Trollheart

Title: Unforgiven
Year: 1992
Director: Clint Eastwood
Writer: David Webb Peoples
Starring: Clint Eastwood as William Munny, Morgan Freeman as Ned, Gene Hackman as Little Bill, Richard Harris as English Bob

If you're my age or thereabouts (god help ya!) then you were probably brought up on westerns, or “cowboy movies” as we used to call them back then. The Magnificent Seven. The Lone Ranger. The Big Country. And series like “The High Chapparal”, “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza” on the TV. Westerns were of course most popular in the forties to about the sixties, and then began to fade a little as other, more exciting and more challenging genres like science-fiction, horror and suspense movies came through. To be totally fair to them, Westerns were seldom great works of writing. That's not to say they weren't written well, but most of them followed a basic formula, and while Sergio Leone's “spaghetti westerns” would somewhat redefine and reinvigorate the genre in the seventies, Westerns were pretty much on their way out by the following decade. In recent times they've made something of a resurgence, thanks mainly to the likes of “Dances with wolves” and “Tombstone”, but even now it's unusual to see a Western on the big screen.

That said, the last one I watched, the remake of “3:10 to Yuma”, was very enjoyable. But if you look through the history of Westerns there are big names striding across them like colosssi: Brynner, Wayne, Marvin. And in later years, one man would come to almost embody the idea of the hired gun, the nameless stranger drifting into town and causing, or getting caught up in, a whole heap of trouble. Beginning his career in the TV series “Rawhide” and later going on to become the hard-bitten cop Harry Callahan, Clint Eastwood made his name in the already-mentioned movies directed by Italian film maker Sergio Leone, and it is to these, to some degree, that this movie tips its battered, gunshot hat.

Billed as “the last great Western”, it really does turn out to be that. In a coda or epilogue to his years as “The man with no name”, Eastwood stars in, directs and produces a movie which forever draws a line under every mean western hombre he played in his younger days, and drags in the process some harsh truths out into the light. This is not a feel-good movie, where the goody gets the baddies and the girl. There is no riding off into the sunset as some unseen harmonica plays, no kicking the heels to the flanks of a trusty steed which whinnys and rears up, carrying the hero across the bleak desert, his job done, the town saved, the bad guy lying dead on a dusty street behind him.

This, if it can be termed as such, is a real Western, probably the most faithful and least fanciful depiction of what life must have been like in the Old West, and how stories get taller and taller the more they're told, and ordinary men who would laugh at the concept are made into heroes, but the reality is much different. It also finally answers that old question: just what does happen to old gunslingers who aren't killed and survive to their retirement?

We open on a typical western scene. A man stands in the setting sun, seen from a distance, raising and bringing down an axe. We can't see what's he's doing. Is he burying a rival, someone he has just killed? Is he digging for treasure, or indeed hiding some? Turns out that, under a tree and next to a ramshackle barn, the man is burying his wife, who has died of smallpox. It's two years later and we're in Big Whisky, Wyoming, a typical shithole of a town where the rain is lashing down, as if in sympathy with the pathetic lives the folk here live. In a cathouse, a cowboy takes exception to some remark made of him by one of the prostitutes and cuts her face. He leaves her disfigured, but she must still earn her living the only way she knows how, the only way she can.

The sheriff, known as Little Bill (Hackman) is reluctant to have the two cowboys hanged --- it was, after all, only a whore they cut --- and instead decides to whip them, but when Skinny, the owner of the bordello, complains that he is out of pocket as he now has one less whore to work for him, Bill fines the two instead, which does not go down well with the other ladies. They decide to pool what little resources they have and try to get together enough money to offer a reward to anyone who will come to Big Whisky and kill the two cowboys for them. Justice was not done, they think, so they will create their own justice. An eye for an eye.

