Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Unforgiven’, Clint Eastwood, and “We all have it coming, kid”
Alongside John Wayne, Clint Eastwood is one of two stars more synonymous with the western than any other, and his complete self-awareness of that sentiment saw him carry every ounce of his baggage into Unforgiven, which stands tall as his directorial magnum opus.
The legendary actor and filmmaker may have helmed 40 features since debuting behind the camera on 1971’s Play Misty for Me, but none of them can hold a candle to his elegiac love letter to the genre that made him a global superstar, which doubles as his fond farewell to a medium that both defined him as a performer and gifted him many of his greatest successes.
A borderline metatextual rumination on his own standing within the Western, Eastwood’s protagonist William Munny is presented as more vulnerable than any other character he’d played on the dusty plains, and with good reason. He knew he was bidding farewell to the world of saloons and six-shooters for good, with the central figure in the story deliberately evocative of its producer, director, and leading man’s standing both within the industry and the Western itself.
The ageing gunslinger is a trope that’s been done to death, but it’s nonetheless jarring to see Eastwood rolling around in the muck, failing to hit the target when he’s shooting at tin cans, and resigning himself to the fact his best days are behind him. However, it’s the introduction of Jaimz Woolvett’s Schofield Kid that serves as not only the impetus behind his reawakening but a reflection on how mortality is an inescapable fact of life regardless of how anybody chooses – or is pushed towards – getting there.
On the surface, the Schofield Kid is everything Munny is not; he’s arrogant, sure of himself, and happy to share his tales of mercilessly tracking down and taking out his bounties. Munny, meanwhile, is trying to live a quiet life and raise his family as a widower, burdened by the guilt and repentance of a previous life that left a trail of bodies and destruction in its wake.
Of course, the Schofield Kid’s façade is inevitably shattered in two very different ways, first when it’s revealed that he’s severely near-sighted and nowhere near as good a shot as he proclaimed to be, and secondly, when David Mucci’s Quick Mike is removed from the equation. Turning to alcohol in a bid to quell his trauma, the Kid confesses that he’s never killed anybody before, with all of his bluster and bravado being entirely fabricated.
“It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man,” Munny says. “Take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.” Desperately attempting to justify his actions through eyes glistening with tears, the Kid responds: “Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.” Knowing full well that he’s too far gone past the point of redemption, Munny issues a rebuttal of his own, delivering one of Unforgiven‘s most unforgettable moments in the process: “We all got it coming, kid.”
In the space of such a short exchange, Eastwood the filmmaker and Eastwood the actor both furthers his mythologising of the American West while simultaneously deconstructing it. Saul Rubinek’s writer W.W. Beauchamp is the manifestation of how fact can often evolve into legend over time, while the narrative thrust of Unforgiven relies on the latter to paint the heroes who become the subjects of those tales for generations to come as dark, troubled individuals haunted by their pasts, a far cry from the white hat-wearing figures present in the very same type of stories Beauchamp has built his name on.
Throughout his life, the one lesson Munny has learned above all others is that death comes for everyone eventually. The Schofield Kid may be desperate to secure his own legacy, but when push comes to shove, he doesn’t have the stomach for it. As someone who’s taken their fair share of lives and done some truly terrible things, Munny is completely aware there’s a chance death is always looming over the next horizon. Gene Hackman’s Little Bill Daggett says he’ll see his killer in the afterlife, and it’s clear he wasn’t talking about heaven, something Munny has already long since accepted.
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