastwood's character "represented changes in content . . . and in audience expectations" that gave the dying Western genre new life in the United States, influencing other directors, including

Stanley Kubrick in his production of A Clockwork Orange (1971) and in filming the violence in Bunch (1969) (280).

A Fistful of Dollars is the beginning of the Eastwood character's reputation of violence on screen, a continual violence that often begins shortly after the opening scenes of a film and doesn't stop until the end. Character development purposely was not a point of interest in these early Western films. The audience knows nothing, and learns very little, about the background of any of the characters, other than they are usually criminals of some sort, violent, with some more or less likeable than others. The violence is rampant on both sides, but, unlike the traditional Western, the distinction between good and evil is not so clear, and the mythic hero is not redeemed.

Because Italy had no PCA detailing how violence could be depicted, Eastwood, used to following the rules of the PCA, was excited about his new freedoms. Rules for what was allowed to be shown on screen in American films at the time were different than in Italy. About

Leone's use of violence, Eastwood told Paul Nelson: "He didn’t know you weren’t supposed to tie up the shots of the guy shooting a gun and then somebody else getting hit by a bullet"

(Nelson 29).

Another characteristic of the "Man with No Name" is his fierce independence and lack of trust of any of the other characters. This lack of trust and respect for the ability of law enforcement agencies also became a trait of other Eastwood characters. He is the loner in 28

Westerns who rides into town, never gets close to any other character, and then rides out or vanishes, cutting all ties. He may use the help of other characters at times, but never relaxes his concentration on what might be going on behind his back, another stylized identifying characteristic created in these early Westerns. The creation of this character begins Eastwood's rise to fame--one who works outside the conventions of the law, but in the end receives some sympathy from his audience because he renders his own idea of justice, often by killing those he sees (and some audiences see) as worse than himself.

The "Man with No Name" becomes a sympathetic character to some audiences because he is an unknown entity, with no known background, who seems to live by some sort of higher personal moral code, and, also because his evil is perceived by them as not as bad as the evil of the others. His character represents a solution to a society's problems within a specific historical context, a way out, a cleansing character, but with no personal redemption, only and retribution. He is not part of their past and will not become part of their future. He simply makes his appearance, kills those who "need to be killed," and rides away as a somewhat tarnished avenging angel.

Robert Ray sees the Eastwood characters in the spaghetti Westerns as the "outlaw hero," only becoming that hero when necessary, and in the Dirty Harry series, as society's vision of the independent hero who lived by some personal moral code, righting the wrongs of society that official law enforcement could not, a "natural man versus the civilized man," each provoked into action ("Thematic Paradigm" 5-6). This fierce independence and the need for immediate action to right a wrong are what Ray believes to be at the center of the popularity of characters like those Eastwood portrays. 29

In looking at the popularity of, and even sympathy for, Eastwood's characters from another viewpoint, theologian Walter Wink discusses the "Myth of Redemptive Violence" as especially fitting for American audiences: "It is the dominant myth in contemporary America. It enshrines the ritual practice of violence at the very heart of public life, and even those who seek to oppose its oppressive violence do so violently."

Wink sees the attraction of the audience to this myth being the means it provides to let them transgress, to experience their own personal violence through a character, and then to find redemption in the satisfaction of that character's ability to restore order to chaos. Violence is, therefore, justified, even glorified, and the character, even though he/she may be acting outside the law, becomes the hero, much like what Robert Ray described earlier as the "outlaw hero," and which becomes a mirror of many of Eastwood's characters, beginning with the "Man with

No Name" and carrying over into Harry Callahan and others.

Eastwood followed these early Westerns with Coogan's Bluff (1968), the story of a modern-day cowboy-cop from Arizona who goes to New York to escort a prisoner back to

Arizona and ends up doing some "unorthodox" police work during his stay in the big city (a pre- cursor to Dirty Harry), breaking the rules but getting the job done. He continued, as a character, to maintain his independence, establishing a pattern of doing what he thought best, even if it meant working outside the rules of authority.

Next came two World War II films (Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Kelly's Heroes

(1970)), two American made westerns (Paint Your Wagon (1969) and Two Mules for Sister Sara

(1970)), and then, breaking new ground, The Beguiled (1971) followed by his directorial debut,

Play Misty for Me (1971), the last two featuring Eastwood as the victim of violence. Although 30 these films still portrayed violence, they did not portray Eastwood's character to be as unfeeling and fiercely violent as he had been in Leone's films.

Play Misty for Me, with its unexpected explosive outbursts of violence from the knife- wielding and psychotic Evelyn () out to either have radio D.J., Dave Garner

(Eastwood) as her lover or permanently keep him from others by brutally murdering him, surpassed any portrayal of violence Eastwood had used before, but, due to what he refers to as a lack of promotion by Universal Studios, and possibly the introduction of an Eastwood character reviewers were un-familiar with, it never gained him the level of critical acclaim from critics

(other than Roger Ebert) he had experienced thus far as an actor. Even after what Eastwood calls

"a brilliant preview," in which, he says, "People were just screaming out of their seats,"

Universal still refused to provide promotion (Schickel 254).

In Play Misty for Me he emphasized his cinematographic technique with his newly- developed (for him) use of hand-held and reverse-angle camera movements from the point of view of Evelyn attacking Dave, and from Dave's point of view receiving the attack, virtually putting the audience within the scene, a cinematic tactic he would use again, and one that has become one of his trademarks as a director. Eastwood's character, Dave, also becomes the hunted in this film, a reverse of his previous characters, and someone worthy of sympathy, despite his macho posturing as the handsome D.J., known for luring women fans to his bed.

The Dirty Harry series followed beginning in 1971, and Eastwood, who has voiced his ideas about a personal concern for victims and victimization, collaborated extensively on the subject with series director Don Siegel. In A&E's 2005 Biography: Clint Eastwood, Eastwood discusses his concerns with what he saw as the lack of justice for the victims of violent crime, which carried over into those early "Harry" films. 31

He used the Harry Callahan character as the spokesman for his anger with the judicial system then. Other films followed suit with Straw Dogs (Peckinpah 1971), (Hodges 1971),

Billy Jack (Laughin 1971), and Death Wish (Winner 1974). But in his films of the last 30 years, although his concern is still with the victim, his larger concern has become the depiction of the wide range of the effects, or repercussions, of violence. According to Akiva Gottlieb, his methods of projecting the issues have changed. She places Dirty Harry's (and Eastwood's) personal concerns within the era by discussing what she calls the public's and Eastwood's view of

Miranda v. Arizona and Escobedo v. , and the concerns of and for "a justice system that affords the criminal more rights than the victim" (Gottlieb 31). Although she sees Harry as a vigilante trying to protect the victim from the criminal, she chooses to avoid the issue of human rights for all involved, even the perpetrator. Gottlieb cites Eastwood as once referring to the situations in the Dirty Harry series as "a simple plea for common sense" (32). She also refers to an earlier interview in which Eastwood illustrates the idea that he was not trying to say something political, only to offer help to those who could not get it any other way (32).

But, the film was political in its use of the American flag to represent good, and the peace sign, worn as a belt buckle by the Scorpio, to represent evil. These two symbols were also significant during the time period the film was released: the flag symbolizing support for the US in the Vietnam War (good) and the peace sign symbolizing those who wanted an end to the war (evil). The controversy within the nation was carried over into the film through the narrative and through the use of those symbols representing opposite sides.

In the 1970s, Eastwood's opinions on crime were fueled by the media's depiction of

"America as a society besieged by violence, the increased level of fear in society, and the idea that crime is no longer someone else's problem (32). In those early films (spaghetti Westerns 32 and the Dirty Harry series), directed by Sergio Leone and Don Siegel, the audience knows nothing of the Eastwood character's background, only his present actions. They never get the chance to see his inner emotions, hear his story, or know his motivations. When sociological factors are considered, he was a character some audiences identified with because of what some saw as his ability to speak for those who critics refer to as the average person or working class, and who Gottlieb refers to as "the common man." He recognized, and identified with, the worries and frustrations of the group between the extremes of politics and, she believes, became the vehicle for the release of their anger with a system that they felt had ignored the victims of crime in favor of the criminal.

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the United States was embroiled in the

Vietnam War, war protesters flooded the streets, and political controversy between right and left was a constant on the nightly news. In steps Eastwood as "Dirty" Harry Callahan, the one personality people politically situated both in the middle and on the right could identify with--an independent working outside the law, even for the benefit of the public. Eastwood's characters became the means for movie audiences to transgress and then gain some sense of redemption through his on-screen violence, but, with the depiction of violence in the Dirty Harry series, audiences also began to notice the effects it had on Harry. Although he sanctioned it, he did not seem to feel comfortable with the violence, or that it had given him the redemption and satisfaction audiences expected him to exhibit. Viewers are left with the original theme of a justice system unable to be effective and a society in chaos. Laurence Knapp suggests that

"Violence is an incorrigible phenomenon in Eastwood's work; a phenomenon that strips people of their humanity and robs them of their capacity to feel and love" (14). He also comments on the effects of the violence as seen in Eastwood's characters, and all those it touches. The 33 expressions on the faces of his characters tell the story. There was his smirk, no smile, no indication of a sense of satisfaction in what they had done (14).

Scorpio, the killer in the first Dirty Harry film, with his shiny peace-sign belt buckle, became a symbol for everything Eastwood's audience perceived as wrong with American society and the legal system. Eastwood has continually said the film was not intended to be political but was a reflection of the increasing division between extremes of liberal and conservative views, each seeing it in a different way: "That was all due to that early seventies syndrome where everybody was finding something political about everything. That was an era of real name- calling, a kind of chicken shit era on our planet" (Nelson 75). As an example of the political interpretation of scenes in the film, Eastwood cites a change he and director Don Siegel made in the script concerning a scene in which Scorpio hijacks a bus. The original script had been written for the bus to contain adult passengers, but director Don Siegel had decided the scene would have more emotional impact if the bus were loaded with school children. Because the group of children was racially mixed, Siegel had been accused of promoting anti-bussing.

"Siegel and I didn't know what the hell that was all about," says Eastwood (74).

Setting the stage for change, and honing his acting and directorial skills with a number of

Westerns (, 1972; , 1973; , 1976; Pale

Rider, 1985), separated with police dramas (, 1973; The Enforcer, 1976; The

Gauntlet, 1977; , 1983; Tightrope, 1984), Eastwood began to move away from the characters and story lines his audiences had come to expect, starring in the highly successful

(at the box office) comedy Every Which Way But Loose (1979), something that caused some controversy within his fan base, the studio, and especially with film critics. Eastwood stars as

Philo Beddoe in this film, and its equally successful sequel, Any Which Way You Can (1980), a 34 bare-knuckle street fighter and tow-truck driver making extra money participating in illegal fights, and having as his sidekick an orangutan named Clyde. This character has very little of the

Eastwood persona of his former characters, but even though it is a comedy, the plot is built around the violence of street fighting and gambling. His next role, the portrayal of Frank Morris in Escape from Alcatraz (1979), supposedly the only person to successfully escape from that prison, also surprised critics and fans, prompting them to question what Eastwood would try next.

With Play Misty for Me (1971), Eastwood had begun making films for himself, and had interspersed his popular box-office films with the likes of (1973), Thunderbolt and

Lightfoot (1974), The Eiger Sanction (1975), (1980), Firefox (1982), and

Honkytonk Man (1982). After ending the Dirty Harry series with (1988), he began to experiment with roles, some similar and some uncharacteristic of his past. In Bird

(1988), his critically acclaimed film about musician Charlie Parker (he directed and produced, but did not act in the film), Eastwood's concentration was on the personal life of the jazz great, using dramatic lighting techniques to create the realistic look of dimly lit 1940s and

1950s jazz clubs, and set the mood for the story of Parker's tragic struggle with fame and drug addiction.

His portrayal of director John Wilson in White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), which he also directed, gave Eastwood the chance to step out of previous personas and into that of director

John Huston (the basis for the John Wilson character), on location in Africa during pre- production for the film African Queen. Eastwood was now making films for himself; some were winning critical acclaim, but his once-loyal fan base began to decrease at the box-office, at least 35 where these new ventures were concerned. Both critics and fans alike could tell that he was undergoing a career and character change, but seemed unsure of where it would lead.

Eastwood has stated in a variety of interviews dating from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s that he had reached a point in his career at which he decided he needed a change in the way he was portraying violence, and that he wanted to enforce the idea that violence affected everyone it touched, from criminal to law enforcement official, to innocent bystander, to those who just happened to know anyone associated with it--and that it did not come without consequences.

Noticeable changes in the Eastwood character's persona of violence began to surface in

White Hunter, Black Heart (1990), the of Peter Viertel's 1953 roman à clef by the same title. Violence was present, but was being used in a different way, and for a purpose that went beyond mere entertainment. A fight scene involving Wilson (Eastwood) and a racist maître d' in a Belgian Congo restaurant resulted in Wilson taking a beating, but using the fight to make a point. Knowing the younger and more athletic man will defeat him, Wilson enters into the fight to stand up for his principles, which are obviously not shared within the context of colonial

Belgian Congo of the 1950s. In choosing to include this scene in the film, Eastwood introduces his new theme, and begins to shift his use of it toward a new direction by showing the effects of violence on all who are touched by it.

There is no Eastwood character winning over incomparable odds. In the last few scenes of the film, when Wilson's (Eastwood's) native hunting guide and close friend is killed trying to divert a charging elephant away from Wilson, the effects of violence are again emphasized--this time in the eyes, expressions, and actions of the grieving villagers as the body of their friend is brought back to their village. Viewers also see the imprint of violence in the hollow eyes, slow 36 deliberate movements, and lengthy, deliberate zoom to a close-up of the tortured facial expression of Wilson. He slowly and methodically climbs into his director's chair, in shock and oblivious to the world around him, and finishes this film with the beginning of another--with the word "action." The emotion portrayed in that final expression from Wilson, and the emphasis on the visual reactions from the villagers (naming Wilson White Hunter, Black Heart because of his lack of concern for anyone except himself), sends the message that the violence that has just occurred has touched and affected everyone.

Reactions from audiences and journalistic and scholarly critics were mixed, but some, like Roger Ebert and Luis Miguel Garcia Mainar, saw what they thought was a new theme emerging. To Mainar, "The fact that the film departs from previous Eastwood works, while at the same time resembling them, makes it revisionist, a self-conscious commentary on itself, disclosing an who has a conscious concern with the meanings he represents" (29). Others were not so kind, some seeming to be out for blood, never seeing beyond the stereotypical masculinity of prior Eastwood Westerns and Harry Callahan films, or thinking he was simply trying to impersonate Huston. Rita Kempley, writing for The Post, begins with sarcasm: "Make my day, bwana. And get your bongo out of the Congo" (Kempley). Richard

Schickel, writing for Time, noted the difficulty of playing Huston, and commented that "the film's largest strength is its fully dimensional re-creation of the man's spirit, about which

Eastwood is thoughtfully, often amusingly, ambivalent."

Eastwood chose excerpts to adapt from the original text of Peter Viertel's White Hunter,

Black Heart that emphasize what he considers the most important events and incidents of this obsessive quest, adding, at the end, the mise en scène that helps viewers visualize the change in

Wilson and the film's denouement. This last scene summarizes what Viertel's epilogue states on 37 the final page of his book: the idea of Wilson as an isolated, broken, changed man, only going through the motions of his job with the burden of a reality that will never go away. Eastwood diverges from what audiences have come to expect in order to show the experiences of a man grappling with his inner demons. In the end Wilson goes through a period of tragedy and self- reflection caused by the violence he has experienced, during which he learns a life-changing lesson about egotism and responsibility. He, and all others around him, is affected by this violence. No one rides off into the sunset or fades away to his apartment for a cold beer and some slow, mellow jazz.

In Unforgiven (1992) Eastwood further emphasizes a noticeable change in his portrayal of violence and its effects on all those it touches. Unforgiven begins with reminders of the traditional Western genre, but without the traditional Eastwood persona. He is now a reformed thief and murder, William Munny, living on a pig farm in with his two children. His wife has died and he is left to raise the children alone. It is a peaceful enough existence, but, with an epidemic of hog cholera killing his animals, he cannot earn enough money to support his family, and sees the chance to move on to something else (by temporarily reverting to his murderous past) when a young bounty hunter, The Schoefield Kid, offers him half of a $1000 bounty in exchange for helping him kill two cowboys who "cut up a whore" in Wyoming.

Although Munny (Eastwood) decides to take The Kid up on his offer, it is not until the end of the film that a new, even more violent, Eastwood character is seen. In Unforgiven, each violent scene goes slightly further in its portrayal than the one before. Eastwood's character of William

Munny not only does away with the Western heroic myth, he creates a murderous animal he has never before portrayed. But the violence here is not solely for the entertainment of the audience, and is not expected. What starts out as an attack and mutilation of a prostitute has escalated, in 38 the end, into the murders of nine people, and caused Munny to break his promise to his now- dead wife as he reverts back to his original murderous ways. What stands out within all the killing is the central theme that all who come in contact with violence become victims in one way or another. This is a story that links violence, victims, and victimization throughout a series of historical, socio-cultural events where there is no hero, no winner, and no redemption--just revenge.

The violence and victimization continue in A Perfect World (1993), set in Texas in 1963, and directed by Eastwood, who also plays the role of "Red" Garnett, head of the Texas Rangers.

This film takes another tack, this time looking at the societal problems involved with childhood violence, juvenile incarceration, the failure of a "family" system, and the resultant effects on both escaped fugitive Robert "Butch" Haynes () and the seven-year-old boy, Phillip

Perry (T.J. Lowther), he and his psychotic partner take as a hostage. What begins as a manhunt across Texas in November of 1963 (shortly before the assassination of President Kennedy in

Dallas), quickly works its way into the story of a pseudo father and son relationship between

Butch and Phillip. This is more about Butch assuming the persona of what he considers a good father (the father he never had), while acting as the father Phillip never had, rather than a story about a statewide manhunt for an escaped murderer. says A Perfect World,

"may seem like a buddy movie crossed with a road picture," but it is much more than that. Roger

Ebert agrees, writing about the film's statements, stressing the effects of violence on almost every character within the film.

Butch lets Phillip (even forces him at times) to do the things he thinks a young boy would like to do (things Butch never got to do with his father), while, at other times, becoming the stern father-figure and guide for the naive Phillip. This story is also about the violence Butch was 39 subjected to as a young boy, the father he needed but never had, and the life of crime it led to, along with what Butch saw as the lack of normalcy in Philip's seven short years of childhood.

Instead of concentrating on the manhunt, the attention is on the effects of violence on the younger Butch, and how society and circumstances made him who he has become. He is the victim of his violent past. Eastwood's focus on violence as a reflection of the multitudes of problems within society is seen through a variety of perspectives--the innocence and naïveté of the boy Phillip, the cruel childhood and past of the criminal Butch, and the disappointing personal life of Texas Ranger "Red" Garnett, who feels partially responsible for Butch's life of crime.

The violence portrayed in Mystic River (2003) concentrates on a community suffering with the tragic grief of the recent death of one of their own, and the repercussions of the death of innocence from years past. Far from the point of view of Eastwood's former policeman characters out to right the wrongs of society and the political bureaucracy in the Dirty Harry sequence of films, Rand Cooper, in his article, "Unforgiven in Boston," sees the film as an act of atonement for Eastwood. Cooper discusses Eastwood's main concentration here as the recipients of the violence, and the layers of their suffering (25-26).

Beginning with a to that underlies the entire film, the abduction and molestation of a young boy (Dave) twenty-five years earlier by two pedophiles posing as policemen, Eastwood frames a close up on the hand of one of the men who is wearing a ring embellished with a shiny gold cross, instantly setting a tone linked to current events of the time in Boston. The symbol of the cross on the ring connects this incident with the 2002 news reports from of the sexual abuse of young boys by Catholic priests, and a cover up by church officials that had been going on for decades. The story that made headlines worldwide 40 and rocked the archdiocese of Boston to its foundation only a year earlier was brought back to life, especially in Boston, with the release of Mystic River. Eastwood combines this first image and incident with other religious symbolism throughout the film, keeping the involvement of the

Catholic Church in the forefront of what he refers to as "the most heinous crime, one that involves children" (Papamichael) which, in this case, leads to murder. Peter Travers of Rolling

Stone writes: "His film sneaks up, messes with your head and then floors you. You can't shake it.

It's that haunting, that hypnotic," and he does it with a polished stylistic technique that includes you, the viewer, in the scene as an unwilling victim of the violence.