We're back at the farm, where the man we saw at the start, the man burying his wife, is chasing hogs around when a stranger rides up and starts telling him that he knows who he is. William Munny (Eastwood), famed gunfighter, bankrobber and train robber, who shot more men than anyone even knows. The man denies this, annoyed, looking at the young man who sits arrogantly astride his horse, eyeing him as if deciding whether or not he has wasted his time making this trip to meet him. Invited in, turns out the youth is the nephew of someone Munny knows, calls himself the Schofield Kid, and says that his uncle told him that if he wanted a partner to help him kill someone he should seek Munny out. Schofield tells Munny about the disfigurement in Big Whisky, though by now it's become somewhat embellished: the whore lost her eyes, here ears, and so on. Schofield is going there to claim the thousand dollar reward that the other girls have offered, and wants Munny to split it with him. Munny, however, is not the man he used to be, or is rumoured to be, and declines, sending the Schofield Kid on his way.

As he watches him ride away into the distance though, Munny looks thoughtful and it's obvious he's remembering freer times, wilder times where he rode where the wind took him, and shot down any man who looked at him cross-eyed. Later he takes out his gun and practices shooting, but his late wife has “cured him of his wickedness” as he says himself, and his aim is well off. Age has caught up with him, and a farmer has little use for a six-shooter. With some perseverance though, and switching to a rifle, he finds the old skill has not deserted him. Soon afterwards he is riding in pursuit of the youth, leaving his two children to look after the farm.

In Big Whisky, Skinny discovers that the girls do not have the thousand dollars they have advertised as a reward, and worries what will happen when someone comes to collect? He goes to tell Bill, who is less than pleased, knowing that such an offer, even if the girls are lying and actually have the money, is going to attract every cowpoke and gunslinger from here to Cheyenne. They'll be flooding in, all eager to get their hands on that money and do in those two cowboys. Going to be real hard to maintain law and order round here now. And he was just getting finished building his house, too.

Munny comes to the house of his old friend and partner Ned Logan (Freeman) who he asks to look in on his kids while he's away. Ned however decides to accompany his old buddy on the trip, and the two of them rendezvous with the Schofield Kid, who is less than happy that the reward is now going to have to be split three ways. Munny, however, is immovable: it's either Ned, him and the Kid or they'll both go home and the youngster can tackle the cowboys on his own. Schofield gives in with bad grace, seeing as he has no choice, but declares that Munny will have to share his half with his friend. Munny says it's a three-way split or nothing, and Schofield has to agree, especially when they discover he's almost blind.

Meanwhile, the first gunfighter to act upon the whores' offer rolls into town, as “English Bob” (Harris) heads towards Big Whisky on a train. It's not long however before he and his travelling biographer, Beauchamps, are accosted by Bill and his men. Having disarmed Bob --- Beauchamps would not know what to do with a gun --- Bill proceeds to kick the living shit out of him, sending a message to all the bounty hunters and cowboys who plan to come looking for the “whores' gold”. Having reduced Bob, a much older --- and unarmed now --- man, to bloody pulp, he then throws him and his biographer in a cell. While they're incarcerated, Bill reads through the book which is supposedly written about English Bob, “The Duke of Death”, and laughs at the so-called true account of the episode he reads. Bill tells him the true story, and Beauchamps begins to see that Bob may not be the “English gentleman gunfighter” he has been portraying him as. When Bob is “escorted” beyond the county line, Beauchamps stays behind, reasoning that he can get more and proper material for his writings by sticking with the sheriff.

When Little Bill is told two strangers have ridden into town, armed, he goes to relieve them of their weapons, by any means necessary. Ned goes to check on the Kid --- and intimates he might take a little detour into one of the ladies' rooms while he's at it --- leaving William shivering and looking a pathetic figure on his own at the bar. When the sheriff's men enter and demand his gun, and he refuses to hand it over, Bill takes it and then doles out to the stranger the same treatment he gave English Bob, which is to say he punches, kicks and generally beats the crap out of him. Ned and The Kid meanwhile have been helped by the girls to escape, and make for their horses. William manages to crawl outside and somehow gets up on his horse, and they all head to shelter.

