Mansur Ahmed

Clint Eastwood is the ultimate polymath of the filmmaking world. He started as an actor, but slowly evolved into a director, then a producer, then a film composer, and on the title song of his film, Gran Torino, he sings. He’s pushing 80 years old and shows no signs of slowing. Judging from his demeanor in Gran Torino when his family presents him with the prospect of a nursing home, I imagine merely uttering the term senior citizen in his proximity would be hazardous. While I think other artists his age would rather spend their time playing the grandfatherly figure in a lighthearted comedy or direct a cliched Bucket List kind of movie, Eastwood continues to dredge through brooding existentialism. Since the start of his career, he has been apt at exploring the darker sides of human nature. Most of the characters he’s played are antiheroes or at least anti-establishment, and the characters put under his directorial microscope have their most flawed attributes showcased. The interesting thing about Clint Eastwood’s films is in the way he chooses to see people as individuals. While he has examined characters of diverse cultural backgrounds, he does not ascribe their behavior to anything but who they uniquely are, not ethnically, but as a person. Like I said, the aim of his art is to dissect human nature, trimming away everything, all excuses for a character’s immorality, until there’s nothing left to speak for it except their own human integrity.

Clint Eastwood first came into prominence portraying the Man With No Name in Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. The character is based on Toshiro Mifune’s nameless Ronin from Akira Kurosawa’s film Yojimbo, and just like him, the Man With No Name embodies the same disillusionment with the world that is the epitomical theme of Eastwood’s body of work. In fact, a profound analogy can be made between the Man With No Name’s personality and Eastwood’s films. They both contain an undercurrent of moral ambiguity with a self-defined, though unorthodox, sense of justice. A good example would be the conclusion of Million Dollar Baby. Justice is a subject that is not so cleanly defined in Eastwood’s world. Many people had an issue with the way that film ended, but the character did what he thought was right, or rather what he felt he had to do, considering the alternative only compels one to be defeated by the bleakness of existence. He made a choice, accepting the blows life hammered him with, and moved on rather than allowing said bleakness to slowly eat away at his soul until even his memories of joy are reduced to nothing.

Another motif in Eastwood films is the sometimes cruel meaninglessness of particular truths. In Unforgiven, the character of William Muny tries desperately to change his ways and forget his murderous past, but somehow the trajectory of his circumstances invariably leads him to have to kill once more with cold brutality even when his intentions are noble. He submits himself to the fact that he cannot shake who he truly is, but simply contain it until it is inevitably unleashed by forces beyond his understanding. It is very powerful when Eastwood has to make the admission, pointing the barrel of a shotgun in the face of a guilty, though helpless, victim, that he has in his lifetime murdered every kind of living being. When he finally kills him, it is apathetically, as routine as breathing. There is no explanation for it.

A similar situation occurs in Eastwood’s recent film, Letters From Iwo Jima. Two Japanese soldiers surrender themselves to Americans after suffering the harsh conditions they’d endured fighting through the night. The leader of the American squadron is courteous, polite, offering them water and security. Before escorting them away, he has to finish surveying the area. He assigns two of his men to guard them in the meantime. The two young Japanese soldiers are left with the two young American soldiers, feeling a sense of relief and safety. However, after some time the two Americans grow bored with their assignment and decide the easiest way to get out of it is to kill the prisoners and walk away. And so they do, with no other motivation than boredom. Not because of animosity for their enemy, not because the soldiers were Japanese, simply because they were too impatient to wait for their captain. So what is it Clint Eastwood is trying to say about human beings? Some things are best left unsaid. Nor does Eastwood waste time trying to explain. His messages are all as straightforward, direct, and economical as the dialogue right before Eastwood kills Gene Hackman in Unforgiven. Hackman: “I don’t deserve this, to die like this. I was building a house.” Eastwood: “Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” Hackman: “I’ll see you in hell, William Muny.” Eastwood: “Yup.” That’s when Eastwood shoots him in the face.