Gran Torino (2008) is the completion of an arc of violence for Eastwood that began with the undertones of the effects of violence in White Hunter, Black Heart. Here he chooses yet another socio-cultural setting to look at the effects of violence--a former working-class neighborhood in Detroit, as retired auto-worker Walt Kowalski sees it, being "invaded" by those of a different culture (Hmong). One area of emphasis is on the combination of Walt's racist attitudes and his anger with these new residents, in part because they remind him (with their physical oriental appearance) of the violence and death he experienced during the Korean War, and in part because they are taking away the security he felt in this formerly all white neighborhood. Eastwood, as director, also highlights a variety of other troubles he sees in contemporary American society--the economic slow-down, hatred and racism, old age and death, and religion and the validity of the church, with Walt coming through at the end, exhibiting another defining characteristic of an Eastwood character--the reliance on an inner moral code to provide a sense of justice, as Walt makes the ultimate violent sacrifice designed to stop the violence.

41

Concerning the violent ending of the film, Annalee Ward writes that although Eastwood has abandoned the typical Dirty Harry vigilante violence to stop violence his character was previously known for, he ultimately does use violence to achieve justice, but this time the violence is against him, rather than by him (Ward 387).

With Walt Kowalski, Eastwood's characters have come full circle: beginning with the

"Man with No Name," who seemed to kill indiscriminately with greed and self-preservation as motives; to Harry Callahan, fighting against the "system" (sometimes outside the law) for the

"working class"; to William Munny, who, although he knew violence did not buy redemption, kills in the most savage expression of violence an Eastwood character has used to revenge the death of his friend; to Walt Kowalski, who, this time participates in the violence as victim, the only way he sees of ultimately stopping the violence in his neighborhood and bringing justice to its residents.

In the following four chapters, I discuss Eastwood films set in diverse social, cultural, and historical contexts. These films emphasize his change in the portrayal of violence from that of restoration of order through vigilante justice, common in his earlier films, to his--sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit--central theme that violence affects all it touches and that it does not come without consequences. This change which, at first took audiences and critics by surprise, demonstrates Eastwood's changing attitudes toward violence and its impact on our culture.

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Chapter 2

UNFORGIVEN

In Unforgiven (1992) Clint Eastwood found a vehicle for expressing two themes that have surfaced concurrently throughout his films since his "spaghetti" Western days--the Western heroic myth is dead, and all who are touched by violence become victims. Unforgiven, with its lack of redemptive qualities, absence of any form of heroic character, and a sense that all of its characters are victims, goes beyond any previous use of violence in Eastwood's films and effectively destroys any remaining semblance of the Western myth. No "good guy in a white hat" rides in at the last moment to save the day.

In Unforgiven the stress is on the consequences of violence, not only with the extreme, non-redemptive, violence at the end, but also showing how characters have been affected by their violent backgrounds through character development and background information rarely used in his previous films. In those films, characters appeared, performed, and were gone at the end of the film, sometimes leaving the audience wondering where the character had come from and where they would show up next. The characters of Unforgiven begin to offer the audience references to their past, which helps in understanding the motivation for their actions.

Eastwood's depiction of his protagonist, William Munny, murderer-turned good guy- turned murderer, is that of someone fighting with inner demons he thought had long since been destroyed. At first, Unforgiven reiterates the myth that even the worst outlaw can be tamed by the love of a good woman: a cold-blooded killer of men, women and children who is transformed into a caring, loving father by his now dead wife. Scratching out a living with his two children on a poor pig farm in Kansas, he maintains that he is a changed man because of his wife's rehabilitating love and that he will never go back to his former life. But circumstances 43 cause him to re-think his present life, a life that seems foreign to him (and for an Eastwood character). His hogs have cholera, he has very little money to support his children, and, although he is now an honest and reformed man, based on a comparison with Eastwood characters from his previous Westerns and audience expectations, there is a sense that all is not right in his world--that there is something wrong or unbelievable about the situation. Here the charade ends, as a young, arrogant, Schofield Kid rides up, offering to split a $1000 reward with him for the killing of two men in Wyoming.

When turned down, The Kid rides off, thinking all he heard about Munny's lawless reputation was false. Afterward, Munny begins thinking about the money, his children, and his present situation. Reluctant at first to come out of retirement and pursue what could be a fatal mission, Munny, in the end, needs the $500 he will receive as a killer for hire to fund a new start for him and his two children. This appears to be an attempt to generate audience sympathy for a reformed hired killer and to justify his killing for money in order to help his children and improve their living conditions. Throughout most of the film Munny reluctantly attempts to recover his former skills as one of the most violent killers of his time, and with great difficulty, that is until his only friend Ned, also along for a share of the reward, is beaten to death by the sheriff of Big Whiskey, Wyoming. Munny, about to head home with his share of the reward money, becomes enraged after hearing of Ned's death, instantly forgets his past ten years as a loving father and pig farmer, and reverts to the very ethos of violence that justifies his once renowned reputation.

This is not a film about redemption through violence, or an embodiment of the typical

Eastwood character or style of acting. He is not the cold, unemotional "Man with No Name" of

Westerns past, going about his business with the methodical manner of a robot, acting under a 44 self-professed moral code. At least not in the beginning. Here even his past persona changes.

He becomes a brutal killer, driven by rage and by the pure emotions of vengeance and retribution, until becoming a victim, again, of this world of violence.

With Unforgiven Eastwood is at a turning point as an actor and director, offering his version of the effects of violence and victimization on victims who, in this case, are everyone in

Big Whiskey, Wyoming, all touched in some way by the series of violent events. "We were trying to make a statement about violence and the moral issue of it," says Eastwood. "Because there is concern, a concern for the characters: that everything that has happened and what they have done is having repercussions" (Gourlie and Engel 10).

Eastwood's central theme in this film is that all who come in contact with violence, in any way, are affected adversely and suffer the repercussions. Michael Henry Wilson writes that,

"David Webb Peoples' outstanding screenplay lays bare themes that have preoccupied Eastwood from the beginning: the trauma of injustice, the spiral of vengeance, the tragic cycle of violence and reprisal" (90). He goes on to point out the similarities between the sheriff and the outlaws in the film, showing the sheriff as a cruel torturer and executioner who shuns the mythic gunfight in the street in favor of beating and humiliating his prisoners in front of a frightened townspeople.

Wilson recognizes that for the first time Eastwood is not using violence as entertainment, but is now showing that those who use violence, no matter the reason, are adversely affected (90).

That Eastwood chose a Western format to introduce his main concern on the consequences of violence emphasizes his knowledge of an audience and following he felt sure would at least see the film. At first, some film critics and movie reviewers saw Unforgiven as the same old Western story, and Eastwood's last hurrah. Hal Hinson, Washington Post movie reviewer, sees little difference in the Eastwood character of the past and William Munny, not 45 noticing the adverse emotional response Munny has to violence and his reluctance to revert to his former life of killing. Others, like Vincent Canby, movie critic for , Robert

Kapsis, and James Berardinelli had different takes on Eastwood's William Munny, seeing the change in this character. Canby cites Eastwood's performance as "his richest, most satisfying performance since the underrated, politically lunatic ." Kapsis calls the performance "proof that Eastwood was the model genre filmmaker, respectful of the conventions of the genre, yet bold enough to rework them with sometimes dramatic results," while

Berardinelli says, " few [Westerns] evidence the ethical complexity that Eastwood embraces in

Unforgiven."

From the first time he is seen on screen, in a long shot silhouette, under a tree, digging his wife's grave (reminiscent of The Outlaw Josey Wales), along with the introduction to the reserved character of Will Munny as pig farmer/family man, there is a sense that this is not the familiar Eastwood character, nor the one anticipated. Audiences wait for something to happen during the opening, something to break the tension, but nothing does.

There is also a sort of black humor here that might not work without the expectations about a known character and his persona. Munny in the pigpen and falling in the muck is humorous, but also sad. Eastwood's character as a broken man, and the pigpen incident are seen as possible provocation, which influences him to commit to the decision to take The Kid up on his offer. The scenes that follow are also humorous: first, because it has been so long since he has ridden a horse (and that his horse has been ridden), Munny cannot mount without falling off or being thrown off; and second, when he takes his gun from its hiding place and begins to practice shooting, he is rarely able to hit any of his , and ends up firing a shotgun, a weapon easier to kill with--easier to hit a target--but also requiring him to be closer to his target. 46

These scenes, although funny at first, lose their humor when it is understood that they are the preparation for killing.

Just as Munny's frustrations seem to be giving him second thoughts about his return to killing, things begin to change--if only bit-by-bit, and, with an over-exaggerated reluctance that is seen throughout the major portion of the film--as his old abilities slowly begin to surface.

When he visits his long-time friend and former partner in crime, Ned, to ask him to watch over the children while he is gone, Ned also decides to join the hunt, and they set off together to catch up with The Kid. The excitement--even happiness--reflected in Ned's expression gives the impression that this job will be just like old times for him and Munny. Only now is the standard

Eastwood Western anticipated, and, at first, those expectations are seemingly being met.

With the opening scenes, the mood set by Eastwood is not one of darkness or violence, but of depression and sympathy. The beginning scene, with him in silhouette under a tree and digging a grave (which viewers later find out is his wife's grave from two years earlier), is described by scrolling dialogue over part of the image with information about his past and the events leading up to the present. This background information, supplied at the beginning of the film, signals another change for an Eastwood character. Rarely have any of his characters been given a history, or an explanation of why they might have developed into the character they are.

In Unforgiven characters slowly but continuously reveal bits and pieces of information about their past, sometimes through their actions and dialogue, and sometimes through what others reveal about them. This is helpful in that it explains and sets the scene for the violence that occurs throughout the film. The violence builds from the first scene in Big Whiskey, with most of it taking place there, giving the impression that it is a place of evil. 47

From the moment Big Whiskey, Wyoming, is introduced, with the panoramic view of the town, in a setting of grassy plains with snow-covered mountains as a backdrop, and a thundering winter storm moving in, another foreboding visual impression is created, along with a tone or mood of uneasiness. This establishing shot is a characteristic of Eastwood's cinematic style, grounding the audience within the physical location of a scene by using a long shot with a point of focus that draws interest and anticipation, and, in this case, a hint of foreboding.

Moving next to a flashback that shows how the conflict in this story begins, street views of the town at night, during a violent rainstorm, further add to the cold, dark, and dismal mood of the scene, and also add an expectation of violence. Still in flashback, this expectation is immediately satisfied with a violent bedroom scene in which a whore has her face disfigured by a cowboy with a knife ("Quick" Mike) after she giggles at the size of his penis. This very dimly lit scene also adds a gloomy sadness to the mood. With this scene, a series of violent events are triggered that eventually affect the entire town, connected and instigated by town sheriff Little

Bill Daggett, who rules with the brutality of a sadistic dictator. The value (or lack of value) placed on individuals because of their professions (in this case, prostitution) within the context of the time period is apparent when the prostitutes are referred to, by "Skinny," the bar owner, as

"property" rather than human beings.

Adding to the darkness of the mood, Skinny is not upset that one of his whores has almost been killed, only that she can no longer make him any money with her face disfigured, and asks Little Bill to extract monetary recompense from the two cowboys. When Skinny offers no sympathy for Delilah and her injuries, only remorse for himself, the stage is set for another typical Eastwood morality play. One of his featured characters in prior films has been that of the 48 strong woman figure, and the women of Unforgiven are no different. They also fit the stereotype of the "underdog," another typically sympathetic character of his past films.

Little Bill, who seems to be taking the incident rather lightly, adds to the contempt the whores have for him by, at first, deciding to whip the two cowboys for what they have done, then, considering Skinny's appeal for reimbursement for lost income, and, instead of whipping, orders "Quick" Mike to bring in five horses and Davey to bring two next spring as payment for damaging Skinny's property. Delilah, the damaged whore, is devastated (as are the other whores) by Little Bill's treatment of her as property. Infuriated by the loss of what human dignity they might have had, the whores, led by Strawberry Alice, band together to collect $1,000 to hire an assassin to kill "Quick" Mike and his partner Davey. As they start to pool their money, the flashback ends, and the present-day story begins.

There is a kind of empathy for the whores, but they are whores, who, within the historical context of the 1880s, are thought of as some of the lowest members of society, and, in this case, are also victims of the violence in their own world. Their reaction is emotionally driven by their rage at the attack on Delilah. Even more so, they are infuriated by their treatment as "property" by Skinny, the lack of significance Little Bill places on the attack on Delilah, and the light penalty given her attackers. Realizing that with the lack of severe punishment for the cowboys they will not get the revenge they seek from the official law of Big Whiskey, they take measures into their own hands, another characteristic of an Eastwood film. Although they have been treated horribly, and Delilah hurt physically and emotionally, the hiring of an assassin to kill the two cowboys could be considered too emotional a response, and certainly the murder both cowboys too violent a punishment for the crime committed. Even though Davey did not take part in the attack, he did help Mike by holding Delilah while Mike cut her, making him, in their 49 eyes, just as guilty as Mike. Guilt by association, a point of law then in current practice, supports

Eastwood's central theme of repercussive violence--that all who are touched by violence become victims.

The violence builds, as one violent act leads to another, driven entirely by emotion. This penalty for committing a crime against a woman, following Western mythology, is not as out of place in the historical context of this Western frontier town as it might seem. But considering that the crime committed was against prostitutes, neither is the retribution exacted by Little Bill.

In one sense, Western mythology says these two men need killing, but in another, Little Bill's and Skinny's treatment of the whores is normal and understandable within the historical context of a frontier town in the 1880s. This particular scene not only emphasizes the relationship between the violence of the setting and the victims, but also the underlying themes of victimization and lack of effectiveness of law enforcement (in this case the catalyst for violence to come) that are characteristic of Eastwood's prior films: "You could think," says Eastwood,

"that if the Little Bill character (Gene Hackman) had granted justice to those women in the beginning, that would have changed the whole story" (Jousse and Nevers 177).

At this point in the film, the mood or tone has been set. This is a dark film with a dark message, far, in contrast, from the mood of the opening scene, or the scenes building to the entrance of Munny and his partners into Big Whiskey. The mechanical properties of setting, lighting, and camera placement and angles are important factors in creating an atmosphere that corresponds and even accentuates themes within the film. Eastwood's cinematic vision plays the major role in the creative cinematographic mechanics of his films, and he comments that the lighting throughout Unforgiven was set to mimic the kind of lighting that would have been common in the 1880s. "On Unforgiven, we were able to work it out so that the light emanates 50 from natural sources like doorways, windows, and the few gas lamps that would have been there," says Eastwood (Wilson 94-95). Both Jack Green (director of cinematography) and Tom

Stern (director of lighting) were complimented for their work on the film by Eastwood, who felt that the lighting created a setting that helped tell the story within a more believable environment.

The dark lighting of the interior shots in the saloon, the bedrooms of the prostitutes, and even around the campfire, interpreted in environmentally realistic ways, can either create an atmosphere of reality on screen, or one of total disinterest.

"To me, lighting is essential," says Eastwood. "You don't tell a story with actors and words only. You have to set the right atmosphere" (94). He makes a comparison with some of the older westerns he has seen, in which the light level indoors was almost that of the outdoors, but not true to the situation, instantly losing the feeling of reality. The darkness of the lighting in

Unforgiven continues to hold the darkness of the mood, an identifying characteristic of the films of Eastwood, who has always been concerned that the lighting should match the situation. David

Breskin writes that Eastwood believes the quality of the lighting helps hold the attention of the audience, no matter the other qualities of the film: "There is something about black and white films that have great drama to them. But you can't photograph [a film like Unforgiven] that way, you have to do it from the art direction, the costuming, and so on, everything has to fit" (Breskin

395). Given the lack of description and small amount of dialogue in David Webb Peoples' script,

Eastwood creates visuals for each scene that continue the dark overall mood and tone, bringing out the darkness and personal devastation of the story, and emphasizing the effects of violence and victimization he uses to represent his central theme of repercussive violence.

Western frontier towns of the 1880s, far from the civility of the East, existed in a violent, and, in many cases, lawless environment. Big Whiskey, Wyoming, is no different, except that 51 the violence that exists here is in the form of its law enforcement entity, ruled by a ruthless and brutal sheriff, Little Bill Daggett, whose background is that of a "town-tamer," using any methods he sees fit to maintain order and his view of justice. His life of violence has evolved into a "whatever it takes" philosophy he practices as a deterrent to crime, a philosophy of protection that actually frightens and horrifies the townspeople.

Lee Clark Mitchell writes that the legitimacy of the violence in the typical Western is accepted until it reaches excesses. To Mitchell, the excesses of violence in Unforgiven move away from the traditional "legitimate" functions of violence to restore order, represented in the traditional Western, and provide no redemptive value. He feels Eastwood has "reinvented a newly revived genre," rather than "repeating" the standard Western (180).

Eastwood, as director, reinforces his point about the repercussions of violence as English

Bob (Richard Harris), a hired gun who "shoots Chinamen for the railroad," and obviously a person living a life of violence, arrives in Big Whiskey with his dime novelist/biographer, W.W.

Beauchamp, to collect the reward for killing the two cowboys. The irony here is that anyone entering Big Whiskey is asked to surrender their guns to Sheriff Daggett in order to prevent violence, and to generally keep the peace, but the townspeople live in fear of that same sheriff (a victim of his own violent world), whose brutally violent and dictatorial methods of keeping that peace border on the maniacally sadistic.

When English Bob, confronted by a deputy who informs him of the gun surrender law, says he is unarmed, the deputy inadvertently sees a pistol Bob is trying to conceal and lets Little

Bill know. Bob is immediately recognized by Little Bill as a he knows from his past, relieved of his weapons, beaten until unconscious in the street in front of the horrified townspeople, locked up, and later carted out to the next train leaving town. Not only does Little 52

Bill exact this brutal punishment on Bob, by the smile on his face, he seems to be getting a sadistic pleasure from it--another effect involved with a life of violence. Little Bill may not, at this point in his life, realize he is doing something extremely violent, only that he is following the law, enforcing his role as sheriff, and preventing English Bob from causing trouble.

Biographer Beauchamp, seeing the subject of his current novel brutally beaten and run out of town, is amazed at how easily Bill neutralizes Bob. His former vision of English Bob as the Western hero is destroyed, and he now decides to chronicle the exploits of Little Bill

Daggett, Sheriff of Big Whiskey, Wyoming.

As the episodes of violence increase in number, they also become more intense. In filming and editing the scene of the beating of English Bob, Eastwood purposely cuts back and forth from the beating to the horrified faces of the townspeople in order to emphasize their reactions to the violence and their fear of the man they have hired to protect them. He also cuts back and forth to the group of prostitutes, also watching, a look of despair on their faces, as they see their chance for vengeance vanish with the physical and emotional humiliation of English

Bob.

The violence escalates with the arrival of Munny, Ned, and the Schofield Kid at Greely's

Saloon, again at night, and during a heavy rainstorm. The darkness and stormy, rainy, weather outside the saloon are the same as in the mood-setting scene the night Delilah is attacked, this time also predicting violence. While Ned and The Kid are upstairs with the whores, Munny, cold, wet and shivering with a fever, sits alone in the saloon and waits. He is confronted by

Little Bill and asked to surrender his gun, which he refuses, and is badly beaten and thrown into the muddy street. As he slowly crawls to his escape, this scene mirrors Eastwood's "Man with

No Name" character and the similar scenes of recuperation from A Fistful of Dollars. Badly hurt 53 from the beating, and equally suffering from the fever, he is nursed back to health by Ned, who, with the help of the whores, is able to patch up his wounds. Munny, in the delirium of fever, goes through nightmarish dream sequences in which he sees the men he has killed and screams out violently in remorse for the killings, again illustrating how he has been touched by violence that he can never fully forget, and also illustrating that his reluctance to return to his former life is real, not solely a mouthed promise to his dead wife.

Three days later, when Munny has shaken the fever, and partially recovered from the beating, the three again set out to hunt down Davey and set up an ambush from high above. Ned, who earlier had seemed excited to return to the outlaw life, shoots and misses Davey, killing his horse, and, immediately finding that he can no longer kill a man, passes the rifle to Munny, who finishes the job. Ned decides he cannot return to the violent life he also left ten years earlier, gives the rifle and shells to Munny, and leaves for home.

Now that Davy is dead, Munny and The Kid continue the hunt for "Quick" Mike, and find him, along with some ranch hands, and a deputy as a guard, hiding out in a ranch cabin. It is early in the morning and they wait for the cowboys to take their turns in the outhouse. The Kid, who has been boasting throughout the trip about having killed five men, but in reality has never killed a man, hesitates, then shoots Mike as he sits in the outhouse, instantly realizes killing is not the thrill he thought it would be, and falls apart emotionally, severely affected by his personal involvement in a violent act he once bragged about but now cannot morally cope with. As

Munny and The Kid sit under a tree on a hill overlooking Big Whiskey, waiting for the delivery of the $1000 reward, The Kid breaks down and confesses he has never killed anyone before, and will never kill again. The arrogance of The Kid, another typical characteristic of the Western 54 myth, is neutralized, his punishment for the violent crime of murder: a self-inflicted sentence he will serve for the rest of his life.