It's some time before Munny recovers, and the Kid watches him with growing disappointment, disillusion and realisation that this man is not who he thought he was, not any more. When he says to Ned “He's gonna die, ain't he?” there is no sorrow in his voice, and no real doubt either. He's just concerned that they won't be able to finish the job. The trio go after the cowboys and get one of them, but it's far from the triumph they --- or at least, the Schofield Kid --- had envisioned. Dyin's a dirty business, and it becomes pretty clear to the two hardened veterans that the Kid, despite his boasts, has never killed anyone. He is visibly shaken, and Munny shows his humanity when, having been the one to shoot the young cowboy, he entreats his mates to come out and allow him to have a drink of water, promising that they won't shoot them. He's clearly heartily sick of the whole business, even though he's been spending some time with the girl who these guys cut up. He knows they have to pay for what they did, but he don't have to like it. He will, however, keep his promise and finish the job.

Ned, on the other hand, decides he's had enough and is going to head back to Kansas. William says they'll head down to kill the other target and then hook up with Ned on the way back. When word reaches Little Bill that, despite all his warnings and demonstrations, one of the two cowboys have been killed, he organises a posse and they move out in search of the killers. Ned is captured and brought to him. Meanwhile, Munny and the Kid close in on the other cowboy, who has taken refuge with some of his mates. They get him as he comes out to take a shit, the Kid killing what proves to be his first man. But when the girls bring the reward to Munny and the Kid, they learn that Ned has died under interrogation, tortured to death by Little Bill, and worse, his body is now being displayed in front of the saloon with a sign saying his best friend is a murderer.

And so we kick into the final phase of the movie, where for a short, brutal period Eastwood resurrects the desperado that populated so many Spaghetti Westerns, with a shot of Dirty Harry in there for good measure. Age seems to fall from him like a cloak, and anger and revenge burn in his eyes. If he had a cigar he'd probably clamp it between his teeth and grind them till the cheroot split. He sends The Kid back to his farm with the money, telling him to take his own share and give Ned's and Munny's to his kids, then he rides on into town for one hell of a reckoning.

When he leaves town, Little Bill is dead, Skinny is dead, along with about another four of the sheriff's deputies. He rides off into the rain alone, nobody daring to stop him, and warns that unless Ned is buried with proper respect and the ladies are left alone, he will return and “kill every goddamn one of you sons of bitches.”

QUOTES
Little Bill (looking down at the cut whore): “She gonna die?”
(It's said with such offhand casualness, such total disinterest that he might as well have been talking about the weather. Bill clearly could not care less whether she lives or dies: one less whore to worry about. Still, if it did turn out to be a case of murder, then those boys may have to swing anyway. So maybe he is a little concerned, but more for himself and them than for the poor pathetic victim lying at his feet).

English Bob: “I don't wish to give offence, but I suggest this country select a king --- or even a queen --- rather than a president. One isn't that quick to shoot a king or a queen: the majesty of royalty, you see.”
Joe: “Maybe you don't wish to give offence, sir, but you are givin' it, pretty thick! This country don't need no queens whatever I reckon. Matter of fact, when I hear talk of queens I ---”
Thirsty: “Shut up Joe!”
Joe: “What's wrong with you Thirsty? This son of a bitch---”
Thirsty: “Might be that this dude here is English Bob! He's the one that works for the railroad shootin' Chinamen! Might be that he's waitin' for some crazy cowboy to touch his pistol, so that he can shoot him down!”
Joe: “Is that a fact, mister? You English Bob?”
Bob: “Pheasants. Let's shoot some pheasants. Ten pheasants, say ... a dollar a pheasant. I'll shoot for the Queen, and you for ... well, whomever.” (After the shooting match) “Well, that's eight for me and one for you. That comes to seven of your American Dollars.”
Joe (paying): “Som damn good shootin'! For a “John Bull”!”
Bob: “Well, no doubt your aim was affected by your grief over the injury to your president.”

