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Movies Forum Index » Current Movies Forum » THE COWBOY ICON
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| Dr. Jai Maharaj |
 Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2004 5:13 pm |
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The cowboy icon
-From gunslinger roles to that of director-producer, the
transition marked the beginning of Clint Eastwood's
creative journey. He acted in and made some good and bad
films, but "Mystic River" is his best work, feels UMA
MAHADEVAN-DASGUPTA.
The Hindu
Friday, April 9, 2004
"Mystic River" ... it got Sean Penn the Best Actor Oscar.
"MYSTIC RIVER," Clint Eastwood's newest and best film,
opens with Eastwood's favourite opening shot -- a slow
overhead view of the city, taking one along the dark,
slow-moving Mystic river and into the browns and greys of
the blue-collar Boston neighbourhood, where this tragic
urban noir story is set. And then the drama begins to
play out -- the wet cement on the sidewalk, the boys
etching their names, a car approaching and gliding to a
stop, one of the boys swept into the back seat, and his
face pressed against the glass as he looks back at the
other two. One will not forget that face anytime soon,
and nor will the two friends.
Twenty-five years later, one is already tense as one sees
Jimmy Markum's bright young daughter getting into her
car. Night slowly passes, and then it is day. In the
neighbourhood, life goes on -- a young girl taking her
communion, a boy talking in sign language to his deaf-
mute brother, a man sitting behind the counter in the
store. Suddenly, slowly, everything falls apart.
Police cars drive up. Lights flash. And as Jimmy Markum
lunges and flails wildly -- for he already knows that it
is his daughter who died in that car out there —
policemen in a tight formation keep him from rushing past
the barrier. And the story has just begun.
For some people, it seems, there's no escaping destiny.
Rearrange the letters of Clint Eastwood's name, for
example, and you get 'Old West Action.' And although the
Internet Movie Database lists 26 films that Eastwood has
directed -- beginning with the 1971 thriller "Play Misty
for Me" -- and 20 that he has produced, he is still known
chiefly for his gunslinger roles.
Even if all 58 films in which he has appeared don't quite
come to mind.
Ironically, this American icon began his career
unremarkably, in the days of Marlon Brando, James Dean
and Rock Hudson, as a college dropout taking up bit parts
in movies with titles like "Tarantula" and "Revenge of
the Creature." It was tenacity as much as talent that led
Clint Eastwood to "A Fistful of Dollars."
"What an American was Clint Eastwood," mused Norman
Mailer in a 1983 essay-interview, "Maybe there was no
one more American than he." Mailer was using the past
tense. In a sense, the Clint Eastwood of Mailer's essay,
the lonely, wandering hero of the films of Sergio Leone,
Don Siegel and so many others, of spaghetti westerns and
the Dirty Harry films, the man who was famously quoted as
saying that "there's a rebel lying deep in my soul,"
has never really left the screen.
After all, his first big role -- as cowboy Rowdy Yates in
the long-running TV series "Rawhide" -- came to him when a
studio executive wanted the guy who 'looked like a
cowboy.'
After "Rawhide," the 1960s brought more success: the
Sergio Leone films "Per un pugno di dollari" (1964), "Per
qualche dollaro in più" (1965), and "Il buono, il brutto,
il cattivo" (1966): otherwise known, of course, as "A
Fistful of Dollars," "For a Few Dollars More," and "The
Good, The Bad, and The Ugly." And then in "Where Eagles
Dare" (1968), Eastwood acted alongside Richard Burton. It
seemed he had already arrived. But 1971 was the watershed
year, not only with "Play Misty for Me" and "The
Beguiled," but also with the first Dirty Harry film,
entitled simply "Dirty Harry," in which, for the first
time, one encounters the sad, weary and unforgettable
policeman Harry Callahan.
Along with some unmemorable spaghetti westerns came
"Magnum Force" (1973), a sequel to "Dirty Harry". Then
1976 brought "The Enforcer," the best Dirty Harry film,
and that all-American western, "The Outlaw Josey Wales."
The next sequel to "Dirty Harry," "Sudden Impact" (1983),
made Eastwood a star for the 1980s.