Munny has begun to drink again, and a change in his attitude is noticeable. He has continually referred to drinking as the major cause of his previous ability to kill without emotion or reason. His cold ambivalence for the killings, and calm, unfeeling acceptance of the effects of violence, especially within his conversation with The Schofield Kid, are an indication that he is remembering the killer he once was. Munny is in a fragile state at this point. The story could end here. He could split the money with The Kid and ride toward home, go back to being a father and family man, the typical end to a typical Western, but this story is not about Munny and his family, and what they do in the future. The violence, so far, has been violence from afar, making no major impression that was new or unique for a Western, or for Eastwood. But that is not to last. All that has happened has led to this turning point, and another "What if?"

When one of the whores arrives with the reward money, Will finds out that Ned has been captured and killed, beaten to death by Little Bill for not giving him information about Munny and The Kid. At this instant, Munny is transformed back to his former life. He has crossed over the line between Western hero and cold-blooded murderer, and now his future actions cannot be accurately anticipated. The Kid goes on his way toward home and Munny begins to drink heavily, emphasizing the link between his past, while foreshadowing the deadly events of the future.

As Munny enters Greely's Bar for the second time, audience expectations for an

Eastwood western, and for the typical Eastwood persona, quickly dissolve in an array of violence unequaled by his character in any of his previous films. The outside setting is a cold and rainy night, just as when he had entered the saloon the first time, but this time there is a difference. 55

Ned's dead body is on display in front of the saloon, in an upright coffin lit by torches, and boasting a sign that reads, "This is what happens to assassins." Munny, further enraged by this sight, his rain slicker on and his hat pulled low, almost covering his face, enters the saloon as

Little Bill is giving orders to the posse that is assigned to chase down him and The Kid the next day. The sound of Munny cocking the hammers on a double-barreled shotgun quiets the crowd in the saloon. Skinny, the saloon and whore owner, is the first to be singled out. As he moves away from the crowd, Munny kills him point-blank with one shotgun blast, over the protests of

Little Bill, who, ironically, is infuriated that Munny would shoot a man down in cold blood, and without a fair fight. (There goes the Western myth.) Everything about Unforgiven reeks of repercussive violence. There are no "fair fights," with each gunslinger facing the other in the street to see which is the quicker draw. There is only brutality and murder, with no semblance of justice or redemption, just retribution, something familiar that takes viewers back to the first

Leone/Eastwood films.

Munny then tries to use his shotgun on Little Bill, but the second barrel misfires. He proceeds to draw his pistol, crouches on one knee, and shoots Little Bill and all his deputies, mysteriously avoiding all their bullets. The whores, gathered on the balcony, watch in horror the scene for which they are ultimately responsible, unable to do anything to alter or stop the series of events. When the action slows, viewers are as shocked and stunned as those left alive in the saloon. As Munny admonishes all who are left alive to leave now if they don't want to be killed, he walks around the room shooting and killing the injured deputies. The room quickly clears, with only the novelist, W.W. Beauchamp (who is pinned beneath a ), and a wounded

Little Bill, left alive. Little Bill manages to tell Munny, "I don't deserve to die this way." Munny growls back, "Deserve's got nothing to do with it," and Little Bill replies, realizing he is about to 56 die, snarls, "I'll see you in hell, William Munny." Munny manages a drunken slur, "Yeah," and shoots him in the face with a Sharp's 50-caliber rifle. Although the shooting is not seen, it is significant that this is an obvious use of overstatement, in this case making a dramatic statement.

Munny has effectively removed what he sees as the principal evils from the town--the purveyor of whores, who was the catalyst of this particular violence, along with the brutally corrupt and violent sheriff and his deputies--but with violence unequaled by any of the villains in the story.

The revenge deemed necessary from beginning to end in Unforgiven, the killing of the two cowboys for cutting Delilah's face, and now the killing of seven others in retribution for Ned's killing, represents an exponential increase in punishment that does not fit either crime. This is outside the law, and, at the same time a result of the failure of the law, a characteristic of an

Eastwood film. Beauchamp, recovered from the astonishing flood of violence, now wants to write Munny's story (ironically attempting to perpetuate the Western myth Munny has just destroyed), but decides against asking any more questions when Munny tells him he doesn't remember who he shot first, but he can tell him who will be last.

Eastwood has gone far beyond the expectations of his loyal audience and has destroyed the comfortable persona of his past characters, whose actions were at least governed by some form of a personal moral code. This Eastwood character was killing every person who moved until he ran out of ammunition. He killed without the look of sadness or remorse sometimes evident in the eyes of his past characters, just the cold look of pure hatred and vengeance characteristic of a hardened killer with no conscience.

As Munny leaves the saloon he gives the townspeople an ultimatum: do not shoot at him or he will come back and kill the person who shoots, all of that person's family, and all of that person's friends. He also admonishes them to "bury Ned right" as he slowly rides out of town, 57 still in the darkness of the continuing rainstorm. Passing by some of the whores as he is leaving, he has no sympathy in his eyes. He is a changed man, but this time he has changed back to the cold and ruthless killer of ten years earlier, a victim of his own violence.

This build-up to the ending establishes a feeling of ambiguity that continues through a final scene mirroring the first: Munny in silhouette standing next to the grave of his wife, with a peaceful orange sunset as the backdrop. Written dialogue again scrolls across part of the image, supposedly taken from a dime novel written by Beauchamp, telling the audience only that

Munny and his children were never heard of again, but that it is thought they went to San

Francisco where he started a dry goods business. It is left for the audience to decide if a person such as Munny, who had changed into his antitheses, then reverted to the very personification of evil, could actually change back again to the loving father experienced during the first scenes.

It is here that Eastwood, who has only touched the script minimally, makes a change that adds to the ambiguity, without deflating the importance of his concentration on violence, victims, and victimization. Originally, author David Webb Peoples wrote the ending to have Munny return home to his patiently waiting children. that he came back home, again the reformed father figure from the first scenes, having quiet conversations with his children. Also cut was a scene in which Munny's son tells him that The Schofield Kid, who has now reverted to his real name (Tom), came by with money and gave it to little Will with the message that he was to give half to Sally Two Trees if Munny did not return within a week. One of the most telling of the cut scenes from the return occurred when Munny was asked by his son Will, "Did you kill somebody?" to which Munny lied, "Naw, son, I didn't kill nobody," furnishing implications for the future. Very few other changes, most of which were insignificant, were made in Peoples' script, except for these scenes near the end, which, if left in, give the viewer enough information 58 to form a more precise conclusion about the character of Munny, and maybe even about the future for him and his family. These scenes were photographed, but later removed in the final cut, and the jump is from the night Munny leaves Big Whiskey to the final scene by his wife's grave under the tree.

Since these made up such a short group of scenes, time constraints may not have been an influence in their not being included, but this editing did remove evidence which implied Munny had not been able to go back and forth as successfully from loving father and family man to cold- blooded killer as originally thought. When asked by Wilson about the fate of the whores,

Eastwood replied: "What they have in common is that they all sold their souls to survive; we don't know what happened to the girls. It is up to the imagination of the audience" (Wilson 94), as it is for Munny and his family. As for the un-used last scene, Eastwood admits that he cut the scene to add to the ambiguity of the ending, letting the viewers finish it the way they want

(Breskin 387).

At the time it was released, Unforgiven shocked critics. Some believed it the worst of

Eastwood's career, and some believed it the best, if not the beginning of a new era. Paul Smith writes that he is surprised by how the majority of film critics were writing about the film as if it was different from past Eastwood films and characters. He fails to see that Eastwood has used the film as a criticism of violence and sees no change in the use of violence and no attempt to reveal the remorse and destructive effects of violence, only the same old Eastwood (263-268).

Carl Plantinga writes about what he refers to as "the complexity and ambiguity in the film's treatment of violence." Although Plantinga is not totally rejecting, as did Smith, the idea that Eastwood is using the film to show the repercussions of violence on all involved, he does 59 feel that the portrayal of regenerative violence, which he feels is still at work, has a powerful influence on the audience, overshadowing Eastwood's central theme.

A few other journalistic critics followed the leads of Smith and Plantinga, but most praised Eastwood and the film for what they saw as an obvious change in his use of violence.

Breskin considers Unforgiven "A polished piece of rawhide revisionism, it's anti-romantic, anti- heroic, and anti-violent" (368). Eastwood went on to tell Breskin about the change in the use of violence in Unforgiven and how this change came about, saying that this new use for violence is,

"the element I've wanted that's been missing for me" (Breskin 381). Throughout the interview,

Eastwood's comments come back to the central theme that everyone in the film is a victim of the violence. This is the first time, he says, that the audience can see where the violence leads (381).

Newsweek critic David Ansen, although not seeing the violence aspect as many others did, highlights the Western heroic myth, calling Unforgiven "a classical tale of the Old West that's a radical critique of Western-movie conventions [where Eastwood] reveals his disgust for the false mythology of the Western hero." Tim Groves, writing for Senses of Cinema, agrees with Ansen, and characterizes Unforgiven as a "harsh, brilliant culmination, indeed consummation, of themes, motifs, characterizations, and critical attitudes that have evolved in

Clint Eastwood’s Westerns for more than thirty years."

But, both Ansen and Groves, in their praise of Unforgiven, fail to see the change in

Eastwood's use of violence as the central theme of the film. They tend to center their comments on the end of the Western heroic myth. Eastwood, continuing to reinforce his message, when asked: "What would you say is the difference between this one (Unforgiven) and the others

(Westerns)," replied "The film deals with violence and its consequences a lot more than those

I've done before" (Jousse and Nevers 176-177). Eastwood was concerned with what he calls the 60

"gratuitous" killings in his films of the past, and the lack of consequences for the perpetrators, themes he felt needed to be changed. Immediately upon the release of Unforgiven many journalistic critics failed to see anything other than the typical Eastwood Western. With time, and a closer reading of the film, some journalistic and scholarly critics have acknowledged his new central theme and even praised his approach to the subject.

Another new element Eastwood introduced in Unforgiven is a form of character development that ties all the major characters together. These are not the "No-Name" characters of the "spaghetti" Westerns or the "Dirty" Harry series, only known for their present actions.

Viewers know just enough about most of them to see how they fit within the story. The characters of Unforgiven, except for the Schofield Kid, all have violent pasts, and none are spoken of as being upstanding members of society. Although the violence in past Eastwood films has sometimes been rampant, the obvious personal moral code Eastwood's character followed reserved the killing and violence for the criminal. Gourlie and Engle do recognize his changed use of violence, but fail to see that Eastwood's point in using the tragedy within these films is to emphasize his central theme of repercussive violence as the cause of the tragedy.

Both Brad Klypchak and John Tibbetts see Eastwood's use of violence in Unforgiven as a purposeful change and a comment on past portrayals. To Klypchak, the change includes a change in the Western genre (159). Tibbetts adds that the violence of Unforgiven extends beyond that anticipated from an Eastwood Western, and "can hardly be characterized as indulging in false heroics or sensationalizing violence" (173). Looking at Unforgiven as a new stage in the genre, William Beard suggests that the historical progression of the genre has, itself, generated a new level of dominance for the type of "problematic and anti-heroic" persona (61). 61

Beard describes the film as a critique of the violence it creates and the concept that violence only

"masquerades" as honor and justice (Beard 174).

Other significant effects of the killings in Unforgiven are that they provide turning points and repercussions for the characters committing them. Ned cannot kill the innocent Davey and gives the rifle to Munny, who, almost reluctantly, finishes the job. Afterward, Ned, saying he cannot bring himself to kill again, leaves for home, only to get caught and beaten to death by

Little Bill. The Schofield Kid brags about his fictional killings until he does actually kill Mike, and then is completely broken and rides for home, leaving Munny alone to exact a savage revenge for the killing of Ned. Until after he finds out about the killing of Ned Munny has been reluctant to journey backward into his violent past. As Eastwood notes, "Munny has thrown a switch or something and now a kind of machinery was back in action, a machinery of violence"

(Gourlie and Engel 10).

What started as an act of revenge by a group of prostitutes triggered a chain of events that got tragically out of hand, leading to the deaths of nine men. The un-armed saloon owner Skinny is shot point blank with a shotgun, not because of the way he initially treated Delilah, but because, "he decorated his saloon with my friend," says Munny. His killing of Little Bill is the essence of cold-blooded murder and excessive violence. These two acts, plus the killing of four of Little Bill's deputies, and the ambushing of the two cowboys, break the myth of the Western hero. The truth finally comes out--the hero who rides in at the last moment in the white hat only exists in the minds of Hollywood writers and dime novelists.

In 1990, shortly before the release of Unforgiven, the Center for Disease Control began to shift its emphasis from studying the causes of violence to finding ways to prevent it. Although violent crime figures had been on a decline, teen suicide, crimes against children, and rape were 62 on an increase. The release of Unforgiven confronted some of these concerns, and served as a new forum for Eastwood to present his ideas on violence and its effects. When the film was first released in in August of 1992, Americans had seen days of rioting on the television news during the end of April and first of May prompted by the court's decision not to convict the police officers who participated in the filmed beating of motorist Rodney King. Audiences there had experienced first hand the futility of the justice system, and the same futility of vigilante justice with the violent attempt at revenge through the riots that followed. The violence perpetrated on King, the not guilty verdict of the officers involved, and the response to these events from the rioters, brought no justice for King or anyone else, but did end up making them all victims of that violence, and physically destroying their own neighborhoods. The message in

Unforgiven fit unusually well within that context. What television audiences saw during the riots was mirrored in the events which took place in Unforgiven. In Los Angeles, a lack of justice from law enforcement resulted in vigilante justice taking over and violence getting out of hand, ending in massive repercussions. No one wins in Los Angeles or in Unforgiven, but all suffer the repercussions of violence.

63

Chapter 3

A PERFECT WORLD

In 1963 the American public was watching a series of chaotic events unfold during each nightly television newscast. President Kennedy had established a travel and trade embargo against Cuba. Religious turmoil flared in South Vietnam as Buddhist monks burned themselves to death in the city streets of Saigon. Racial tensions caused chaos across America as The

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., made his "I have a dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln

Memorial, while newly elected Governor George Wallace of Alabama declared the state's schools would remain segregated forever, and NAACP Field Director Medgar Evers was gunned down in his front yard in Mississippi. In England a Russian spy/British official scandal raged in

Parliament and the press. Political tensions were high in Greece, the Dominican Republic,

Indonesia, and the newly formed Malaysia. The United States, seemingly on the brink of war in

South Vietnam, thinking they were preventing a take-over by Communists, aided in a coup overthrowing the government of President Diem and the assassination of Diem and his brother- in-law Nhu, events that served as the catalysts for the 10-year police action referred to as the

Vietnam War. Adding to the chaos of 1963 is the assassination of President Kennedy on

November 23 in Dallas, Texas. The historical context of A Perfect World (1993) is Texas in

November of 1963, less than two weeks before Kennedy's fateful November visit to Dallas, and far from perfect.

The chaotic events within A Perfect World represent a microcosm of world society. The violence used to stop the chaos in the film is as ineffective as the violence associated with stabilizing world chaos, but emphasizes how that violence, on a worldwide scale, makes victims of all who come in contact with it. 64

A Perfect World begins as a contradiction--an absurdity far from perfect. As the film opens, two inmates are breaking out of the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. Over the course of the film, they kidnap, and later kill, a prison official, and kidnap a small boy. One escapee kills the other, and then takes what seems like all of the major law-enforcement agencies in Texas, the FBI, and the small boy he has kidnapped on a cross-country road trip/manhunt, ending in death for the escaped convict at the hands of an FBI sharpshooter. On the surface, this appears to be a typical police drama that ends with a happy resolution--the hero rides in with his white hat shining, just in time to kill the bad guy and save the day (in this case to save a seven- year-old boy), but it is not. This could also be the story of Butch, a bad man (but really not that bad down deep) who establishes a buddy relationship with a young boy he identifies with who has been deprived of what Butch sees as a "normal" childhood experience, but in a different context than himself. Neither is the real story within the film; they only serve as vehicles for carrying examples of the repercussions of violence.

Clint Eastwood has created a complex inner story from a rather flat, plain, and unemotional John Lee Hancock script, which now includes an analogous central theme of how repercussive violence affects victims and victimization, theorizing that each person touched in any way by violence also becomes a victim. Not only do the technical and mechanical aspects of

Eastwood's cinematic style create a feeling of reality within A Perfect World that makes the film more believable, they also show the effects of violence in ways shattering audience expectations that this might be a modern-day mirror of Unforgiven. Unforgiven had been released the year before (1992), and, although some critics had responded favorably to what they saw as

Eastwood's new emphasis on the repercussive violence in that film, others saw the "same old

Eastwood." The same mixed response to A Perfect World occurred. Many critics saw only a 65 slowly evolving chase film with little story line, and a significant failure for Eastwood (e.g.,

Desson Howe, Mark Leeper, Richard Montarari). Authors and critics seem to touch on the idea of change in Eastwood's portrayal of violence, but never see the change as an overall revision of his use of central theme--only as individual incidents, and only in major award-winning films.

But support for Eastwood's newly expressed theme concerning repercussive violence, and his methods of expressing that theme in A Perfect World, came from other critics, including

Roger Ebert, who, in a 1993 review writes that the film is not what it appears to be, but notes the use of violence and the importance of showing its repercussions. Gourlie and Engel see an obvious reflection of what they call "a change in the Eastwood persona" (10), comparing the characterizations of A Perfect World to those of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: "The viewer knew who the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly characters were, and he knew the temper and tone of the film. In A Perfect World, the characters are portrayed as more complex and more malleable"

(11). The irony within the title, according to Gourlie and Engel, is also exhibited in the characters and their situations: Butch is not as bad as the character he represents (that of a life- long criminal), the Texas law enforcement officials do the opposite of establishing order out of chaos (they represent chaos), and the FBI becomes the "bad" (based on the lack of respect for human life symbolized by their trigger-happy sniper) (Gourlie and Engel 11). Ebert, Gourlie, and Engle are seeing parts, but not all, of Eastwood's central theme, but not seeing the overall theme of repercussive violence and its relationship to the of the main characters.

The on-screen portrayal of violence in A Perfect World is far from the visuals of exaggerated violence in Unforgiven. This story is less about superficial visions of violence than it is about the repercussions of violence from the past and present. Violence is spoken of and inferred throughout the film by escaped convict Robert "Butch" Haynes' (Kevin Costner's) 66 expressions and off-hand comments, but not experienced explicitly until the end. The threats of violence are in the actions and comments of his psychopathic fellow escapee Terry Pugh (Keith

Szarabajka), who is only there because he happened to be Butch's cellmate.

In the first scene from the prison cell, what is immediately apparent is the disparity in the personalities of Butch and Terry, who almost immediately display two distinct types of violence.

Upon the audience's first encounter with the two convicts Butch appears to be all business as he digs his way through the wall vent of looking for an escape route through an air duct that an old prisoner had told them about, while Terry postures, telling the old man from one cell to the next, "It better be there or I'll cut your tongue out." The volatile temper of Terry suggests he will be the catalyst of more violence in the near future, whereas, Butch just wants to get away.

That expected violence occurs quickly when, after escaping from their cell, they capture and kidnap a prison official, hold him at gunpoint to get them through the prison gate, and then steal his car. After finding the prison official's gun, Terry smiles maniacally and says, "Gawd I'd love to blow yer' head off." The difference in personalities suggests that Terry, not Butch, is guilty of the implied violence of the future. Is the prison official they kidnaped (now missing from the film) in the car's trunk? Is he alive or dead? Viewers suspect Terry might have carried through with his earlier threat, but this mystery is not solved until much later, when the law enforcement officials find the dead prison official in the trunk of his car. Although the audience never finds out who actually did the killing, viewers suspect Terry, who continues to have fits of temper, along with drastic mood changes, while laughing hysterically. Violence is his turn-on, and a constant, which, early on in the film, ends badly for him. Although nothing is known about the specifics of their backgrounds, or even what crimes they committed, Eastwood is presenting "background" on these two characters by what they say and do. Attitudes are 67 developed and conclusions drawn by the audience concerning these characters' individual sense of right and wrong, just from their dialogue, their actions, and their animosity toward each other.

After leaving the prison with the prison official (no longer visible), Butch and Terry drive down the dark street of a Huntsville, Texas neighborhood in the early morning hours following

Halloween, looking for another car to steal. Butch parks the stolen prison official's car while

Terry goes to look for a Ford (Butch wants a Ford), but instead is sidetracked by an early- morning light in the window of a home, and breaks into a house where he finds Gladys Perry cooking breakfast. A script change occurs here that adds intensity to the moment. The original script had Jerry motioning with his gun for Gladys to open the door: "Gladys gasps at Terry's face pressed against the screen, but controls herself when he brandishes the pistol. He motions for her to open the back door. She does. He slides into the room and sits down at the table"

(Hancock). But, in order to add more intensity to Terry's violent character, Eastwood had Terry ram the barrel of the pistol through the screen door, use the barrel to open the latch, then storm into the kitchen. He holds the gun on the surprised, terrified Gladys, asks her for some food, and, when she comes near, grabs her, pulls her onto his lap, and begins kissing her neck.