Bob: “There's a dignity in royalty, a majesty that precludes the possibility of assassination. Now if you were to point a pistol at a king or a queen, your hands would shake; the sight of royalty would cause you to dismiss all thoughts of bloodshed and you would stand ... how shall I put it? In awe. You would stand in awe. Now, a president? Well, (pauses and laughs) why not shoot a president?”

Bob: “Little Bill! I thought you was --- I mean, I thought you were dead.”
Bill: “Lot of people thought I was dead, Bob. Hell, even I thought I was dead, till I found out I was just in Nebraska!”

Bill (reading the book in Beauchamps's bag): “The Duck of Death.”
Beauchamps: “Um, duke. The Duke of Death.”
Bill: “Duck, I says.”

Bill (while kicking seven shades out of English Bob): “I guess you think I'm kickin' you, Bob, but it ain't so. What I'm doin' is talkin': talkin' to all those villians down in Kansas, and I'm talkin' to all them villians down in Missouri, and all those villians down in Cheyenne! And I'm tellin' them there ain't no whores' gold! And even if there was, they wouldn't wanna come lookin' for it anyhow!”

The Kid (looking at a badly-beaten Munny): “His pistol must have jammed!”

The Kid: “Say Will?”
Munny: “What?”
The Kid: “That was the first one.”
Munny: “The first one what?”
The Kid: “First one I ever killed.”
Munny: “Yeah?”
The Kid: “You know I said I shot five men? It weren't true. That Mexican that came at me with a knife? I just busted his leg with a shovel, I didn't kill him neither.”
Munny: “Well, you sure kileld the hell out of that fella today.”
The Kid: “Yeah. Yeah I did. I killed the hell out of him, didn't I? Three shots, and he was takin' a shit. Jesus Christ! It don't seem real! He ain't never gonna breathe again. Ever. Now he's dead. The other one too. All on account of pullin' the trigger.”
Munny: “It's a hell of a thing, killin' a man. You take away all he's got, all he's ever gonna have.”
The Kid: “Yeah. Well. I guess they had it comin'.”
Munny: “We've all got it comin'.”

Little Bill: “Well Sir you are a cowardly son of a bitch! You just shot an unarmed man!”
Munny: “Well, he shoulda armed himself if he's gonna decorate his saloon with my friend.”
Little Bill: “You'd be William Munny out of Missouri. Killed women and children.”
Munny: “That's right. I killed women and children. Killed just about everything that walked or crawled at one time. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.”

Those clever little touches

A man almost synonymous with Westerns and being a hard-bitten hombre who would ride for days to find a man and kill him, Eastwood finds that as he tries to mount a horse for the first time in what must be years, it is not as easy as he rememnbers it being, and he ends up dancing around in a comical/tragic circle trying to get on the horse's back, eventually ending up on his backside in the dirt. Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

Whether it's intentional or not, it's interesting that the hero/antihero's name is William Munny, very close to William Bonney, the famed Billy the Kid, espeically as Munny is supposed to have this tough desperado reputation.

The times, they are a-changin'

Munny thinks little of leaving his two children, the oldest of whom can't be more than ten or twelve, to fend for themselves on the farm while he rides off after the Scofield Kid. I guess they're in the middle of nowhere; it's not as if the kids are going to be attacked or anythng, and they've probably been shown how to defend themselves. Still, social services would not be impressed!

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Trollheart

True Western

If ever a movie was made that showed the stark, unalterable, unvarnished truth behind the tales of heroism, bravery and daring beloved of those who write about the “Wild West”, this is it. Munny may have once been a bad, evil, scary man who would shoot you as soon as look at you, and who inspired fear in everyone by the very mention of his name; a man whose fame and the tales of whose exploits would have drawn gunslinger after gunslinger into conflict with him, eager to dethrone the king, eager to prove themselves the next big thing, eager to take down the boss. He may have been all those things once, and perceived that way, but that was then and this is now. When The Kid asks him about some incident in the mythology that has grown up around his life, he tells him he doesn't recollect. He may be playing the event down, but it may also be true to say that he really doesn't remember. He's much older now, weaker and he would say a better man, or striving to be one, thanks to his late wife. He has hung up his gun and ridden his last horse (or so he thinks) into danger and adventure, and wants to put all his gun-toting days behind him. Maybe he makes himself forget, or tries to, or maybe it's just advancing age and the strain of too much whiskey and too many bullet wounds, but William Munny is no longer the man he was, much less the legend he has become, or that people have tried to make him, maybe even against his will.