In 1988, he did his fifth and final Dirty Harry movie,
"The Dead Pool." As his star value declined, he took up
other projects, first with "Bird" (1988), about Charlie
Parker, which came from his abiding interest in jazz; and
then "White Hunter, Black Heart" (1990), based loosely on
John Huston.
At the time, he was just embarking on his creative
journey as a director. The next decade brought him a Best
Director Oscar, as well as a Best Actor nomination, for
his tough, unforgiving western story, "Unforgiven"
(1992). "In the Line of Fire" (1993) was another success,
followed by "A Perfect World" (1993), with Kevin Costner.
Next, however, came the uninspiring and ploddingly
sentimental "The Bridges of Madison County" (1995) with
Meryl Streep, in which, as the joke went, Eastwood acted
out the fantasy of every bored American suburban
housewife: husband and children out of town, and Clint
Eastwood at the door.
After this came a mixed bag, from "Midnight in the Garden
of Good and Evil" (1997) to "True Crime" (1999), "Space
Cowboys" (2000) and "Blood Work" (2002).
Over the years, Eastwood has been overrated as a director
— he has even been called an auteur, and his sturdy
preachiness has been mistaken for a complex moral vision
— more, perhaps, because of the American myth that he
stood for.
While his films have been very American, however -- very
controlled and held-together, and indeed, he is known for
completing projects on time and within budgets -- they are
often lacking in style and impulsiveness. One thinks of
"The Bridges of Madison County", for example, which could
have been a film full of grace and vision, but ended up
too cloying and too trite. And yet he is still out there
on that screen, the restless, loner cowboy with anger
burning inside him. He is there even in the working-class
urban neighbourhood, appearing not only in Sean Penn's
ravaged Jimmy Markum in "Mystic River," but also in Kevin
Bacon's tense detective, yearning for his wife to come
back home.
The film emerged as one of the best efforts from the
Oscar factory this year, winning the Best Actor and Best
Supporting Actor Oscars for Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. It
is also Eastwood's best work as a director -- for although
he continues with his slow, heavy, uninspired style, it
somehow manages to work in this film, and even adds to
the inexorable feeling of tragedy. And as always, with
the space he gives them, the actors Penn, Robbins, Kevin
Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden take the story to new
heights.
Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane with a screenplay by
Brian Helgeland, the film is the story of three friends,
Jimmy, Sean and Dave, who, on one lazy afternoon as they
are playing on the sidewalk, get caught up in a tragic
chain of events. Two men, claiming to be policemen,
abduct Dave: they manage to keep him for four days before
he can escape, but four days are enough to scar a child
for life. And not only him: for Sean and Jimmy too, are
left shaken by the incident.
Years later, they have all gone their individual ways.
One becomes a reformed lawbreaker; another, an upholder
of the law; and the third continues to be a victim of
fate -- 'damaged goods,' as someone says. But is he the
only one who is 'damaged', one wonders: what about Sean,
the detective, who cannot seem to make his marriage work
at all; and what about Jimmy, whose anguished eyes hide
unexplored depths of darkness? As the tagline of the film
goes, 'We bury our sins, we wash them clean.'
It's not that "Mystic River" is a perfect film. There are
several clunky moments, including the shots of Sean's
wife, who has left him -- one only sees her wobbling chin
next to the telephone. She says nothing, though she calls
a lot. And then there's the too-easy ending: one is
almost rushed through it, even though the rest of the
film has moved at a brilliantly slow pace. There's also
Laura Linney's unconvincing bit of drama in the final
moments of the film as she comforts Jimmy. And yet,
despite its flaws, the film works powerfully.
Onenever forgets the face of that young boy as he turns,
in the first few minutes of the film, to look back at his
childhood, as he leaves it behind forever.
One grieves for him; and one grieves also for the young
girl who dreams of escape from the neighbourhood but who,
as we see, does not survive her last night there.
One grieves for the wife who wants to be loyal to her
husband, and who thereafter makes a terrible, terrible
mistake, one that will destroy her. And one wonders, more
in this film than in any gun-slinging Clint Eastwood
genre western, why men kill each other.
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