When seven-year-old Phillip enters the kitchen and tries to intervene, Terry backhands him, knocking him to the floor. At that moment, Butch bursts in at the door and kicks Terry in the face, knocking him across the room and making him drop the gun. Butch, knowing Terry as the psychopath he is, takes control of the situation (and never releases that control), and, when an old-man neighbor steps in the door with a shotgun, Butch quietly diffuses the situation without more violence, again emphasizing their different personalities. From what is known after experiencing Terry's temper, he probably would have shot the old man, increasing the expectations of a violent confrontation between the two escapees in the future. Terry's violent 68 character is becoming well known to viewers, but they remain unsure about Butch. This is the first instance of Butch's use of violence to restore order. There is the sense, following this scene, that there is more to know about Butch than what has so far been seen on the surface.

The anticipated confrontation between Terry and Butch finally occurs when Butch enters a country store to get supplies for their travels (including bullets for their pistol), leaving Terry and Phillip alone in the car. Terry tries to molest Phillip, who bites Terry's hand, escapes from the car, and runs into a cornfield to hide. He has taken the gun, but there are no bullets. Phillip, on his knees and hiding from Terry, hears someone coming closer to his hiding place, and points the unloaded pistol toward the sound, only to see Butch (now with a handful of bullets), reach out for the gun. As Phillip runs back to the car he hears a shot, and so does the storeowner, who comes running outside. Butch gives him a controlled warning (which gives his character more development), telling him to go back inside and lie down on the floor until they are gone, and he and Phillip drive away, with no questions asked or answered by either one. The violence is still inferred. Both the prison official and Terry are no longer visible participants in the film, but their implicit killings are dealt with much differently than the expected explicit methods of violence seen in past Eastwood films. Is the prison official dead and in the trunk of the car? Is

Terry dead and left in the cornfield? There are no visuals of villains (or anyone else) being gunned down in front of the camera or bloody dead bodies discovered, and no visible psychotic threats of retribution.

Now, with Terry out of the way, an entirely new story begins to surface with the unexpected relationship that develops between Butch and Phillip as the road trip/manhunt begins. By removing the distraction of Terry's psychotic rants, and, with the lack of visibility of

69 police in pursuit, viewers are now able to fully concentrate on that relationship and the bond that grows out of it.

A difference can be seen in this film early on that began to appear in Unforgiven: there is character development at an ever-increasing level. Although not much, some background information was given to the audience of Unforgiven explaining the circumstances of William

Munny (his past life and his wife's influence on his current life), Little Bill, English Bob,

Munny's friend Ned, the Schofield Kid, and the events that brought Munny to his present circumstance, information rarely exposed about characters in Eastwood's films. His characters usually stay unknown and mysterious, riding out at the end, leaving the audience with little or no more information than when they were first introduced. Character development in A Perfect

World, although revealing information slowly, gives a more intimate picture of each character's past, allowing the audience to form opinions about the motives for their actions of the present, a unique addition, which adds an element of understanding to Eastwood's central theme of how the repercussive violence touches all the main characters. Chris Cabin writes: "To Eastwood, Butch isn't a bad person, though capable of dark and violent acts; he's the product of Red's morally dubious dealings in the legal system and a seductive criminal father who teased him with reconciliation." As the audience slowly learns Butch's childhood history, they also see that his life has been touched by violence since he was very young, and he becomes the victim of his past.

Eastwood's choice of actors in A Perfect World emphasizes their on-screen personalities.

Costner's Butch does not have the typical hardened attitude and characteristics audiences expect from an escaped convict who has experienced a life of crime, which makes them un-sure of

Butch's intentions. But, the characteristics exhibited by Terry are what is expected from a career 70 criminal (at least what audiences have learned from other TV and film versions of criminals), making them completely sure of his intentions. The major characters reveal incidents in their lives (or have them revealed by others) that were turning points, or they put a series of events together to explain their personalities, suggesting their actions within the story. Even Eastwood's character of "Red" Garnett, head of the Texas Rangers, who does not play a major part in the story until near the end, has layers of his story revealed piece by piece until viewers understand his early role in Butch's life.

The characters continue to grow throughout the film (another facet new to an Eastwood film, and first used in Unforgiven), to the extent that they represent stories and situations involving parenting and childhood experiences that are universally familiar and understandable across societies, cultures, and generations. They represent human-interest stories frequently seen on news reports and in newspapers nationwide--some even local--that add to the reality of each character's story, and make the personalities these characters symbolize familiar to audiences.

"Butch is the film's central, agonized subject, who is in the narrative's thematic doubling and redoubling, both archetypal son in search of a father and father in search of a son," writes

William Beard (93). He is a career criminal, and a victim of a violent past, both as a child and as an adult. Phillip is a victim of his present, and of society, partially because of the isolationist restrictions placed on him by the religion his family practices (Jehovah's Witness). Butch and

Phillip both have absent fathers, and neither had what could be referred to as a "normal" childhood--Butch growing up in a New Orleans whorehouse/dancehall, his mother a whore dying from syphilis who hung herself; and Phillip not allowed to experience the joys of other children around him--Christmas, birthday parties, cotton candy, carnival rides, or holidays, like the Halloween festivities underway near the beginning of the film. 71

Although their pasts are different, Butch begins to realize that there are parts of Phillip's life that mirror his: not the violence, but the lack of what he feels is a "normal" childhood.

Traveling along the back roads of Texas, Butch comments to Phillip that they have a lot in common: "We're both hansom fellas, we both like RC Cola, and we both have fathers that ain't worth a damn." As the story develops, Butch and Phillip form a sympathetic relationship, and the events leading up to, and including the kidnapping of Phillip, are somehow forgotten, and never mentioned. Berardinelli notes that "Those who understand the psychology of hostage situations are aware of the bond that develops between captive and captor." Their conversations about the lessons of life and growing up give the impression of a man and boy on a drive in the country, both affected by this pseudo-father/son situation.

As Butch continues to assume the role of father figure for Phillip, doing things with him, and talking to him about how to deal with life's situations (like a father would), it becomes apparent he wants Phillip to experience the things in life that will give him happiness--things he has never been allowed to do--and tells Phillip to make a list. Critic Roger Ebert concurs that

Butch, because of his past, wants to save Phillip from the same life he has been through, and make sure he has a happy childhood, while, at the same time, trying to re-live his childhood through Phillip (Ebert).

To Berardinelli, Eastwood allows the relationship between Butch and Phillip to play out slowly in order to: "achieve its ultimate depth and power." A comfort zone between the audience and the actors is beginning to build as the story progresses, establishing sympathy for Butch because of what violence has done to his life, and for Phillip because of everything he has missed in his short life. There is no fear that Butch will hurt Phillip. In fact, the two seem more like traveling buddies, or a father and son, off to see the country on a road trip to Alaska; the postcard 72 from his father Butch constantly looks at, sent from Alaska (and the last contact with his father) represents the fantasy Butch holds on to.

Janet Maslin feels that the relationship between Butch and Phillip has gotten so comfortable that Phillip is filling in the spaces left out of Butch's childhood, and, ironically,

"Phillip is seen rising to the point of making moral choices, and learning to understand right and wrong on his own," from an escaped convict and life-long criminal. Viewers notice obvious changes in the mood and the facial expressions of Phillip and Butch, but only in the flashing of the pistol in his belt by Butch or when the two are forced to confront society. Phillip does not seem to be able to rationalize what is happening, although these actions help ground the reality that this is no normal road trip. Butch is a wanted man who has, and is, living a life of violence.

There is still no explicit use of violence, only what is implied. Butch could have used the pistol as more of a threat (something expected), but, instead, simply used it as the implication of violence. Terry was the expectation of violence fulfilled. Butch is the unknown expectation, a unique leading character within an Eastwood film.

Emphasis is added to the development of the relationship between Butch and Phillip with the use of the in-car scenes. The choice to view the in-car conversations from opposite viewpoints, sometimes from the back seat and sometimes from outside the car through the windows, is a method of placing the audience within the scene and in the position of each character: a choice by Eastwood which increases the audience's comfort zone and adds to the realism of the situation by removing the visible boundaries of door frames and windshields.

Using over the shoulder shots, reverse angles, and close-ups of facial expressions from each character's height gives the impression of watching from their points of view. Eastwood's visual interpretations of the characters of Butch and Phillip, the gestures, facial expressions, and body 73 language of the characters, much of which must be analyzed and re-interpreted by an involved audience, silently participating in , are indicative of his cinematic style.

Laurence Knapp highlights some of the cinematic techniques Eastwood uses to convey meaning. After being locked up for a major portion of his life, Butch's idea of freedom seems to be synonymous with being behind the wheel of a car on a lazy trip to nowhere. Since the main portion of the film takes place in a car, Eastwood uses this enclosed location as Butch and

Phillip's private space, their sanctuary. "To bring us into Butch and Phillip's space," writes

Knapp, "Eastwood circumscribes the widescreen by emphasizing close-ups, angle reverse-angle shots, and character development" (179). To do this he uses an anamorphic frame, reducing the distance between Butch and Phillip in the car while increasing the visual distance and size of the landscape outside. This technique also emphasizes the intimacy of the scene and what Knapp calls the "embryonic" situation within the car (179).

As each character examines each other's expressions as confirmation of meaning, so does the audience. Eastwood's interpretation of the script is, again, one of few words , allowing the visuals to speak volumes. As Butch philosophies, his facial expressions show him deep in thought. The puzzled, thoughtful expressions on Phillip's face, as he listens to Butch's instructions for life, confirm his naïveté, but also an "I'm not sure I believe you" look of confusion, which shows Phillip trying to rationalize what Butch is saying. Phillip's expressions give the impression that he wants to believe Butch, but that what he is hearing is foreign: ideas that are new, even the things he wants to hear, and things that are a little scary because of his limited knowledge and experience. If Phillip's expression had been flat, or even happy, a different mood would be present, and the innocent, childlike qualities of Phillip would not exist, giving him less importance as a character, dissolving the father/son-like situation, and creating 74 more of a focus on Butch. Without the concentration on the relationship and interaction between

Butch and Phillip, and the insight into their personalities, the interest in the story ceases to exist.

The exterior shots require a different aspect, says Knapp: "The world inside the automobile is embryonic--when Butch leaves the comfort and security of his 'time machine' and follows Phillip on foot, Eastwood makes full use of the anamorphic frame and switches to shots of greater distance and depth" (Knapp 179). The idea here is to emphasize the difference between the interior of the car and the vastness of nature. Within the confines of the car, their world is known and controlled, a safe but tiny microcosm of life that belongs to Butch and

Phillip. Outside, the long, panoramic shots of the Texas countryside offer vast directions and choices: something sometimes uncontrollable, unsettling, or uncomfortable. With these changes in location and creative use of cinematic techniques, Eastwood effectively manipulates scenes from the script to depict his own meanings, set tone and mood, create safe environments, establish locations, or invent an attitude, just to name a few. A Perfect World is also the kind of film which lends itself to location shooting, something that has become one of his favorite filmmaking strategies. In the case of the shots from within the car, the vastness of the outside landscape serves as a symbol of the outside world, void of the protection of the car.

Knapp also describes Eastwood's methods of filming violence, breaking them down into two basic forms: "instantaneous or ritualistic. When violence occurs unexpectedly, Eastwood shifts to a series of low-angle, point of view, hand-held shots that disorient the viewer and de- emphasize time and space, inducing us to identify with the stress and fear of being assaulted or attacked" (Knapp 13). This is first apparent near the beginning of the film, in the scene of Terry and Butch in the Perry kitchen. The audience becomes part of the violence, part of the scene.

Near the end of the film, and, although Butch has displayed a history of violent reactions to the 75 perpetrators of violence against children, the surprise at his response to Mack (the sharecropper who offered them a place to sleep for the night) striking Cleve (his grandson) is compounded through Eastwood's extreme close-up of the fearful expression on Mack's face as the gun is shoved in close. Then, as Butch stands talking to Garnett, attempting to give himself up, there is the feeling that this action is too simple, and moving too slowly, for an Eastwood ending, activating the anticipation that violence is about to have the last word.

When Butch reaches for the postcard his father sent from Alaska, Eastwood quickly moves the camera angle in a reverse axis from the point of view of Garnett, as he looks back up the hill, silently mouths and shakes his head "No," to a close-up of the rifle action and trigger finger as the kill-shot is fired, quickly followed by a close-up of the distraught face of Sally

Gerber as she screams "Nooooo!" and the audience's anticipated fears are realized. Eastwood uses montage in all his films, says Knapp, to elicit a reaction to violence and its effects (13). The wide grin of satisfaction on the face of the FBI agent is played against the distraught looks of despair on the faces of Garnett and Gerber. This sequence is essential to the conveyance of the central theme of all who are touched by repercussive violence become victims, even the remorseless FBI shooter, for whom killing has become a vocation, and who seems to delight in the death of Butch. Sally Gerber represents the new model of justice, constantly digging to find out what incidents in Butch's background drove him to a life of crime. Red represents the status quo of law enforcement, finally seeing in the end that his old ideas and methods are on the way out, to be replaced by the newer, more caring version of law enforcement that Gerber represents.

As the relationship of Butch and Phillip develops, so do the relationships of both with the audience. State criminologist Sally Gerber (Laura Dern) supplies Butch's background information to chief Texas Ranger Red Garnett (Eastwood) (who already knows more than her 76 about Butch from a past association), which helps fill in the blanks of Butch's (and Garnett's) past.

Eastwood's central theme of recursive violence is reinforced with this more complete understanding of Butch and his background. Combined with the indication that he really does not want to use violence unless absolutely necessary, and the kindness he shows to Phillip, all build sympathy for Butch, whose lack of explicit violence is unexpected for a major character within an Eastwood film. Even Garnett, when coerced to explain his prior relationship with

Butch of twenty-two years earlier, confesses that he talked a judge into sending Butch to

Gatesville Juvenile Detention Center for four years in order to protect him from his father and to keep him from becoming a career criminal. (He had been caught joy riding in a stolen car, an offense that normally brought a probated sentence.)

Garnett feels ultimately responsible for Butch's life of crime. During those four years

Butch was surrounded by violent people who were also the victims of violence, and who gave him the knowledge and hardness of character to become a victim who is now the career criminal who became the target of this manhunt. Garnett's attempt to save Butch years ago by sending him to Gatesville failed miserably, a point driven home by Ranger Tom Adler's comment:

"Yeah, that's where the son-of-a-bitch learned to be a criminal. We've seen that before, haven't we Red?" Red just looks away, the tortured expression on his face adding to the sense that he is feeling responsible. Roger Ebert expresses his version of Eastwood's theme as this scene develops: "And as a complex series of events unfolds, we discover the real subject of the movie:

Treat kids right, and you won't have to put them in jail later on" (Ebert). Ebert agrees that Butch is a victim of the violence in his past. 77

Another aspect of Butch's personality, based on an assumption formed from information about his childhood, is his immediate, and, almost always, violent, reaction to adults who hurt children. This is apparent at the Perry house soon after their escape when Terry backhands

Phillip, and Butch, seeing what happens, bursts in at the door, kicks Terry in the face in protective retaliation, using violence to prevent violence.

Says Eastwood: "Our perception of Butch changes as we go. We experience contradictory feelings towards him; one minute we feel hostility, the next minute sympathy"

(Wilson 102). The next time there is a confrontation, when Terry tries to molest Phillip, Butch decides Terry will have to go, shoots him, and leaves him in the corn field. When Butch and

Phillip hitch a ride with Bob and his family, Butch starts to think about retaliation as Bob's wife violently scolds her daughter and son, but calms down when Bob intervenes and tells his daughter, "It's okay, Daddy loves you." The anger in Butch's facial expression is easy to read, and, as the scolding continues, his expression becomes increasingly tense. Later, Butch tells

Phillip, "Bob did the right thing. . . . Bob's a fine family man. That's about the best thing a fella can hope to be." The idea of the breakdown of the family is continually highlighted as it is realized as a developmental factor in the backgrounds of the major characters in this film.

With the information supplied by Gerber and Garnett, the relationship between Butch's anger and his childhood becomes evident. Eastwood agrees that Butch has been through a lot early in his life, but also believes "that we are only partially a product of our environment," and that this exposure to events should not be used as an excuse for a criminal or violent lifestyle

(Wilson 103). To Eastwood, "There is no more horrible crime than physical or sexual abuse inflicted on children. But we are living in a era where we are always looking for someone else to blame" (103). Wilson suggests that, "In A Perfect World, the worst violence is perpetrated by 78 the system. Law and order are not what they used to be. Rage has given way to powerlessness.

The Texan lawman screws up everything, including his redemption" (100). Wilson seems to be blaming the system and Garnett for making Butch the criminal he is, while Eastwood indicates that is only partially true, and that Butch is also responsible for his current life of crime.

There is a constantly increasing anticipation of violence as Butch's anger builds based on the intensity of violence enacted against the children in each incident, and that anger finally becomes uncontrollable the morning after he and Phillip spend the night at a black sharecropper's house. Mack, the sharecropper, who had found them asleep in their car in his field and offered them his couch for the night, comes in from working all night, asks his grandson to go to the truck and get his thermos, and, when the young boy does not instantly respond, slaps him hard on the side of his head. The boy runs to his grandmother crying, and when it happens again, Butch, finally pushed over the line, explodes, this time determined to resolve the situation by murder.

He takes out the pistol and sticks it in Mack's face, the first explicit threat with the gun since the demise of Terry.

What starts out as a reflex action to protect a small boy from the physical abuse of an adult, a reaction Butch possibly learned from being abused as a young boy, develops into a protective reaction for all children he comes in contact with throughout the film who he sees as victims of abuse. For Butch, it is obvious this childhood memory is one of his worst, and one he is determined to prevent, even to the extent of murdering Mack and his family. But, from

Phillip's point of view, Butch is going too far this time. Phillip realizes Butch wants to protect

Mack's grandson, but that killing the family is too severe a punishment for the offense committed and must be stopped. (Similarities are seen between this event of too severe a punishment for the 79 deed done and that of the revenge the whores sought in Unforgiven.) Phillip franticly tries to diffuse the situation, but to no avail.

Butch begins to tie up the couple and their grandson, and, while taping their mouths shut, lays the gun on the floor. Phillip picks it up, shoots Butch in the side, runs outside, throws the gun in the well, and runs away through a field in an attempt to escape and hide from Butch.

Knapp agrees that with Butch, Costner and Eastwood have created a character who is totally unpredictable when provoked, comparing him to William Munny in Unforgiven: "Butch does not have Munny's lethal grace; when he goes berserk, it is a coin toss whether he will butcher

Mack and his family or thank them for their hospitality" (186). But, what Butch does have, writes Knapp, is a different personality, one that is outgoing and friendly, making his character much different from Eastwoodian characters of the past. "Because Butch is much more personable than Munny, his breakdown is all the more frightening" (186). As viewers see more instances of Butch's explosive temper, there is the expectation that he will soon go too far and kill in front of Phillip, and almost does with the incident involving Mack.

Butch grows as a character in this film, but so does Phillip. Eastwood has employed another aspect of victimization here, one that Butch experienced during his childhood, and, that

Phillip is now experiencing--the loss of innocence. Butch immediately recognizes that Phillip has not had the exposure to the world, and to life, that he has had, and, as circumstances require, begins to educate him. This education is not general, but specific, emphasizing what Beard calls

Phillip's "lack," what Butch realizes Phillip is missing in life, based on his comments, questions, and answers to Butch's questions (96-97).

But, as close as their relationship is becoming, that closeness also obscures the significance of the incidents in which Phillip, under the tutelage of Butch, is learning to become 80 a criminal. He points the pistol at Terry while Butch goes into a store, does not ask about the gunshot or Terry's absence after hiding in a cornfield. Later he helps Butch steal a farmer's car, steals a Casper the Friendly Ghost Halloween costume from Friendly's dry goods store, hides with Butch in the back seat of Bob's car to get through a roadblock, and finally does not protest when Butch "borrows" (steals) Bob's car. From the moment Phillip is kidnapped he has known

Butch is an escaped convict. He later assumes Butch has murdered Terry, but ignores frequent chances to escape and continues to stay with Butch. Phillip has experienced and participated in the violence of Butch throughout their travels, and ultimately is forced to use violence himself to prevent violence against Mack and his family, shooting Butch to prevent a murder. In the end he has become both a victim of repercussive violence and a perpetrator.