This could not be demonstrated any more clearly or harshly than in the scene where Little Bill encounters him alone in the saloon, and proceeds to kick the living shit out of him. Conscious that the man is unarmed, and not caring who he is, the sheriff kicks him and sneers as Munny crawls along the floor, trying to avoid the blows. At one point, he grabs his whiskey bottle, intending to use it as a weapon to defend himself, but almost as if his erstwhile ally is turning on him, the bottle slips from his hand as he is knocked back to the floor, potential salvation --- which had been intent on being his damnation until his wife saw fit to try to change him --- snatched from his grasp.

The pathetic sight of the once-feared gunfighter cowering as he tries to evade the blows, and the somewhat shocked faces of Bill's men as they watch their boss sadistically lay into what they see to be an old drunk are telling, too: even they can see this is over the top, and perhpas some of them are seeing the real sadist in the sheriff, a man who enjoys beating defenceless people up and is no respecter of age.

But it's not just William Munny that's lying there, panting and gasping in the rain on the sodden ground outside the saloon, hoping he's not going to die. It's every gunfighter, every hero of the West, every pistolero and cowboy and rebel and desperado that ever walked, rode and fought his way through the pages of a western novel or whooped his way across the silver screen. In a very real way, this is Eastwood showing us the true West, where while a man's livelihood --- indeed, his very life --- and certainly his reputation could depend on his being faster on the draw than the other guy, every time, when old age crept up on him it gave no points for scores mounted up while the man was young: now he's old, and his past exploits don't matter a damn. In the same way as he, in his younger days, would pass by and narrow his eyes at some old-timer sitting on a bench or propping up a bar, he now is the old-timer, and the world is viewing him through the slit and narrowed eyes of the present, where his adventures years ago count for precisely nothing.

In the end, you can live on your legend --- real or built up by others --- for so long, but eventually time and age will claim you, and the harsh bitter truth comes home to roost like a dark raven alighting on your shoulder, and you know that your number is up. There will be no more heroic deeds, no more last-chance gunfights, no time to draw anymore. The other guy is finally quicker than you, and he's looking at you thoughtfully from behind a cowl as he leans on his scythe. All things pass, and so must even a legend pass into history, and the Old West must make way for the new.

Why do I love this movie?

I love the honesty in it. It's never once denied that Munny was a badass, but those days are long behind him now and he is a pale shadow of his former self. It's also almost a case of “Godfatherism” --- ”I keep tryin' to get out, they keep pullin' me back in!” --- where Munny has voluntarily, for the sake of his wife and his kids, left his old life behind, has quit drinking and settled down to the boring and unrewarding life of a farmer, but is denied this retirement when he is dragged back to his darker days, both to (I suppose) impress or at least not disappoint the youngster who seems to idolise him, and to make some decent money.

I love the way it's driven on three separate imperatives. Firstly, and most importantly of course, it's money. William is not making much of a living, scraping out an existence as a poor farmer, and a share of that rumoured thousand dollars would certainly help the lives of he and his kids. Then there's the outrage, the almost chivalrous need to ride to the ladies' defence. It's charming, but almost out of character with the West. In general, women --- especially whores --- were treated with almost contempt by the men, and the idea that anyone would seek to avenge an attack on one is pretty ludicrous by itself. Put it with a cash reward though, and suddenly everyone's Sir Lancelot. Given that, though, it's fair to say that for this trio there is certainly a sense of wounded chivarly at play. Munny, though he probably killed women and children, as he says himself later, is outraged and angry that anyone could treat a woman that way, perhaps because he himself did the same sort of thing, and wants now, at the end, to try to make up for it.

The Kid is idealistic and really does think he's riding to the rescue. For him, the money is secondary, although he goes on about it a lot. He's not really that interested. He's young, after all. Plenty of time to make his fortune. But to ride with William Munny, the legendary gunslinger, and to take on those cowboys in the name of revenge and the settlement of honour, that's far more important and it will make his name from one state to another if he can pull it off. Ned, of course, really just comes out of boredom and a sense of loyalty to his friend.

So there's chivalrous intentions, the greed for money and the need to prove themselves. Even Munny, old now and well past this sort of thing, must feel that he has still something to show the world, one last hurrah before the end, one more time before he really does this time hang up his gun. Once more unto the breach, pardners, once more! He probably realises fairly soon that he has bitten off more than he can chew, but he is not a man to back away from something once he has undertaken it. Even when Ned quits after they shoot the first cowboy, and Munny probably wants to follow him, he holds true to his promise, perhaps one of the few things he can continue to hold on to, the only real proof he still can offer that he is a man.

Then there's the downbeat tone of the movie. There's no whoopin' and hollerin' and shootin' up the town. When men are killed, it's shown to be a dark, gritty, unpleasant business. There's no honour in it. There's no joy in it. It's a job, simple as that. You kill them or they kill you. And wehn Munny is being beaten up in the bar, every moment you keep expecting him to whirl and take on Bill, his familar sneer and growl coming back, a six-shooter, carefully concealed, coming into play as he blasts away. But it never happens. The “old” Munny does not resurface, and the properly old Munny is all that's left; he must take the beating and then drag himself out into the wet streets like a dog, because he literally has nothing left that he can fight back with. To a degree, too, he may see and feel in the flying boots of Little Bill as they impact his body every cowboy and rancher, every farmer and banker, every man and woman he ever wronged screaming their dark delight and their delight as his battered body is subjected to their long-delayed revenge. All the anger, all the pride, all the cocksureness has been leeched from him, both by time and by a patient wife who has tried her best to turn him onto the road of salvation, little realising that this could in fact lead him to his death.

In fact, the first time we see the old Eastwood character surface is when he's told that Ned has been killed. Then we see the spark return to those tired eyes, the fires light behind them. Now there's really something to avenge: now real life has kicked the adventure into the dust and he's staring at a woman sorrowfully telling him his best friend --- who was not even supposed to be coming on the quest and who had quit and was heading home --- has been murdered by Little Bill. Now, let the whole world beware, cos The Man With No Name is comin', and Hell's about three paces behind him!

Even the confrontation is kind of low-key, in keeping with the overall non-exciting, non-sensationalist tone of the movie. There's no two men facing each other in the street to see who's quicker on the draw. There's no prolonged battle or chase. Munny's rifle jams but he quickly produces his pistol and shoots all around him dead. Bill goes down easily, though he doesn't die right away, and Munny has the satisfaction of looking into his eyes before ending his life forever. He then leaves, unopposed, like an avenging wind blowing in from across the desert, or a cleansing fire sweeping all before it. At this point he's no longer a broken-down old man: he has regained something of his old self, spurred by the unnecessary and ignominous death of his friend, and he is once again a force to be reckoned with, an irresistable power against which nobody can stand. But when the job is done --- and he seems to take little pleasure in it --- he rides out of town and back to his farm, returning to the life he was leading before The Schofield Kid crossed his path.

I even love the music. Far from being the uptempo, exciting, stirring music of adventure that used to colour westerns, this is a far more downbeat, laidback and slow score --- when it's there: much of the movie has no music soundtrack at all --- and is almost more suitable to a lazy day on the river than to the taking of men's lives. The entire thing can almost be taken as a metaphor for a man sleeping in the sun, waking for a moment to fire off a shot that kills someone he needs to kill, and then tipping his hat back over his eyes to ward off the bright light, slipping back into a doze.