Phillip lost his innocence within the period of a few days, and to a career criminal he came to love, someone who did not try to harm him, but attempted to give him the childhood and father/son relationship he never had, and that Phillip had not experienced in his short life. But,

Butch is not the perfect father figure, far from it. There is recognition of this in the expressions of Phillip during each incident when Butch threatens or enacts violence. Beard suggests that A

Perfect World is an attempt by Eastwood to "deconstruct the idealism from which the very conception of the Eastwood-father is created" (98). This idea of deconstruction is obvious, and parallel, in the association of Butch and Philip. Butch puts himself in the dual role of father and son, trying to be a father to Phillip, while trying to re-live his childhood through Phillip.

Also obvious is Phillip's resistance to assume the role of Butch's son. He becomes

Butch's friend, and learns Butch's views of the world, and how Butch would deal with situations he may encounter, but does not appear to fully accept all he hears as right. Phillip, after close 81 observation of Butch, becomes the one person who can predict and defuse Butch's anger.

Phillip's religious training, something foreign to Butch, takes over in some instances, but is temporarily explained away by Butch's criminal view of the world. Stealing the Casper

Halloween costume is wrong to Phillip, but Butch counters with: "Stealin's wrong, ok? But if there's somethin' you need bad and you ain't got the money, then it's okay to take a loaner on the item. It's what ya' call an exception to the rule." Phillip is not sure if Butch's reasoning is plausible, but he puts on the costume with a smile. Phillip, through the entire trip, seems to know the difference between right and wrong, but, under the spell of Butch's personality (and leniency), goes along with breaking the rules for the chance of having fun in what he knows is a temporary environment.

The concept of a perfect world is the opposite of the collection of events within the film.

As the state criminologist, Sally Gerber, says, "If this was a perfect world none of this would be happening." "But the world in which A Perfect World unfolds is a place of sad, ineradicable scars that shape their characters' destinies," writes . "Many of those scars have to do with the burdens and misapprehensions of manhood, as illustrated beautifully during the course of this eloquent road film and understood by Mr. Eastwood in subtle, profoundly moving ways"

(Maslin). Symbols accented by Eastwood's direction constantly refute the "perfect world" concept and develop the idea of unfinished relationships. There are roads where the pavement ends, never to be completed; broken father/son relationships, never to be restored; ruined lives, too far gone to be saved.

Another broken father figure connection exists in the historical context of the story. "It is

Texas in 1963, and as the Eastwood character is introduced preparations are being laid for

President Kennedy's fateful visit to Dallas. Everyone is about to lose their idealized substitute 82 father" (Beard 97). As Red Garnett and his deputies are introduced to (and decide to appropriate) the "governor's headquarters on wheels" (a travel trailer decorated with flags and pulled behind a pickup truck) that is to be used in the upcoming presidential parade, the seed is planted with the audience for what Knapp refers to as "impending disaster and disillusionment," not only for Kennedy, but for all in A Perfect World. President Kennedy is assassinated within the next two weeks.

With Kennedy's assassination, the breakdown of the family, on a variety of levels, is about to be complete and universal. A series of events, beginning with the unfortunate childhood of Robert "Butch" Haynes, has led to, and is connected through the concept of needless death with the Kennedy assassination--Eastwood's central theme that repercussive violence makes everyone a victim is realized, and in this case, the entire country is victimized. To further connect it with the effects of the chaos and violence of 1963, the film was released on the 30th anniversary of the assassination.

Eastwood, with A Perfect World, is offering his audience a lesson about the uses and repercussions of violence--a clarification of his past through a new beginning. Kent Jones suggests "A Perfect World is filled with odd little lessons, built around the way we want things to be and the way they are" (184). What Jones is referring to is Eastwood interpreting his concerns, trying to make them understandable, and using repercussive violence and character development to complete meaning. There is no closure here, and no feeling of redemption, only retribution and the fragility of human life, emphasized by the vision of the grinning, arrogant, FBI agent, holding his rifle after the kill shot. Red gains no closure from punching him, and Gerber no closure from her knee to the agent's groin. What does exist is the devastating sorrow that the situation ended the way it did. 83

Jones sums up the ending with an overwhelming refutation of closure: "Butch's gift to

Phillip is finally a sad one: knowledge of the world's imperfection" (189). But, in this story there is another sad theory; this incident is one that is never forgotten, it comes back to haunt your thoughts, just like Butch's early history haunts Garnett. Red will now be haunted more than ever, blaming himself for creating a career criminal in Butch, and feeling responsible now for his death. The characters and the story within this film represent culture and society dealing with problems of family and instances of violence, and not knowing how to prevent things from going further.

What makes this film a success is Eastwood's emphasis of the narrative through his method of combining actors with roles that fit their on-screen personalities and abilities, along with his ability to interject behind the scenes elements, merging both to give the film the realism necessary for plausibility. Things that may seem simple, and even overlooked by an audience-- period cars and clothes, speech colloquialisms and accents from the area and time of the setting, interiors and exteriors of buildings, products used on camera--become part of the film's environment, and part of its realistic quality. What an audience does not notice (as out of place) sometimes adds to plausibility, allowing its concentration to be fully on the actors and the story.

Eastwood avoids some of the more popular cinematographic techniques (computer generated images, and even the use of slow-motion sequences of violent acts) that might detract from his message, in favor of a more realistic view of the situation that conveys what he wants to say about the effects of violence. He feels that the realistic view is lost as soon as the audience notices the camera movements or special effects. According to Julie Sanders, audience response is directly connected to their ability to "participate in the play of similarity and difference" (45) between their personal history and the story being told. "And this is a story that appears to be a 84 modern-day fable that is familiar," says Sanders. Historical events in A Perfect World are tied together with other situations familiar in society and culture to create a central theme. The assassination of President Kennedy (the father figure of America, in this case) is close at hand.

The shared knowledge of history corresponds to the failings or the loss of other father figures within the film (Red, Butch, Butch's missing father, and Phillip's missing father) and emphasizes

Eastwood's belief in what he considers the commonalities of single parent families. The lack of father figure role models, failures to provide stable home situations, all common topics in discussions of factors leading to future violence and crime, will cause universal failure of the family system, unless changes are made.

Films, archetypes, filmmakers, even genres, have trained viewers to anticipate, and anticipation and expectation make audiences feel comfortable in predicting an outcome, freeing them to participate, visually and mentally, in the action. This type of participation is evident in the Dirty Harry series, where viewers are allowed to transgress through the actions of Harry, to retaliate or to revenge, and then gain redemption when Harry displays his "higher moral code" and sees that justice is done (according to his rules), even though it might involve actions outside the law. But, what happens when their anticipation is not justified, and events go entirely against expectations? Watching Clint Eastwood in one of his Westerns, or as "Dirty" Harry in one of his policeman roles, viewers anticipate the actions of his character, and are not as concerned with the ending as they are with the events of violence that run from beginning to end. Characters are not fully developed and even narratives seem not as important as the fighting, shooting, car chases, and hostility toward authority. With the direction of Eastwood since 1990, the old trends and archetypes familiar to his audiences of the past (those anticipating a "Dirty" Harry type of

85 character) can no longer be trusted to satisfy expectations, even though the stories, at first, may seem familiar.

Although A Perfect World becomes very real with its overly familiar story, Eastwood, again, does not fulfill audience expectations. There is no familiar violent final confrontation between him and the "bad guy." And his comments, "I don't know nothin', not a damn thing," after Butch is shot, take some time to absorb. He realizes that his sending Butch to Gatesville twenty-two years earlier has had the opposite effect from what he had expected, something that could have been avoided had he not chosen to help. There is an attachment to these characters, and especially to the relationship between Butch and Phillip, that is not soon forgotten. "To

Eastwood," writes Cabin, "Butch isn't a bad person, though capable of dark and violent acts; he's the product of Red's morally dubious dealings in the legal system and a seductive criminal father who teased him with reconciliation." Partially true, but Eastwood also believes we are not totally controlled by our backgrounds.

Eastwood's film, through his cinematic vision, speaks volumes about the narrative that the screenplay alone does not offer. The surreal aspect of the opening and closing shots, looking down on the body of Butch (first thought to be sleeping in the opening sequence) with money blowing across the scene, adds to the central theme that repercussive violence has again touched all. Butch's death has affected all. Phillip, who, like the rest of the country after President

Kennedy is assassinated, must go on with his life without his father figure, his innocence lost, reminding audiences of another of Eastwood's themes--the importance of family. The last time

Phillip is seen is through the glass bubble of a helicopter, holding Butch's bloodstained postcard, crying in his mother's arms and looking down at his dying friend, as the helicopter slowly circles and rises. Eastwood ends the film appropriately and ambiguously. Butch is now in the only 86 perfect world he will know, free from the chaos of reality, and from the life of violence that brought him to this point. In their own ways, every character in this story becomes a victim of the violence, even, and especially, the FBI sharpshooter who fired the fatal shot.

In Unforgiven repercussive violence is seen as a method to establish control out of chaos, as excessive punishment for the crimes committed, and as retribution and revenge for violence and death. The implicit repercussions of violence in A Perfect World reflect the societal effects violent environmental conditions, single-parent families, and the absence of father figures have on the characters. Viewers are being shown that no matter what the causes of and reasons for violence, the repercussions are for all involved. Next, in Mystic River the violence continues, as an entire community suffers from a circularity of violence that has led to repercussions of emotional indifference.

87

Chapter 4

MYSTIC RIVER

Mystic River moves viewers into a twenty-first century setting, and into a South Boston community dealing with past and present violence. This film, like Unforgiven and A Perfect

World, takes audiences into an entirely different historical context and socio-cultural environment of victimization. This small, closed community within South Boston is self- contained. They take care of their own, they do not talk to police, and the repercussions of their violence is held and perpetuated within their boundaries.

The first encounter with violence in Mystic River is within the first few minutes of the film, as viewers are taken into that neighborhood twenty-five years earlier, and into the lives of

Jimmy, Sean, and Dave, three eleven-year-old boys playing street hockey. After losing their ball down a sewer drain, ending their game, they are just about to finish writing their names in some fresh concrete on the sidewalk when two pedophiles, posing as cops, pull up, in what looks like an un-marked police car, lecture the boys for destroying public property, and take Dave away, supposedly to talk to his mother. Dave's boyhood ends there. He is held by them and molested for four days. Although he does escape, he is robbed of his innocence and never recovers from the violence he has suffered, and neither does the community.

Following an introduction to this neighborhood through an establishing shot from above, both looking over it and showing it in relation to the city of Boston, and isolated from it by the

Mystic River, Eastwood moves to camera angles from the height and perspective of Dave, Sean, and Jimmy, at eleven years of age, putting viewers in the position of the boys, allowing them to see things as the boys saw them. These camera angles and perspectives enhance the feeling of conflict between child and adult (the boys and the adult pedophiles), visualizing how adults use 88 size as a method of intimidation. He also uses close-ups of the faces of Jimmy and Sean as

Dave is taken away, the look on Jimmy's face seeming to question the truth in the events that just took place. Viewers are left with the scene of Dave staring helplessly out the back window of the pedophiles' car as they drive away. As an adult, Jimmy still feels a certain amount of guilt and regret about the past, wondering if there was anything he could have done to help Dave.

After Dave escapes and is reunited with his mother, he is taken to his room upstairs, and as he looks down to the street, sees Jimmy and Sean staring up at him and gives them a small wave. All the while background voices of some of the adults on the street are heard referring to

Dave now as "damaged goods," a label he never outgrows. The separation and distance between

Dave and his two friends exaggerates the separation and distance from the rest of the community he experiences from that moment on. Years later Dave is still experiencing that distance from the rest of the community. It was not his fault, but he is now different. The entire community has been affected by the violence he has suffered, and, rather than comforting him and helping him to begin the healing process, he is rejected, ignored, and still looked upon as "damaged goods," someone to stay away from. Those two words (damaged goods) are emphasized by the visual isolation and separation apparent through the choice of camera angles and the apparent distance from Dave's window to the boys on the street, another example of Eastwood's cinematic style and technique that portray his central theme concerning the consequences of violence, even on those not normally considered victims.

Mystic River is a very dark film, emotionally, and Eastwood's cinematographic techniques emphasize that darkness by creating, early on, a darkness of mood or tone. Location and weather play important roles in the film of both adding to the grim reality of the context, and holding the cold, gray mood until the end. In the case of Mystic River, the high angle locating 89 shot of the neighborhood from across the Mystic, over the Tobin Bridge toward the city of

Boston, shows the community as actually disconnected, encircled and isolated by the river. The mythology connected with a river has a long association with literature, usually representing a new or different experience, a source of freedom or escape, or symbolizing a cleansing effect provided by the constantly changing water that flows along its banks, but in Mystic River the isolation of the river serves to restrict the community to a never ending cycle of repercussive violence and victimization.

Eastwood prefers to shoot on location, and the weather, luckily in this case, is a major advantage. There is no sunshine in this film; the overcast conditions help to set a tone of overall gloom and despair that carries throughout. To Dennis Rothermel the lighting conditions associated with the weather on location worked to the advantage of Eastwood, allowing

"shadows and contrast to structure meaning and characterization" (239). Shooting on a sound stage where all aspects of the lighting and weather can be controlled or produced might be a much safer and more predictable place to film a scene, but Eastwood, judging by his past films, rules out that method for obvious reasons: (1) he likes to present high-angle views and panoramas that give the audience a lay-of-the-land establishing shot, and, (2) he sometimes uses the space between the camera position to what is happening at a focal point in the distance to tell part of the story, or set a mood or tone. Cinematographer Tom Stern worked with the existing conditions, and manipulated interior lighting, to either hold or create Eastwood's idea of evil lurking within the darkness. Even when the lighting was not dark or high contrast, there was a sense of coldness that existed beyond the simple aspect of cold weather.

Mystic River is the story of a series of inter-related events and associations--past, present, and future--that continue to reveal themselves, connected by the common thread of violence and 90 victimization. The three boys in the opening scene are victims of violence, and are still connected, in different ways, to that event. They have grown into men who are reflections of what they were then. Just prior to the abduction of Dave, the conversation between the boys foreshadows the events and lives of the three viewers are now witnessing. Jimmy, now the criminal, wanted the boys to steal a car and go joy-riding, but Sean, now the policeman, refused, worried about the consequences, and Dave, still the victim (the most vulnerable in the eyes of his abductors), just went along with the others, agreeing to be part of whatever they did. They are all still connected, but now through a new series of violent acts that for them, in this community, is an everyday reality.

As the main story unfolds, some of the underlying stories begin to emerge that give answers to the questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how, that are generated by each new scene, all revolving around, or derived from, the effects of violence and victimization within the entire community. Maynard, Kearney, and Guimond suggest that: "The reason for the revenge, the motive for the murder, the injury that produced the injustice--virtually all of them begin in the past and influence the future" (22).

The recent violence begins with Silent Ray and his friend accidentally wounding, and then purposely killing, Katy Markum with a gun used in a holdup years earlier by Silent Ray's father, Just Ray, and Jimmy Markum. Following Katy Markum's death, her father Jimmy recounts his time in prison after taking the rap for the liquor store holdup with Just Ray, and his guilt for not at the death of his first wife, as he contemplates his daughter's death and his vengeful hunt for her killer. Sean Devine, now working as a state police detective, and assigned to this case, immerses himself daily in violence as a part of his job, constantly getting phone calls from his estranged wife, who only listens and never speaks. Dave Boyle fights his 91 inner demons and ends up killing and disposing of a pedophile as an attempt at redemption for the misguided guilt he feels from his past. Dave's wife, Celeste, does not believe Dave's story of beating the pedophile to death and turns him in to Jimmy as Katy's killer. The Savage brothers laugh and joke about the crimes they have and will commit as part of the reality of their daily routine. Jimmy kills Dave and decides to re-enter a life of crime. Viewers are left with the feeling that the violence is cyclical and will never end within this community. Eastwood's central theme of the repercussions of violence is being complexly and successfully played out.

He shows the inner and outer conflicts of the individuals and the community as repercussive violence and how the victims deal with the violence, or simply take it in stride as part of their everyday life in the neighborhood.

Societal and cultural factors in the film reflect the time period and area in which it is produced, and the intimacy with the context created by the shooting style of Eastwood put viewers inside that social environment. Included within this environment is the river, shown from high above at the beginning and ending of the film, and in darkness as the burial site for

Dave, surrounding and holding close the events contained within the neighborhood. Rothermel calls the Mystic River "the film's center of gravity," suggesting it "absorbs the past, without forgiving and without healing. Old feuds, forgotten retributions, horrible misdeeds, sins, miscreant evil, all stripped of their generic agency, linger in its depths" (218). The river also seems to at times hold the community hostage, hiding their secrets, while creating a separate world apart from the rest of the city. It is also the resting place for evil. Jimmy threw the gun he used to kill Dave into the river, as he had done with the gun he used to kill "Just" Ray years earlier. 92

As viewers again see violence used within this Eastwood film, questions about its use arise. Does it make a statement of any kind, and, if so, is the statement made to any specific audience, or group, or to the population as a whole? If there is a statement made, no matter how blatant or how subtle, is that statement influenced by the author's perceived theme within the text, by society's reaction to that theme within the text or social/cultural environment, or solely by the filmmaker's personal concerns woven into the film? Housel's statement that "Film adaptation is a vehicle for life experiences" (xi) is directly connected to the influence of the filmmaker and the writer, especially when adapted from contemporary novels such as Dennis

Lehane's Mystic River (2001), and on the effects of violence in this small community within the city limits of Boston. Mystic River's focus is, again, based on Eastwood's central theme concerning repercussive violence and its effects on those who come in contact with it. His audience has expanded to include not only his previous working class fan base, but also society as a whole, as he attempts to project his new central theme into this film as he has done previously in Unforgiven and A Perfect World.

These elements are not new to Eastwood, who has voiced his feelings about the effects of violence since the 1970s and the beginning of his series of Dirty Harry films, especially as they apply to the social concerns of a specific group in society at a specific time period. He used the

Harry Callahan character in Dirty Harry as the spokesman who voiced his anger with the justice system's failure to control violence then, but, in Mystic River, although his main emphasis is still with the victim, his larger concern is with the depiction of the effects of violence, how its repercussions touch all involved, and with his methods of effectively projecting this message through film. 93

Eastwood's concentration on repercussive violence has proven to be controversial, as referenced (in chapters one and two) by previously mentioned critics who cannot quite see it as anything more than an entertainment tactic as used by other films of the time period. Saturating the viewing public with screen violence during the 1990s, the films (1990), Cape

Fear (1991), (1993), and (1994) provided new incentives for higher levels of violence to feed the desires of audiences and keep them coming back for more. Each has influenced the judgment of critics and fostered a cynicism that can cloud objectivity. Even

Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992) was seen by some scholarly and journalistic critics (and some audiences) as extreme violence for the sake of violence. In addition to the films mentioned, the public is constantly reminded of the reality of violence in society by daily reports of robberies, stabbings, rapes, beatings, and murders, common on daily news media sources. Reactions to these instances of violence fuel what Javier, Herron, and Primavera refer to as society's socio- cultural preoccupation with violence.

"Like the Dirty Harry films, the psycho-on-the-loose genre pointed an accusatory finger at the failure of social institutions to protect society," says Russell Covey (1376). But, in Mystic

River, the violence portrayed moves away from the point of view of the 1970s policeman out for vengeance ("Dirty" Harry), and into a community suffering with the tragic grief of the recent death of one of their own, the death of innocence from years past, and the reality of dealing with repercussive violence on a daily basis.

The violence in Mystic River seems to proliferate with each new incident, and with . Apparent is the sense that there is no attempt to change or counteract the effects of the violence the community lives with. It becomes a reality that is accepted as commonplace in their everyday lives. Dave never recovers from his past, and ends up blurring the lines between 94 good and evil by using deadly violence against the child molester he finds with a young boy, then justifying it because of the fact that it was a child molester. He first sees justice and redemption through violence, but in reality, becomes a victim once again. Sean has pushed his wife away, himself a victim of the violence he is exposed to daily in his job as a policeman.

Jimmy is driven back to a life of violence and crime, using murder as retribution for the murder of his daughter. As all the relationships and connections to violence are revealed, viewers begin to see the complexity and multi-layers of this story within the layers of the community where it takes place. This is when Eastwood's concept that no one in the neighborhood is un-touched by the violence is realized.

Allen Redmon notes the change in Eastwood's methods of the portrayal of violence, writing that the ending of the film, although somewhat ambiguous, differs from the endings of previous Eastwood films, but does not detract from the central theme of the film--violence creates more violence and everyone is a victim of the consequences (327).

Deborah Allison, in discussing Eastwood's directorial style, cites some other "defining features" of his work--the "theme of the triumphant underdog," his "obsession with characters that fight to achieve," and "his need to be a voice for the victims of violence," as present in this and other of his films. Whether Eastwood wanted to make a political statement during the

1970s, or not, his Dirty Harry role of policeman as vigilante, and self-declared role of spokesman for the victim, and his working class fan base, framed him as a conservative who believed that the rights of the victimized had been pushed aside. As evidenced in Mystic River, the method he now uses to implement his central theme is much more complex than the early cop movies that blatantly established his image. The complexity of Mystic River is in the exposure of its layers of violence, the effects on the people involved, and how they deal with 95 these effects. The point of view is no longer that of the policeman-vigilante, but now of the victims living with their victimization. Eastwood is using Mystic River to show that violence affects each victim in a different way, but that those effects never seem to release their victims.

To Rand Cooper the film is an act of atonement for Eastwood. Cooper discusses

Eastwood's method of the portrayal of repercussive violence, which, in Mystic River,

"complicates the idea of violence with which it is associated" (26). The attention is now on the recipients of the violence, the layers of their suffering, and "far from romancing the silence of the avenger, Mystic River is haunted by the silence of the victim," and the indifference of the community. The first encounter with violence in the film, which Dave and the community never get over, is an important part of the central theme, and one Eastwood emphasizes. When Stella

Papamichael asked him how and why the novel Mystic River was chosen, he followed with a statement about his fascination with "the stealing of innocence," calling it, "the most heinous crime." There is no mention of retribution, revenge, or vengeance by Eastwood, only sadness that the effects of the crime continually haunt the victim.

Eastwood also explained his choice of Mystic River to Michael Parkinson: "I just wanted to tell a story about people, about conflicts, and about people overcoming obstacles in their lives.

This story did it for me." But the people in this story never actually overcome their conflicts.

The instances of murder, death, and guilt are not overcome, but seem to be absorbed into their daily lives, relegated to unimportance by their indifference.

What does Eastwood accomplish with Mystic River? Carlos James Chamberlin discusses what he refers to as the horror aspects of the film, and suggests that many of the aspects mirror the aspect of a , and presents the idea that: "Mystic River‘s style plays on these same 96 horror archetypes." To Chamberlin, "Its 'realism' belongs to the nightmare. The atmosphere is deliberately grim. We don’t feel the sun until the end of the movie."

The aspect of horror seems to be a good fit with Dave as the example. His horror is derived from the loss of his boyhood innocence, and is the focus of the first few minutes of the film. Now, years later, it is still the focus of the police, the focus of his wife, the focus of Jimmy, and lastly, the overall focus of the community. Dave tells Jimmy (falsely) that he killed Katy because when he saw her in the bar he had: "a dream of youth--I don't remember having one.

You'd know what I mean if you'd got in that car instead of me." Jimmy follows, just before he kills Dave, with: "this part you do alone." This one act releases Dave from the agony of living with his loss of boyhood innocence, then and now, and rids Jimmy of the sense of guilt he has shouldered since not trying to do something to save Dave from the pedophiles. As the killing of

"Just Ray" Harris had removed his guilt for taking the blame for an earlier crime they both took part in, and causing him to be in prison when his wife died, it is his killing of Dave, with daughter Katy no longer there to act as his conscience that re-kindles Jimmy's life of crime. The violence has been carried forward, from child to adult and back to child. Because of Dave's admission to Jimmy, will Dave's son Michael now be referred to as "damaged goods" and have to live with his father's demons?

Chamberlin's reasoning for Mystic River as a horror film comes not from individual events and acts of violence, but from Eastwood's use of repetition of those events. As

Eastwood's use of repetition becomes apparent, it is obvious that it's not coincidence. Multiple recurring views of the sidewalk with Dave's name half finished, Dave (as an adult) getting into the back seat of a black car a second time and looking out the back window as it drives away (the same as when he was 11), the two Ray Harris' and two wild shots from the same gun, and the 97 continual depictions of symbols of the cross create a feeling of horror that develops from the sense that there is some underlying evil within the community that just will not go away, revealing a cycle of violence.

Eastwood's stylistic technique, through lighting, camera point of view, and pacing of dialogue, emphasizes the horror of these acts, and their place in the cycle of violence. His artificial lighting techniques purposely kept the mood cold and distant, complimenting the cold tones of the overcast weather. In making the final print of the film he de-saturated the color, emphasizing even more the cold mood created by the existing weather, while foreshadowing the coldness of the film's central theme.

Beginning with the long shot of Boston from a position high above, he shows the isolation of the community by the Mystic River and grounds the location for the audience.

Eastwood's choice of camera angles and positions maintain the feeling of closeness and interconnectedness between the main characters. He continually uses medium and extreme close- ups, emphasizing individuals instead of groups, which isolates characters and their conflicts from the community. Especially significant is an overhead shot of Jimmy Markham as he charges into a sea of police in an attempt to see his daughter's body. He seems to be awash in a sea of dark blue as he is hoisted, writhing, above their shoulders, the colors blending with the weather and emphasizing the dark mood. The dialogue is not rushed and is allowed to play out slowly in short deliberate comments, providing the time to absorb what is being said and allowing enough time for the tension within the scenes to fully develop.

Martin Scorsese talks about Eastwood's use of violence in the film during his interview for A&E's Clint Eastwood biography. He sees Eastwood as conducting a much deeper exploration of that violence than has been done previously by showing, in Mystic River, "how 98 violence ultimately affects not only the victims of violence, the loved ones around them, and how it's literally the un-doing of the very social fabric of the world, of society, and how violence destroys everyone around them." Eastwood takes a very personal view of that violence by showing it as it affects the individual. This method avoids the use of a Harry Callahan character, who enters the scene to remove the effects of violence with more violence, and the idea of redemption through violence. Using a variety of situations that center on each major character's personal level reveals the complexity created by looking at how individuals deal with violence, rather than having a Harry Callahan deal with violence on the community level. This personal view presents a more intimate look at repercussive of violence and its effects on each individual.

As Eastwood mentioned earlier, in an interview with Stella Papamichael, the points that interested him about the story in the novel Mystic River are the kidnapping and molesting of the eleven-year-old boy. In an interview with Emma Brockes of , Mystic River author

Dennis Lehane makes an almost identical statement, but "Lehane isn't too keen on examining his obsessions, lest they evaporate under scrutiny," writes Brockes. "But," says Lehane, "I'll always be fascinated with the loss of innocence or corruption of the soul at a young age."

Eastwood attempts to steer attention toward his interest in the effects of violence in many of the interviews he has done in the years since Unforgiven (1992) and A Perfect World (1993), but emphasizes that it is not a topic the studios have always been eager to support. He tells

Charlie Rose that, although Warner Brothers did agree to back the film, they only backed it at the minimum rate. He admits having competition from other films the studio was backing at the time

(Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and Matrix Reloaded) made it difficult for studio executives to become excited over his pitch for Mystic River. But Eastwood did receive the backing he 99 needed, and, to the surprise of studio executives, won two Oscars and sixty other awards out of sixty-eight nominations.

Dennis Lehane discusses his inspiration for the idea of the opening scene in an interview with Linda Richards for January Magazine, noting that it developed from a similar incident that happened to Lehane and his best friend, also age eleven, on their way home from school. They were having a fight in the street in their neighborhood when a car with two detectives came by and stopped the fight. The moment they drove away the boys started fighting again. The detectives came back a few minutes later and they were upset because the boys had not stopped fighting, so they put them in the car and took them back to their parents. The part that really struck home for Lehane, and inspired the fictional tragic circumstances for Dave, happened after the two plain-clothes policemen dropped Lehane off at home. His mother was so shaken up by his getting into a car with two men, and not asking to see a badge, that he remembered the incident years later. Eastwood comments that he changed the fighting to street hockey in order to add more sympathy for the boys and innocence to the situation (Papamichael).

Lehane comes from a working-class neighborhood in Boston and most of his other novels deal with the type of class struggles he grew up with, allowing the background information concerning the socio-cultural environment of a typical South Boston Irish Catholic neighborhood to set the tone in the novel, and also become a focal point for Eastwood in this film. Working class struggles have been a constant interest for Eastwood in many of his other films: Honkytonk

Man (1982), A Perfect World (1993), and Million Dollar Baby (2004). He is constantly advancing his purposes and trying to insure that his ideas about repercussive violence are seen, not only by his choice of works, but also by his choice of authors, texts, screenwriters, and actors. 100

Brian Helgeland, writer of the screenplay for Mystic River (2003) (and Eastwood's Blood

Work, 2002), just happens to have grown up near the area where Mystic River is set, and, in an interview with Holden Pike, provides some insight into the amount of control Eastwood had during the screenplay-writing stage of production for Mystic River: Helgeland said that after he had written and delivered the screenplay, Eastwood re-read the book, then read the scenes in the screenplay to see how they fell in the script, and that he would either be happy or he would say,

"I don't think we need this." Usually he would say, "I like this line in the book, if you could find a way to work that into the scene," showing his involvement in the script, and ensuring that his ideas were emphasized. Eastwood's main concern is that the effects of the violence on the individual are featured (Pike).

Dave () the adult, wanders the streets of the neighborhood, his large frame pitifully hunched over, holding his son's hand as if to keep him safe, constantly reminded of what happened to him when he was eleven by everything and everyone he sees, and with what appears to be the same look on his face, as he had when he rode away with the pedophiles twenty-five years earlier, staring helplessly out of the back window. More than just an expression, Robbins gives his character, Dave, an overall un-changing look of sadness, and the stoop-shouldered posture of a beaten man who can find no happiness in his life, and one who does not like to make eye contact. He and the neighborhood have never forgotten what happened to him, and even give the impression that he is somehow to blame. Dave, like Jimmy, attempts to receive redemption through violence by brutally killing a pedophile who he finds with a young boy in the car with him, later admitting it solved none of his emotional problems. But, as people do in this neighborhood, he goes on with his life as if nothing has happened. When he is questioned by Jimmy, and then stabbed and shot, his body floating away in the Mystic, it is as if the ending 101 of his life has finally brought him peace. It seems to have done more for the redemption of Dave than for Jimmy.

Jimmy (), former young thug of the neighborhood, seems only to harbor guilt for taking the rap for his partner in crime, and being in prison when his first wife died. Although his previous life of violence and crime are past, he easily slips back into that life with the death of his daughter Katy. He is intent on vigilante justice and revenge for her death, to the extent that he conducts his own investigation, which results in his killing Dave, but does not provide redemption. His coldness and adaptation to his violent act are reinforced by the support of his wife, who reminds him to be strong, and that killing Dave was only a mistake. Jimmy's remorse easily vanishes with the sense that he will soon be the leader of the community and crime boss he once was.

The choice of actors who can show "what is in their heads" is essential in Eastwood's films, and the actors in Mystic River are well chosen. Viewers can imagine what is in Jimmy's head as he sits in the back room of his corner grocery store, ambivalent to every thing around him. He seems bored with the ordinary life of an owner of a small neighborhood bodega. But, his face lights up when his daughter Katy enters the scene. When he visits the scene of his daughter's murder, the tortured expression of a mad man, the excruciating pain of a father experiencing the death of a child, is obvious in Jimmy's expression as he surges against a sea of policemen who block him from seeing his daughter's body.

The morning after killing Dave, sitting drunk on the stoop of his house, Jimmy encounters Sean, who tells him they have arrested the person who killed his daughter. Jimmy's realization that his killing of Dave was wrong is apparent in his facial expression and through his body language, but not because it was murder. Jimmy is upset because Dave was his friend, but 102 more because he is the wrong man. He is driven to tears upon hearing the news, and, with a tortured look on his face, jumps up from the step his is sitting on and begins to wander aimlessly down the center of the street sobbing. Jimmy still believes in redemption through vigilante violence, and his wife Annabeth later consoles him, as Roger Ebert suggests, playing the part of a modern-day Lady Macbeth, quietly convincing him he did nothing wrong, as he stands looking out of their bedroom window, shirt off, the soft glow of the outside light encircling his body, shoulder to waist tattoo of a cross on his back--he has just gotten his own form of sexual absolution from his wife.

Sean () appears to be the same person he was as an 11-year-old. He was the kid who would not break the law and steal a car with Jimmy for a little joy-riding, and now he is a cop with the blank, emotionless expression of a person whose daily contact with violence in his job has made him impervious to the tragedies of the world. Even when he gets one of his estranged wife's phone calls, he does not respond emotionally, just asks her to talk to him as she silently listens to his voice. Throughout the film, he and his partner Whitey (Laurence

Fishburne) employ the generic facial facade of emotionless concern, an expression used often in police dramas, and by Eastwood himself in his Harry Callahan and Western characters. Sean only breaks the facade at the end of the film, during a parade, as he stands re-united with his wife and newborn baby girl, smiling, looking across the street at Jimmy and pointing his finger like a gun, signaling to Jimmy that he knows Jimmy killed Dave. Jimmy, also smiling as if things are now back to normal, responds with a shrug of his shoulders that shows his ambivalence to Sean and his accusation. Eastwood has chosen actors who can speak volumes without dialogue, solving the problem screenwriter Brian Helgeland mentioned earlier of having to figure out how to show all the "richness of the characters' internal worlds" and "get it on screen." 103

In the location of the neighborhood of Mystic River there was no need for more than the overall view of the establishing shot at the beginning of the film to place viewers within that environment. Eastwood's current practice has been to put the viewer in close proximity with the character, to look into their eyes, see them sweat, feel their hatred or their fear. He sometimes accomplishes this by moving in with a hand-held camera, invading their personal space, to place the audience into the scene, adding to the realism by giving the audience the point of view of one of the characters. But, it was the high angle spiraling shot of Jimmy Marcum from directly overhead as he was held back and hoisted into the air by a sea of policemen that set the emotional context and the mood and tone for the rest of the film. This shot is an integral element of the Eastwood cinematic style. He reads the script, watches the actors rehearse, decides how the scene would normally be shot, and then seems to surprise his audience with an unexpected camera movement, angle, or position that adds emphasis or gives the viewer a different perspective, and one that continually gets his audience involved with the scene.

In the production of Mystic River, Eastwood's collaboration with the author and screenwriter, the technical expertise used by a trusted crew (most of whom he has worked with for a long period and who know what he expects) to physically produce the film, and the "back- story" behind the novel, work to emphasize the central theme of the repercussions of violence he wants to present. Linda Hutcheon says adapters "must have their own personal reasons for deciding first to do an adaptation and then choosing which adapted work and what medium to do it in" (92). She believes one reason for choosing a certain text is: "An adaptation can obviously be used to engage in a larger social or cultural critique," such as Eastwood's "violence begets violence" theory. "It can even be used to avoid it . . . " (94). Eastwood has stated that he is concerned with crimes involving children and their loss of innocence, and with the effects of 104 violence. Mystic River fits his criteria and is a venue that allows him to emphasize his ideas through applying them to the effects of personal incidents within the story.

Eastwood's filmmaking style, included in the collaboration, is an important element in the telling of the story. His history as a director has been to let the scene, the actors, and the shooting environment lead him in choosing the camera angles, lighting, and cinematic techniques necessary to emphasize his theme. Eastwood has not been known to use storyboarding or overly scripted shooting directions to pre-visualize each scene or camera angle, as do many other directors. Because he works with a crew that, in many cases, has been with him for many years, he relies on collaborating with them for their technical expertise, combined with their knowledge of how he works and what he wants, using the input from all involved.

Adding support for Eastwood's process and cinematic style, theorist Robert Ray notes the ability of film to produce signifiers that use the mixed forms of language and image to convey meaning. This applies to the repetition of symbols mentioned earlier in Mystic River, which takes place, and was released, during the sexual molestation scandal surrounding the Catholic

Church, especially the Archdiocese of Boston, and connects the violence in the film and the loss of innocence with the reality of the scandal. Ray cites the images from an earlier-referenced scene in the film Casablanca, in which Rick Blaine is introduced, as an example of signifiers that achieved their understood meaning through their use in a variety of other movies, publications, and advertising of the era. "[Blaine] Bogart, seated in a white dinner jacket, smoking a cigarette, playing with a chess set placed next to a half-empty champagne glass, the image (a sophisticated, jaded, clever man, simultaneously proud and melancholy) derived from the objects (tuxedo, champagne glass, and chess set)" (The Field, 40), constructed meaning for the audiences of that era without the need of dialogue. 105

Eastwood uses elements within scenes that audiences should be aware of because of their socio-cultural environment. The symbol of the cross is featured on a ring on the finger of one of the pedophiles who kidnaps Dave, and in a tattoo that covers the back of Jimmy Markum.

Featured in these ways it becomes a sign of evil and makes a statement about religion in a heavily Irish Catholic community in close proximity to the Boston archdiocese, at the time caught up in a church scandal involving pedophile priests. In the scene of Jimmy standing shirtless at the window of his upstairs bedroom, the cross tattoo covering his back while getting a sort of absolution from his wife for the killing of Dave, all connect directly with Dave's loss of innocence. Repetitive shots of the storm sewer where many baseballs and street hockey pucks were lost, the concrete sidewalk with Sean and Jimmy's names and the unfinished DA that represents Dave are elements Eastwood uses to remind the audience of the reasons why this story is important.

In Mystic River Eastwood presents situations of death and retribution, or redemptive violence, easily understood on the surface, and a staple of the Western genre. Theologian Walter

Wink discusses how society rationalizes what he calls the "myth of redemptive violence," and why its ease of acceptance is justified: "Any form of order is preferable to chaos, according to this myth. Ours is neither a perfect nor perfectible world; it is theatre of perpetual conflict in which the prize goes to the strong." Reaching further down, below that surface, is the symbolic death of Dave at eleven years old--the death of his innocence and his childhood--something from which he never recovers. There is the accidental wounding but intentional murder of Katy

Marcum--affecting her family, Dave, her boyfriend and his family, and the entire community.

Then, there is the symbolic death of Jimmy Marcum, after re-building his life following a violent 106 past, the death of his daughter, his search for her killer, and his killing of Dave, sending him spiraling back into a life of crime, while using violence to temporarily bring order from chaos.

Young people are used as the main characters in many of Eastwood's films, and, in many cases, are the victims of violence. Will Munny's children become victims of his violent past and present in Unforgiven. Phillip and his association with Butch is the center of attention in A

Perfect World. Dave, Sean, and Jimmy, as young boys, and then as adults, begin as and remain the victims of violence in Mystic River. Walt's kids, grandchildren, and the Hmong teenagers next door are featured in Gran Torino. Eastwood seems to feel they are more vulnerable, and crimes against them more heinous; therefore, his use of them carries more impact.

Mystic River is another instance of Eastwood's use of his style and cinematic techniques to illustrate the central theme of repercussive violence, while gently revealing other sub-themes residing just below the surface. Although viewers know his central theme is there, throughout

Unforgiven, A Perfect World, and Mystic River, it is the story beneath the surface that furnishes support for the narrative. Dennis Rothermel concludes that Eastwood shows "the maturity and grace of a filmmaker who has acquired the art of telling a complex story . . . without distracting from the story told" (239).

Eastwood has learned the use and importance of creating visions of reality in his films that enhance the plausibility of the narrative. He has also learned that reality does not always satisfy audience expectations, but that it goes beyond the typically false versions of "Hollywood" reality (in which the good guy always wins). There is the expectation that Jimmy will not kill

Dave. There is the expectation that Sean, who knows Jimmy killed Dave, but cannot prove it, will somehow find a way to administer justice. Perplexing is the feeling that Dave's death somehow released him from his demons, and that he is, in reality, better off dead. All these 107 situations work together to show how violence can become a way of life, accepted by a community that has always lived with some version of violence, all becoming the victimized, and accepting the use of violence to bring order out of chaos. The scene of the parade at the end illustrates the reality of the situation well. Dave is dead, his wife Celeste is, as Redmon says,

"left fractured by the events that took place during the night [before], events that resulted in the loss of her husband and her son’s father" (327). Sean and Jimmy, and the rest of the neighborhood, are laughing and smiling, enjoying the parade as if the events of the past week, even the past twenty-five years, are forgotten, or have been accepted as just another part of their everyday reality.

Redmon suggests that the final scene, in which the sidewalks of the neighborhood are filled with residents, and a parade makes its way through the streets, a scene that seems to provide restoration of order for the community, works in the reverse with the appearance of

Dave's wife, Celeste, and their son Michael (327). Celeste is now left with her guilt leading to the murder of her husband, and their son Michael has now lost his innocence and will carry the guilt of his mother and the burden of his father, continuing the effects of violence. Jimmy's violence has not restored order. The death of Dave has not restored order. And, there is a tension between Jimmy and Sean that creates a foreshadowing of violent events to come.

This ending, seemingly the scene of a community back to "normal," is also ambiguous, leaving viewers with a false view of contentment and the question: Who will be the next victim?