Message in the movie

Well it couldn't be clearer, could it? It is not cool to kill people and murder, even in the old West, was murder no matter how you dressed it up. But lying beneath this very simple premise is a much deeper one. Munny wants to leave his former life behind, but does he really? When he gets the chance to go hunting down these cowboys he originally declines, but then changes his mind. Why? Is it purely the money that has attracted his interest? Or is it something more? Does he, at the back of it all, yearn for the old days of adventure and excitement, and though he would never admit it to the spirit of his dead wife, chafe to be back in the saddle and feel a gun in his hand again? Has he, really, changed at all, or is he just pretending, to himself most of all?

So the message then might be: to thine own self be true. Munny knows he's a killer: he says it near the end --- “I killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time” --- and those sort of sins can't be blotted out by a few years of honest living. Does he in fact think that perhaps he's not worthy of salvation, that he is after all damned? Does he go to meet his fate, thinking, perhaps hoping, that he will meet his maker, and that in so doing he can make up for all the lives he has taken by offering his own? If not, then why is it that he allows himself to be beaten and kicked in the saloon, but later rides into town like an avenging angel? If this was within him all along, why did he not use it then? Does he, on some deep and subconscious level, want to be punished?

There's also the Kid: he wants to make his name, and at first pretends --- boasts --- that he has killed five men, when in fact he has never even taken one life. When he does kill, it affects him so badly that he never wants to handle a gun again. He tells Munny “I ain't like you” and it's with a certain amount of horror that he could have become like his erstwhile hero, and thankfulness that he has not. So The Schofield Kid finds his own kind of salvation, almost despite himself, by seeing what sort of man he could end up being. He discovers that despite his bravado, he has not really got the stomach for killing.

So the message returns to being one of forbearance: murder is wrong, no matter in whose name or under what banner you fly it. When Munny shoots Little Bill down, he doesn't care that the sheriff isn't armed. To him, at this point, honour means nothing. It's just an excuse, and he doesn't need any excuse to kill the man who has murdered his best friend. He kills Skinny for the same reason, though it's fair to assume that the owner of the saloon probably had little choice in whether or not Ned was displayed outside his business. Munny doesn't care: to him, they're all tarred with the one brush and he will extract his cold vengeance from them all.

But if there's one clear message that stands out above all of these, it's this: the “Wild Wild West” was not the easy-going, goodies-and-baddies, go-fer-yer-gun rough and ready utopia that Hollywood spoonfed us through the early and later part of the twentieth century. It was a hard place, a tough place, unforgiving and relentless, bleak and pitiless and cold and life could be short and if it wasn't then it damn well was hard. All these smiling cowboys twirling their Colt 45s and tipping their hats to the ladies are nothing more than the construct of film-makers and the writers of western novels, and in the same way that movies such as “Schindler's list”, “Saving Private Ryan” and “Apocalypse now” showed the true, harsh, cold and bloody face of war, “Unforgiven” shows us the unvarnished, drooling, snarling, spittle-faced, shit-caking-your-pants and blood congealing on dusty streets that must really have been the West as it was carved out of the bones of America. Men --- and women --- died to tame that land, and this movie, while it doesn't completely pay homage to them, reminds us that they were real people, not actors and movie props and amalgamations of legends, stories and often outright lies.

It's the real West here compadre, and if you don't like it, then you best just ride on out of town. This here place's called Truth, and it don't have too much of a population.

THE STARS OF THE SHOW

Morgan Freeman has never been a favourite actor of mine, and here I feel he does his usual, the quiet, low-key character who talks a lot but doesn't do a whole lot. If anything, he's little more than a catalyst to set the real William Munny free by his violent death. Hackman is good in the part of Little Bill, but does not really have enough screen time to make his presence felt properly, in my opinion. No, for me, there are only two real stars here.