A similar question was being asked by Catholic parents in the area concerning the safety of their children from pedophile priests. Eastwood has again put violence and victimization within a plausible context, in this case, an entire community.

108

Chapter 5

GRAN TORINO

In Gran Torino (2008), set in the socio-culturally different, but equally realistic environment of Detroit, Michigan--and a deteriorating, formerly all-white, working- class neighborhood--Clint Eastwood looks closely at the effects of a variety of timely topics ranging from America's economic slow-down, hatred and racism, ethnicity and gang violence, religion and the validity of the church, but the emphasis is on Eastwood's central theme of repercussive violence. The story is seen from the point of view of a resentful old man, the character of Walt

Kowalski (Eastwood), retired auto worker and Korean War veteran, suffering from what seems to be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as he confronts the demons that still linger from the violence he experienced in the war (brought back to life by the violence instigated in his neighborhood by a Hmong street gang), while dealing with old age, loneliness, and a mysterious illness foreshadowing his death. Repercussive violence, as in Unforgiven, A Perfect World, and

Mystic River, again affects all the characters within the narrative: from the Hmong grandmother who remembers the men of her village who were killed during the Vietnam War, to the young priest trying to deal with the gang violence of the neighborhood, and to the Hmong teenagers

(Sue and Thao) as they try to cope with the pressures of gang and cultural harassment.

This film, at first intimidating and offensive in Walt's use of racial slurs and his gruff back and forth banter with the local priest and the Hmong family next door, is actually a saga of continual victimization that builds in intensity, partially spurred by his refusal to be intimidated by a Hmong street gang, and also by his protection of his teenage neighbors from that gang. As the narrative develops, viewers find out that Walt's depression caused by the recent death of his wife, and a widening gap between his sons and their families, are also repercussions of the 109 violence he has experienced. Eastwood continuously cuts to close-ups of facial expressions to help set or hold the tension of the mood, and to use these expressions to help tell the story by emphasizing reactions to the dialogue.

The type of neighborhood chosen (especially fitting historically, due to the downturn of the auto industry during the early 2000s) provides an environmental connection with reality typical of Eastwood's cinematic style (A Perfect World, Mystic River), and implies that this neighborhood resembles many others suffering with economic as well as generational decline across America: children grow up and move away, parents grow old and retire, houses and neighborhoods fall into disrepair, real estate values fall, lower income families, minorities, and immigrants move in, crime and violence increase. As urban areas age, change takes place within the environment as well as within the make-up of the residents, and, characteristic of these neighborhoods, the residents left behind form prejudices and hatreds of those new residents moving in who are "different," forming the basis for the much used socio-cultural term referred to as "white flight." Much of Walt's anger is triggered by the condition of the houses and yards that surround his house, the realistic approach of Eastwood emphasizing what Walt sees as a lack of pride responsible for the contrast between these homes and how he maintains his yard and house. Walt's house stands out in the neighborhood. It is bright and colorful, but the surrounding houses are drab and colorless. Eastwood uses scenes that compare Walt's well taken care of home with the run down, overgrown, decaying homes that show what has become of his neighborhood, portrayed as a result of the downturn of Detroit's auto industry, and what he sees as the normal attrition of a neighborhood and a lack of responsibility within the new residents.

Eastwood constantly highlights these differences, emphasizing Walt's status as a remnant of another era, now living within a foreign environment. 110

The central theme of repercussive violence in Gran Torino is portrayed through

Eastwood's view of the personal life and ideology of the character of Walt Kowalski, as a bitter, withdrawn man, who, as the film begins, is attending the funeral of his wife, Dorothy. Judging from the sneer on his face, and the camera pan across the faces of his children and grandchildren, he is dealing with the indifference of his family during the funeral, and later, at his house following the funeral, their selfishness and greed. The mysterious bitterness obvious in Walt manifests itself in his hostile treatment of all who are not like him, including his own family.

Cinematographically, Eastwood sets the mood by concentrating on the reality of the environment within the drab, dimly lit, colorless interior of the church during the funeral scene, and the drab, colorless scenes of Walt's neighborhood.

In the case of Walt and Gran Torino, both Scott Foundas and Patrick McCormick feel

Eastwood is seeking his own redemption, through Walt, and through badgering of

Father Janovich (who promised Walt's wife he would watch over Walt after she died and get him to go to confession), for the acts this and his earlier characters have committed (,

Dirty Harry series, etc.). Foundas explains that Walt may be seeking redemption, but "[T]he kind of absolution Walt Kowalski seeks won't be found in a confessional." Foundas compares

Eastwood's use of violence in Gran Torino with Unforgiven, emphasizing that the effects that the killing of another human being, no matter the purpose, leaves its mark on the perpetrator. He notes the crazed animal Will Munny reverts to in the last barroom scene in Unforgiven as the consequences of his former life of killing, and compares that character's torment with the permanent torture Walt has suffered for more than fifty years. Foundas contends that: "[T]he thing that has long haunted Eastwood is the legacy of American violence and the false heroic myths on which that legacy has been written. For him, romanticized movie violence long ago 111 lost its allure." But Foundas fails to see past his idea of Eastwood seeking redemption through his characters of Munny and now Walt Kowalski. It is less a need for his personal redemption than a need to create a new chapter in his life as actor and filmmaker by emphasizing the repercussions of violence.

McCormick sees Eastwood's portrayal of violence through the characters of Gran Torino as a definitive central theme that Eastwood is trying to instill in this, and many of his other films after 1990: "As he gets older, violence seems to disturb Eastwood’s sleep more, his gunslingers haunted by the ghosts of their victims and the guilt for their crimes." McCormick noticed that in the early 1990s, Eastwood began to emphasize the central theme featuring repercussive violence and how it affects all who are touched by it, highlighting other Eastwood films where this has been the case (Unforgiven, Mystic River, Flags of Our Fathers, , and

Million Dollar Baby).

The daily focus of Walt's anger is the family next-door, Hmong immigrants from the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia, who he refers to with a barrage of politically incorrect racial epithets. Because of their Asian physical features, Walt is constantly reminded of the violence he experienced in the Korean War. Viewers learn later, from Walt's conversation with a young neighborhood priest and his response to the "reading" of his state of mind by a Hmong

Shaman, that Walt is haunted by the memory of killing a North Korean soldier who was trying to surrender, much like Will Munny is haunted by the memories of the men he has killed in

Unforgiven. He realizes at that moment the futility of war and killing and how he has changed because of that violent environment, which has generated the repercussions of that violence continuously recurring in his dreams.

112

Distraught by the changing environment of his neighborhood, and haunted by his past,

Walt guards his property sitting on his front porch, sometimes with his M-1 Garand on his lap, a cooler of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and his old golden lab Daisy at his side, ready to threaten anyone who sets foot in his yard. He constantly mutters under his breath about the deteriorating state of his neighborhood, directing racially charged comments to the old Hmong woman (his counterpart) sitting on the porch next door, not realizing that she is doing the same in her language. The audience gets to see the subtitles of these verbal exchanges, providing a comedic

(but sad) break in the tension of the scene, and showing that her prejudices are just as strong as

Walt's. Viewers learn later from Sue that her grandmother's hatred of Walt also relates to past experiences with war--the Vietnam War--during which American soldiers came to her village and recruited the men to fight against the communists. Many of those men never returned, and she now blames all white American men for their deaths. Later, when the war was over, and US forces gone, the communists began a systematic genocide of the Hmong who helped the

Americans, forcing them to leave the country or be killed. Both Walt and the old woman are victims of the violence of war and death. The comparison that Sara Vaux points out between the killing done by Walt and Will Munny, although different in the context of each, still haunts the nightmares of both. The war made Walt a reluctant hero, receiving a medal for his killing, but

Munny was no hero. The repercussions of the violence experienced by both cannot be forgotten

(175).

The young Father Janovich, continually trying to get Walt to go to confession, but, until now, always rebuffed, had earlier confronted him at home, and had asked Walt why he had a problem with him. Walt quickly responded: "The problem is I think you're an overeducated, twenty-seven-year-old virgin who holds the hands of superstitious old women and promises them 113 eternity." But, when the persistent priest invades Walt's comfort zone at the VFW (Veterans of

Foreign Wars) post, Walt reluctantly agrees to talk to him with a "let's get this over with" look on his face. After they settle in to a booth for some privacy, the topics of life and death come up.

Walt tells the young priest about his experiences with violence and death during the Korean War, finally getting to the origin of his inner torture, the details of the killings he committed on the battlefield, not dismissing them as something he was ordered to do, but emphasizing them as direct effects of constant exposure to deadly violence. As the degree of his use of violence grew, it became a daily, albeit temporary, way of life, with Walt both its perpetrator and its victim, and those faces of death still haunting him. Walt's only solace now comes from his visits to the local

VFW post, where he can hang out at the bar with his buddies, drinking beers and shots, and talking about the days when the neighborhood was all white, and times were good at the Ford plant. It is at this bar that Father Janovich, after continuous prodding, finally breaks through his rough exterior and gets a chance to have a serious talk with Walt. This instance is also where he first learns of the beginnings of Walt's depression and the reason for his defensiveness. Walt, like Dave in Mystic River, constantly battles his own set of demons. Close-ups of Walt's expressions and mannerisms add to the understanding of his battle with his past, much like the slumping stature and permanent sadness in Dave's face portray his constant depression.

Violence again takes center stage as the tension heightens in the neighborhood (and the violence builds) with the introduction of a Hmong street gang intent on recruiting the teenage boy (Thao) of the Hmong family next door, harassing the family, and constantly badgering and threatening Thao until he finally gives in. As an initiation ritual into their gang, Thao is told to steal Walt's 1972 Gran Torino. Walt catches Thao in the act, confronts him (M-1 Garand in hand) in the darkness of his garage, trips and falls, accidentally fires the rifle, and, in the 114 confusion and the darkness, Thao escapes. Eastwood is known for photographing dramatic low light situations in many of his films, but the low-level lighting used for the scene with Walt and

Thao in the dark of Walt's garage is not to create dramatic lighting, but more for the need to capture the lighting of a realistic situation.

Thao's refusal to complete his initiation brings more violence from the gang. The next night the gang comes to Thao's house and tries to take him by force, but Walt intervenes with his

M-1, forcing the gang away, saving Thao in the process. The following morning Walt hears noise outside and opens his front door to find flowers and food from grateful neighbors on his front steps and porch. He is again being honored for his use of violence. While he carries his

"gifts" to the trash, other Hmong continue to show up with more. Walt stands, confused, as Sue,

Thao, and their mother, Vu, enter his yard. Sue explains that Walt's confrontation with the

Hmong gang has made him the neighborhood hero to the rest of the Hmong residents, a designation Walt is visibly uncomfortable with. In this case opposites attract, and this incident of protection is the beginning of a bond that forms between Walt and the Hmong family next door, built as a result of the violence shared by both. But, as the bond grows, it becomes something more, something, according to Brett McCracken, Walt has not experienced in many years--true friendship, but a friendship based on a "shared enemy." McCracken notes that

Eastwood's use of violence, and his character's rare friendship with other characters, are, in part, related to his obvious concentration on repercussive violence, which brought the neighbors together. A bond is formed, but only because Walt's violence has brought about a temporary halt to the violence of the gang against the neighborhood.

The main reason for Sue and her family's visit is not only to offer thanks. Thao's family

brings him to Walt so that Thao can pay penance for his attempted theft, and this is where the 115

un-likely friendships begin--with Thao as well as Thao's sister Sue. The crusty Walt again

protests, but finally gives in and reluctantly begins to teach Thao what it means (in Walt's

opinion) to be a man, as Thao works off his reparation for the attempted theft of Walt's car.

Thao shows up the next morning, to Walt's surprise, and begins a series of work sessions that

end in Walt starting him on his journey to manhood. Noticeable change in Walt's attitude

begins with his realization that Thao is a very hard worker, and very respectful to older adults,

traits Walt appreciates (and does not see in his own grandchildren). Walt teaches him about

tools and how to use them, and, along the way, sees something in Thao that is encouraging--the

boy works hard and wants to learn.

After Thao's "pay-back" to Walt is finished, Walt asks him what he wants to do in the

future, and helps him get a job to earn money for college (remembering Sue's remark that

Hmong girls go to college and Hmong boys go to jail). Thao is genuinely appreciative and as

they shake hands, the pause in dialogue, the eye contact, and the expressions on their faces

speak volumes, giving the impression that a friendship of mutual respect has officially been

established. They both appreciate what the other one has done for them. Walt is, in a sense,

becoming the father figure that is no longer in Thao's life, and Thao is becoming the type of

person (son figure) Walt wishes his sons could have been.

Walt's confrontation with the Hmong gang also brings Father Janovich back to have a talk. As the priest admonishes Walt for confronting the gang instead of calling the police, Walt talks about how he handled things in Korea, but Father Janovich stops him with: "We're not in

Korea, Mr. Kowalski." The father continues with an attempt to convince Walt that through confession he can relieve his burdens, confess his sins, and be absolved and at peace with himself for the killing he was "ordered to do." But Walt counters with a statement that puts his 116 inner stress in perspective: "The thing that haunts a guy is the stuff he wasn't ordered to do."

This comment emphasizes the effects of constant killing and the fear of being killed at any minute had on his mental state then and now. Even though Eastwood did not see combat in

Korea, during his time in the service he witnessed the effects of war in the soldiers who returned, and is able to translate those experiences through his character of Walt Kowalski in Gran Torino.

Through Walt, he shows that any form of violence, especially violence used to bring order out of the chaos of war, makes victims of all involved, and, in Walt's case, it can be passed on to those they touch.

The character of Walt brings back memories of previous Eastwood characters and begs the question: Is the character of Walt going to evolve into a geriatric Dirty Harry? Eastwood, in an interview with Geoff Boucher, answers a disguised, but emphatic, "no" to that question: "I think the movie will surprise some people, the nuance of it. These days, I would only do the movie if it had something to say." Eastwood admits, in an interview with Michael Wilson, that he used violence for the entertainment value and to satisfy the desires and expectations of his audiences through the mid-1980s (90), but his current emphasis on repercussive violence becomes even more apparent with the increase in character development used in the four films I discuss here. Before the emphasis of this theme, and the use of extended character development, viewers were left with little information about why a character exhibited a particular personality on screen, since nothing was known about that character's past. They simply appeared in a scene, did what they needed to do, and were left at the end with nothing but their abbreviated exposure in the film to define their characters. This is reminiscent of Eastwood's statement during the filming of A Fistful of Dollars, asking Leone to let him leave out the background

117 information and dialogue written in the script about his "No Name" character, and let the audience figure it out for themselves (Wilson 125).

The way Walt's information is revealed gradually, and in layers, makes it easier to see and understand how the effects of violence in his past are affecting his thoughts and actions in the present. Eastwood's use of background information has changed drastically. Viewers are now able to see the motivation of his characters, the causes that explain their thoughts and actions. Character development in Walt, and the other characters in this cast, is equal to, and even surpasses that of John Wilson in White Hunter, Black Heart, and offers a rare opportunity to see into the backgrounds and motivations portrayed in his casts of characters since 1990.

Even though the main theme of Gran Torino deals with repercussive violence, as do the three films previously discussed, there is another story, with an emphasis on cultural understanding, within the narrative that, for Eastwood, was important to tell, and, again, something unique to an Eastwood film: "I like the fact that Kowalski learns something. I had to put him in that kind of extreme situation in order to take even one step on a journey toward tolerance of other people and other customs" (Boucher). Eastwood had looked at both sides of a violent conflict with his earlier films, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, but here he merges the conflict together in one film, and through questioning Sue tries to come to an understanding of the Hmong history and culture.

Although it happens rather quickly (a little too quickly to be plausible), Walt puts the cultural differences and his prejudices aside and comes to the conclusion that the Hmong family resembles his vision of an "ideal" family unit, even if they do not culturally fit his idea of a family. He sees the respect family members give each other, the respect given older members of 118 the family by the young, and the fun they have when families come together for celebrations-- unlike the tension he experiences when his own family gets together. But, as McBride and

Shahamiri comment: "This is not a fairy tale – hate and violence still exist around Walt’s, Sue’s, and Thao’s world – but just as relationships can develop, certain flaws can be accepted, lessons can still be learned and taught, and priorities can be shifted." This is not the end of the story. On the contrary, this is actually the beginning of a new direction for Walt--with someone to help and protect, someone who cares about him.

Coerced by Sue, Walt eventually (and reluctantly) participates in some of the Hmong family activities, and, because of his earlier defense of Thao, becomes their protector against a local Hmong street gang that begins to harass the family. McBride and Shahamiri see Walt's relationship with Thao and Sue as the beginning of the kind of change Eastwood mentioned earlier in Walt, and a change in his racist attitudes. They also mention the myth of redemptive violence, a holdover from Westerns and action dramas: "In Gran Torino, Eastwood now moves violence from a vehicle of revenge to a means of redemption . . . as a way to cleanse the soul"

(McBride and Shahamiri). But, can redemption be had from violence, or does the violence only bring temporary order? Walter Wink, referring to the need for order in his "Myth of Redemptive

Violence," says that because many films that contain violent acts rely on this myth, they promote the concept that "any form of order is preferable to chaos." In Unforgiven, A Perfect World,

Mystic River, and Gran Torino, order may be restored, but redemption falls short, and order is only temporary. In Eastwood's early Westerns and police dramas order was restored, but the repercussions of violence were not apparent on all sides, and the restoration of order appeared to be the end of the story. There is the realization, in these earlier films, that more violence may come from some other source in the future, but the films ended there. In Gran Torino, the 119 violence is constant, and follows short periods of order, generating more violence with more intensity. There is a commonality within these four films that creates a lingering tension that even with all the happiness in each there is a suggestion that more violence is to come.

Small incidents begin to rapidly appear early on in this film and become clues that indicate there soon may be changes in store for Walt, and his racist attitudes. From his first cough during his wife's funeral, when a small spot of blood appears on his handkerchief, there is a foreboding feeling that a serious disease, or death, is in Walt's future. The loss of blood increases as the film progresses and Walt's coughing becomes more severe. The blood is never explained, but here the camera again acts as an anonymous bystander, one who does not interfere with the concentration of the audience, but as a viewer studying the faces of the characters and their almost un-noticed actions for extra information or emotional reactions. Eastwood's use of the camera has been as another viewer of the story, un-seen and un-noticed. That is its use here, to emphasize the reality of the environment, both literal and emotional.

The Hmong family (mainly Sue) continues to acknowledge him, chipping away at the wall of hate, resentment, and anger Walt has constructed between himself and everyone else in the neighborhood. Even though the Hmong grandmother, his nemesis, continually tells her family they should have nothing to do with him, Sue ignores her and makes Walt her personal project. When Walt saves Thao from being recruited by a local gang, and then saves Sue and her boyfriend Trey from a group of street thugs, he is again the hero of the Hmong in the neighborhood, creating another chink in the wall he has constructed. These events occur very quickly, and, as I said earlier, a little too quickly to be believable. The violence has grown from stern looks and comments to gang posturing, and now to gun pointing, and so has the friendly

120 relationship of Walt, Sue, and Thao. These are events that seem like they should take weeks or months to develop, but they occur in only days.

After being admonished by Father Janovich, for intervening instead of calling the police when the gang tried to take Thao by force, Walt, in his irreverence, tells the young priest that he prayed for them to help, but they never showed up. That the police, throughout the violent acts of the film, are, as Anthony Manchuco puts it, "oddly absent," makes a point that "is extremely significant," following a tradition in Eastwood's past films of highlighting the ineffectiveness of law enforcement agencies. As in many former Eastwood films (Spaghetti Westerns, Dirty

Harry, The Gauntlet), the police do make an appearance, but only after an incident has occurred, and too late to prevent the violence.

The next day, as Walt sits on his front porch reading his newspaper, he notices the daily horoscope. Judging from his, "Aw, what the hell," remark, he rarely, if ever, reads his horoscope, but today (it is his birthday) he decides to give it a look. Although Walt does not make the connection, the message in the horoscope foreshadows the events of the near future:

"Your birthday today: This year you have to make a choice between two life paths. Second chances come your way. Extraordinary events culminate in what might seem to be an anti- climax. . . ." Just then, an old lady across the street drops her sacks of groceries, and, as Walt looks on, she is made fun of with sexual innuendos by three passing Hmong boys. Walt is about to go help her when, unexpectedly, Thao rushes to her aid, helping her pick up her groceries and carry them inside, an action Walt follows with, "Well, I'll be damned," admirably surprised after

Thao's action. Events now begin to move even faster.

Later in the day, Sue asks Walt if he would like to join them for a barbecue, and surprisingly, he accepts. Walt is introduced around the house, and makes a few cultural faux pas, 121 but draws the interest of the Hmong Shaman, who asks if he can "read" Walt. What Walt hears from the Shaman, and quietly observes during the gathering, in the ways the younger Hmongs show respect for their elders, sets the stage for his almost immediate epiphany. Sue translates for

Kor Khue, the Shaman as he "reads" Walt:

Kor Khue says that you think you've been disrespected. You do not

live your life. Your food has no flavor. You are scared of your past.

You stopped living years and years ago. Kor Khue says you're not

at peace. (Walt looks like he's has been hit by a truck.) The Shaman

watches Walt closely. He knows he hit the nail on the head. Walt

looks pale. He's been spooked good. He wipes sweat from his

forehead. (Schenk)

It is obvious, from the expression on Walt's face, and his rapid movement to isolate

himself from the others, that he is shaken by the Shaman' s comments. As he looks around the

room at the older Hmong being waited on by the young, he coughs hard, and a large amount of

blood appears on his hand. Washing the blood from his lips in an upstairs bathroom, Walt,

looking at himself in the mirror, realizes everything the Shaman has told him is true, and says

aloud: "Son of a bitch. I've got more in common with these goddamned gooks than my own

spoiled-rotten family." This statement is realized when one of his sons and his wife visit later

on his birthday, bringing him an extended gadget for grabbing things out of reach and a

telephone with large numbers, thought of, by them, as ideal gifts for someone in his 70s.

From this point, Walt opens himself to change and acceptance, if, at first, only within his

new Hmong family, but noticeable changes in his racist and isolationist attitudes have begun.

Walt also seems to be losing the permanent snarl in his expression. This renaissance in Walt 122 and the almost immediate in his character are seen as major flaws in the story by

James Berardinelli, who notes: "In this, the film lathers things on a little too thickly. The transformation occurs too easily and with too little motivation." He refers to Schenk's scriptwriting as containing the flaws of a newcomer and being too formulaic (Berardinelli).

[Especially amateurish is the wording in the scene of Walt reading the horoscope. Schenk seems to be making sure the audience knows something dealing with Walt getting a second chance, and having to make choices, is about to happen.] Mick LaSalle concurs, calling the script a "ham-fisted screenplay," wondering why Eastwood would find himself "stuck in a ridiculous movie," and ending with, "he deserves better than Gran Torino." Schenk does make his points rather quickly, affectively halting the suspension of disbelief, and lessening the impact of the narrative. It appears this rapid conversion from raging bigot to neighbor of cultural acceptance marks the beginning of a new life for Walt, and happens as if someone snapped their fingers and the change magically took place. This film allows Eastwood to emphasize his central theme, but at the cost of being un-realistic in the amount of ideological change that takes place in such a short period of time, something rare for an Eastwood film of the 1990s or 2000s.

Life does seem to be getting better for Walt: the next-door neighbors he once referred to as heathens are now his friends; he is enjoying life for the first time he can remember since returning from Korea in 1953; but trouble is about to disturb this passive environment once again. The Hmong gang re-surfaces, this time attacking Thao on his way home from work, taking his tools and burning his face with a cigarette. When Walt finds out what happened he is livid, and, although he does not voice his plans to Thao, decides to take justice into his own hands to protect his new friend. Later that night Walt goes to the Hmong's gang house, waits 123 until Smokie, their leader, is there alone, calls him out and beats him up in yard, telling him to never come near Thao again. But, Walt's form of vigilante justice is short-lived. His use of violence does not create order, but seems to create new, more intense, violent events.

The next night the gang does a drive-by shooting at Thao's, raking the house with automatic weapon fire, and beating and raping Sue. When she staggers in the door, bloody and beaten, her attack is too much, emotionally, for Walt, who quickly leaves for his house, violently punches in the doors of the cabinets in his kitchen, stumbles into his dark living room, drops into his easy chair, and begins to sob uncontrollably.

Later, after Walt has re-gained control, Father Janovich shows up to talk about what happened to Sue and to her family's house. For the first time he and Walt see the situation in the same way. They sit in the dark and have a beer together--Mr. Kowalski is now Walt--and discuss what will happen next. The priest understands that Walt is out for revenge, and, although he does not sanction what Walt is planning, he does not try very hard to convince Walt otherwise, an apparent vindication of vigilante justice. Walt asks Father Janovich: "Yeah, well what would you do if you were me? If you were Thao what would you do?" and the priest answers: "I know what I'd do if I was you, or at least what you think you should do. If I was

Tao I guess I'd want vengeance. I'd want to stand shoulder to shoulder with you and kill those guys." The role the young priest tries to play is that of Walt's conscience, but his character ends up as a foil for Eastwood's lack of reverence for organized religion here, and in Mystic River, with cross imagery related to the pedophiles (the gold cross on the ring) and the justification and absolution for murder (the cross tattoo on Jimmy's back). A priest, or the church in general, are not major figures in either film, although in Gran Torino, the continuous prodding of Father Janovich seems more of an aggravation than a solace, until near the end of the film 124 when Walt and the young priest finally bond over the terror of Sue's attack. This is the one time that the priest does not mention religion, and actually shows his anger (the effects of repercussive violence on Father Janovich).

Walt is now concerned for the safety of Sue and Thao in the future, and comes to the conclusion that they will never have peace as long as the Hmong gang is around, telling Father

Janovich as much. According to Gourlie and Engel, Walt realizes: "His own achievement of personal peace is inextricably connected to his efforts to bring peace to Thao and Sue. . . .

Walt's peace plan requires the elimination of the Hmong gang" (273). To further accentuate the central theme of repercussive violence, Walt also makes the decision to keep Thao out of his plan. "Walt is keenly aware of his own internal guilt over those he has killed in Korea, and he does not want to make the price of justice a similar burden Thao must carry within himself"

(273). They do not see Walt's actions as redemptive, only restorative--saving Sue and Thao only temporarily from the violence of their neighborhood. In Gran Torino, not only does repercussive violence generate more violence, the violent acts eventually build in intensity until they lead to the ultimate repercussion, and Walt's ultimate sacrifice. In Walt's opinion, in order for the Hmong gang to suffer the ultimate consequence of their violence they had to commit the ultimate violent act. Restoring temporary order was the major effect of the violence in

Eastwood's early Westerns and police films. If there is now an expectation in Gran Torino that an older, wiser, Dirty Harry will re-surface and restore order, neutralizing the gang, it never materializes.

During the day following the attacks on Sue and her family, events begin to move at a faster pace. Walt is drinking coffee in his kitchen when Thao walks in and wants Walt to help him kill the gang members who attacked his sister--NOW! Walt, telling him that the time is not 125

right, convinces him to come back at 4 p.m., and they will take care of business together. In the

meantime, Walt goes through his last day on Earth, another series of events that is obviously

foreshadowing Walt's death. He mows and manicures his lawn, gets a haircut and a shave, buys

an expensive tailored suit (for his funeral), and then goes to the church to confess. Father

Janovich is shocked and wants to know what he has done (more dark humor to break the

tension), but Walt says he only wants to confess things from his past, and the priest relents.

Walt has lost the sneer and actually looks at peace.

When Thao returns to Walt's at 4 p.m. he finds Walt sitting at his kitchen table cleaning his guns. Although it seems obvious that Walt is getting ready to go on a killing spree with

Thao, that is not the case. Walt asks Thao to follow him to the basement to see something, pins the Silver he was awarded in Korea on Thao, and then slips back upstairs, locking the distracted Thao in the basement. Walt's last words to Thao, after locking him in, make it clear that he does not want Thao to be "damaged goods," as he now refers to himself: "You don't want to know what it's like [to kill a man]." He wants to prevent Thao from being scarred forever by the violence of killing another human being that has scarred him since Korea. (The phrase

"damaged goods" is a hold over from Mystic River, where it was used to describe Dave after he escaped from the pedophiles, and a label he was never able to outlive.)

It is obvious that Walt wants to protect Thao from what he called, "the stealing of innocence--the most heinous crime," referring to what happened to Dave in Mystic River, because it was a crime against a child (Papamichael). Children all on the verge of, or losing, their innocence, are used by Eastwood to emphasize the significance of the violence in the four films I have been discussing. For him, the repercussions of violence are universal and affect

126 everyone, but violence against adults does not carry the same prominence as violence against children.

Walt then heads to the VFW to have one last drink with his buddies, and, as he is about to leave the bar, calls Sue and tells her to let Thao out of the basement. Sue and Thao, realizing what Walt is about to do, rush to the gangbangers' house to find they are too late. The place is surrounded by police, Walt is dead, and the gang members are under arrest. Walt is finally free of his demons, and Sue and Thao are free (temporarily) from the violence of the Hmong gang.

This is one of the most dramatic scenes of the film, shot in night time conditions, using reverse axis camera angles, and, finally, the Eastwood signature camera move--the rising camera angle from an overhead crane. This high angle, pull back shot shows the scene after Walt's death, and after the police arrive. The usually passive Hmong population move from the safety of their homes and into the street to show their respect for their former protector, as if they knew his plan in advance. When they speak to the police and offer to be witnesses to the killing of Walt, they react to the violence in a way they have never before done, but one that may bring a longer lasting order to the neighborhood.

Thao and Sue attend Walt's funeral, and, with other members of the Hmong community, almost fill one side of the church. Thao later joins Walt's family at a lawyer's office for the reading of his will. Facial expressions tell the story, as Walt's family nervously glances at Thao, wondering why he is there. Walt's grandchildren, smiling--almost giggling--anticipate the property they will receive in the will, including his Gran Torino, but, to their shock (also obvious from their facial expressions), it is not to be. Walt leaves his house and furnishings to the church

(as he says his wife would want), and his 1972 Gran Torino to Thao. Although this ending can 127 be seen as a rather simplistic--even happy--resolution to an obvious life-changing learning- experience film, it is more. It is the result of, and partial resolution of, continually rising violence from beginning to end in the film, and almost lacks the ambiguity of the previous three films discussed, but there are some questions left unanswered.

Antonio Manchuco attempts to evaluate Walt Kowalski's final decision: "[Walt] understood that his actions had also contributed to the unfolding of the cycle [of violence]. The sacrifice of himself, by which he puts an end to the cycle of violence, is the only and truly radical solution to the problem." Walt's last act is an attempt to take on the repercussive violence in the neighborhood (much of which he is responsible for generating) for all involved. But, does the act that appears to provide Walt with the redemption he seems to so desperately need fall short, or satisfy that need? Does violence, in this case, actually provide redemption for Walt because he now becomes the victim, rather than the perpetrator?

Because of the emphasis on Father Janovich's character, the connection with the Catholic

Church and its rituals, Walt's decision to give up his life to save Sue and Thao, and Walt's need for redemption, religion plays a role in Gran Torino, as it did in Mystic River, but is not the main focus. The focus remains the repercussions of violence for all that it touches. Walt does not become deeply religious because of his experiences or his talks with Father Janovich, and although he does begin to listen to what the priest has to say, actually bonding with him in the end, Walt's death leaves the ending ambiguous. But this bonding and even friendship between

Walt and Father Janovich occurs after the incidents with Thao, the drive-by shooting at the

Hmong house next door, and the rape and beating of Sue. The conversation the priest has with

Walt immediately after the attack on Sue indicates that both know what needs to be done, and that Walt will do whatever is necessary to protect his new friends, while making amends for 128 contributing to their victimization--redemptive violence to restore order--even if it is only temporary.

Roche and Hösle discuss the revenge versus redemption aspects, and other commonalities in both Unforgiven and Gran Torino: "Whereas the Western to end all Westerns (Unforgiven) ends with the hero wielding a gun for revenge and gaining no redemption, in Gran Torino, the hero carries no gun and is redeemed. In Unforgiven: "murder is presented as repulsive and ugly." In both, there is "the portrayal of an aged hero who has a past that weighs heavily on him and a critique of the uglier aspects of violence, including the price of revenge." This time

Eastwood again makes the point that Walt's violent acts of retribution have not stopped the violence, or restored order to the neighborhood, but have hurt the very people he was trying to protect and even escalated the violence, enforcing Wink's refutation of the "Myth of Redemptive

Violence." Walt now sees only one more violent act, his own sacrifice, in which, as

Girard says, he becomes the surrogate and accepts the violence rather than having it fall on the intended victims (13), Sue, Thao, and the Hmong community.

With Walt's death viewers are left with a typically Eastwoodian ambiguous ending. This ambiguity is produced as Walt crosses himself, says a "Hail Mary," and even falls, as he is shot, landing in the shape of an upside down crucifixion. Would Walt have so readily sacrificed himself if he had not known he was dying from some mysterious disease? His violent death at the hands of the Hmong gang has temporarily restored order to the community and saved Sue and Thao from a life of victimization. The questions generated by this ending, typically left unanswered in an Eastwood film, are there to encourage the audience to think of ways to prevent, rather than temporarily stop, the violence. As he told Leone: "Let the audience figure it out for themselves." 129

CONCLUSION

My purpose in choosing Unforgiven, A Perfect World, Mystic River, and Gran Torino for this study is to illustrate how Clint Eastwood, as director, actor, and filmmaker, reaches across genres, time periods, and cultures, to present a central vision highlighting the violence present in

American society. Including and following Unforgiven, his concentration on repercussive violence forms a pattern, extends beyond a single film, and establishes an identifiable trend.

Psychological theorist and philosopher Slavoj Žižek identifies and defines the idea of consequences of violence using explanations similar to those portrayed in the Eastwood films in this study, offering three lessons for thought from his text, Violence. His first lesson is that society should admit that all violence is bad ideologically, and that it should not "be used to render us insensitive to the most brutal forms of violence" through its use in film (206). The second lesson is that we should not use violence as a contradiction of an ideology against violence--violence to stop or prevent violence (207). Lastly is the lesson that violence "is not always a direct property of some acts, but is distributed throughout its context" and can affect those not directly involved in an incident (213). Žižek's remarks mirror Eastwood's theme throughout the four films discussed in this study. When violence occurs, it forms a series of ripples (consequences) moving out from the center, similar to those ripples formed when a pebble is tossed into the still water of a pond. As they move out from the center, they roll over everything in their path, touching all in some way. These are the repercussions of violence

Eastwood illustrates in these four films.

He also stresses that violence is a part of American society and culture, but he also points out, through his characters' actions (in Unforgiven, A Perfect World, Mystic River, and Gran

Torino), that he no longer sees or portrays violence as a means to redemptive justice, as he did in 130 many of his early Westerns and police films prior to 1990. Characters still use violence to defeat violence, or to conquer evil, but the four films studied here are more reflexive and complicate the use of violence, as he emphasizes the reality that violence has consequences for the conqueror, as well as the victimized, and that there is no simple resolution to the problem.

Eastwood admits he used violence for its entertainment value and to satisfy what he refers to as the desires and expectations of his working class audiences through the mid-1980s.

Criticism of Eastwood, and the violence portrayed by his characters, served to focus the expectations of critics and scholars on what he might do next. At the time, no one expected the changes that were about to take place. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Eastwood had begun to see that his past use of violence, violence in the name of justice and redemption, was part of a myth

Walter Wink refers to "as flawed as the myth of the Western hero," only supplying temporary order, and without redemption.

This new direction is a dramatic change for Eastwood, who, for the first forty years of his career portrayed violence as a routine method of restoring order out of chaos. Those he killed in

Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns and the Dirty Harry films were classified by the audience as the "bad guys," or at least perceived as worse than his character, making it acceptable for him to kill. His character was a loner, not a member of some gang of criminals, and he seemed to have an allegiance only to himself, along with possessing some sort of personal moral code that portrayed him as a reluctant protector of the innocent, and not as bad as the other criminals in the film.

With the change in Eastwood's central theme, and his new method of revealing character information gradually and in layers, we begin to see, in the case of each of the main characters in these four films, how the violence in their pasts is affecting their thoughts and actions in the 131 present. By giving audiences the addition of character development, he has provided glimpses into the backstories of his characters, in turn offering connections to violence against children, and violence caused by the failure of society and the family unit.

Also apparent from the study of these four films is Eastwood's growth as a filmmaker.

His use of drastic, even psychotic, displays of violence in Unforgiven, subtle character development within a violent character in A Perfect World, complacency, ambivalence, and acceptance of a cycle of violence as the norm in Mystic River, and the victimization of an entire neighborhood in Gran Torino have brought him critical success. In revealing the different ways his characters react to, and deal with, the repercussions of violence, Eastwood has included elements in all four films that are drastically different, but remain connected by this central theme.

Drucilla Cornell, who has written extensively on Clint Eastwood, sees what she refers to as his unique ability to center his attention on a fundamental question: "What does it mean to live life as a good man in a complex and violent world?" (ix). Within his characters, she looks at the stereotypes of masculinity and suggests that: "The undoing of masculine hubris that underscores character in these classic Hollywood genres is what makes Eastwood's work so powerful."

Cornell looks at the ethical and moral struggles his characters go through, and not just the episodes of meaningless violence, "that portray the empty shell of the masculinity that traditional

Hollywood genres have propped up as the basis of male heroism" (x). Instead, she looks at how his heroes now deal uncharacteristically with that violence. His "ultimate strength as a director," she says, is in his "subtle" challenges to the stereotypes of masculinity that eventually reveal a hero not afraid to go against expectations in order to follow a personal moral code, and do the

"right thing" (x). Cornell is correct in her assertion that Eastwood's characters destroy the 132 stereotypical hubris of male heroes and in her description of his need to show his characters' reactions to violence, but the term "hero" as it is traditionally used is hard to place on any of the characters in the four films I have discussed here. Many have the personal moral code Cornell speaks of, but none possess the qualities that place them in such a position as to be classified a hero. Even though Walt's ultimate sacrifice in Gran Torino comes close to qualifying him as a hero, there is always the thought that he might not have used his death for his version of justice and redemption had he not known he was dying. The ambiguity of the ending, and the almost instantaneous change in his prejudice, combine to generate antithetical questions of motive in

Walt's character that also question his heroism.

But, these films are not about heroes; they are about putting the characters into violent situations that mirror the problems he sees in society, then studying how they react, and watching and learning from how the repercussions of violence affect their lives. The realization, with the emphasis on violence that is at times psychotic, out of control, and based solely on revenge, is that violence has a negative effect on everyone in every level of society and culture who comes in contact with it. Every character in each of the films feels those effects. Eastwood's portrayal here is of violence that has gotten out of control because of emotional reactions to a series of events. Human nature, in the form of personal revenge or retaliation, takes over in the reality of the situation.

Adding to and completing this new central theme is a group of elements referred to, and discussed earlier, as Eastwood's cinematic vision, which combine interpretation of the screenplay with putting that interpretation on film. This very simplistic definition of cinematic vision encompasses much more than what is seen on the surface, or in the final film product. The

Westerns and police films of the 1960s through the 1980s followed an almost formulaic structure 133 that made it easy to predict or anticipate his actions or the sequence of events. But, throughout the four films in this study, Eastwood has used his mastery of cinematographic techniques and script interpretation to tell four different stories, none easily tagged with the familiar Eastwood label of violence from his past, emphasizing his growth and strengths as a filmmaker in adjusting his cinematic vision to suit the version of realism he sees for each film. As Dennis Rothermel states, Eastwood's cinematography has become "an un-obtrusive element of the narrative" (93).

He remains an individualist, who makes a film that tells the story at hand in the best, most realistic, way possible to portray his theme, not, at first, easily recognized, as was an "Eastwood film" prior to the 1990s.

In each of these four screenplays there are enough stories running below the surface to easily create a variety of directions and insert one central theme, or to make four films with four different themes. What holds these four films together as a unit (in different genres, in different locations, in different time periods) is their central theme and Eastwood's story-telling ability.

Without these elements of his cinematic vision many scenes in Unforgiven, A Perfect World,

Mystic River, and Gran Torino, even the overall effect of some films, would not have had the same impact or intensity. For Clint Eastwood, these four films serve to form a pattern illustrating a self-proclaimed central theme, effectively portraying the repercussions for all who come in contact, in any way, with violence, while showcasing his talent as an actor, director, and filmmaker.

134

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142

VITA

Charles R. Hamilton received his Bachelor of Science degree in journalism from East

Texas State University at Commerce in 1973, and his Bachelor of Arts degree in photography from Brooks Institute of Photography at Santa Barbara, , in 1975. After a career as a journalist and photographer, he entered Texas A&M University - Texarkana, where he received his Master of Arts degree in English in 2004. He entered the doctoral program at Texas A&M

University - Commerce in 2008, where he received his PhD in English, with an emphasis in literature and film, in 2013. Mr. Hamilton's research interests are in adaptation and film studies.

He has presented numerous papers at , film, and literature conferences, is active in a number of English and film-related organizations, and is currently the chair of the

Adaptation: Literature, Film, and Culture Area for the Southwest Popular / American Culture

Association.

Mr. Hamilton is currently Professor of English at Northeast Texas Community College in

Mount Pleasant, and can be reached at P.O. Box 589, Mount Pleasant, TX 75456. His email is [email protected].