Clint Eastwood (duh!) as William Munny.
There could, really, be only one man who could have pulled this off without making it seem like some sort of parody, or overblown. Both acting in and directing the movie, the man with whom westerns became as synonymous in the sixties and seventies as they did with Wayne and Cooper in the forties and fifties makes this a triumph. Not because it showcases him, his character, or even to be fair his acting, which really is nothing terribly great. But because he was the spokesman for the western, the original nameless stranger, the drifter who appeared out of the dust and blew into town, usually killed a lot of people and drifted out almost with as little fuss as he blew in. If anyone was going to hammer in the final nail to the coffin of a genre that had been overexploited, lampooned, copied and bastardised for far too long, Eastwood was the man.

Almost sneering at his own roles in movies such as “For a few dollars more”, “Pale rider” and “The good, the bad and the ugly”, Eastwood presents us with a man who has blazed a trail across the West, a trail of blood and fire, a trail of dead bodies and crying widows, and laced no doubt with gold bullion from many robberies. A trail seeded with treachery and betrayal, perhaps with some kind of love and certainly with a lot of hate, and all deeply drowned in almost bottomless barrels of cheap whiskey. He rides his horse almost like a man in a dream, or a daze, kind of unable to believe he's doing what he's doing at his age, and perhaps slightly amused by the turn fate has taken for him. But he also may --- subconsciously or not --- want to impress the young kid, or indeed, he may want to not impress him, to show him, rather like Cagney at the end of “Angels with dirty faces”, that he is no hero, no god, no legend, but just a man, and a bad man at that. Not someone to emulate, not someone to venerate and certainly not someone in whose footsteps the Kid should try to walk.

He surely sees something of himself in the brash young Schofield Kid, who brags about the men he has killed and keeps pestering Ned for stories of Munny's exploits. As I've already said, he may also want to prove to himself that he can still do this, or even that he cannot, and should he survive, he will be happy to (as he does) return to his life on the farm and take care of his children, although the end lines of the movie hint that he may have moved to San Francisco, no doubt on the back of his newfound wealth after receiving the reward.

Eastwood is perfect in the role of the man who has been more or less constrained to go back to his own life, knows he is not really up to the task, and is anxious to get the job done and go back home. However, his almost absent-minded amusement disappears like ice under boiling water when he has to man up and avenge his friend, when the reality of their situation makes itself plain to him, and he must once again don the cloak of vengeance, this time righteous, and for once, as he says himself, sobre.

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Jaimz Woolvett as The Schofield Kid
Although he does not receive top billing --- when you're dealing with actors the calibre and with the reputation of the likes of Freeman, Harris and Hackman, you're always going to get bumped down the pecking order ---- I really feel that between them, this young actor and Eastwood make the movie. As I've already noted, and as I'm sure was intended by the writer, The Schofield Kid (a name he has given himself and which in all likelihood nobody, bar maybe Ned and Munny, call him by) is really a younger version of Munny. He's the way he used to be: eager to get out there and make a name for himself, unafraid to kill, bragging about his prowess while never having actually having killed anyone and daring anyone to cross him.

In other ways, he's like an excited puppy, just itching for his first big adventure, but sensible enough to mask that excitement behind what he believes to be a cold mask of indifference and calm. The fact that his eyes are narrowed in the way they are, much like Eastwood's are, has more to do with his short-sightedness than any conscious effort on his part to look tough seems to escape him, and he tells nobody about his infirmity. It's only Ned who works it out (mostly from the fact that when they approach him for the first time the Kid shoots in every direction); Munny either does not care to notice or misses it completely.

But such a disability in a serious drawback for a gunfighter, especially one heading down to collect a reward by killing two cowboys in Big Whiskey, so of course it's understandable that he would say nothing, and hotly disputes it when Ned calls him out on it. There's no avoiding it though: unless the target is close up The Kid is going to be useless in a gunfight. This is of course the reason, or part of it, why first Ned, then Munny, kill the first cowboy when they're up on a hill: there's no way The Kid could even see the target never mind shoot him. But when the second cowboy is in the john, it's closeup enough that the boy can redeem himself, and kill his first man.
The transformation The Schofield Kid goes through is a tribute to Woolvett's acting as well as the story. At the outset, he's a brash, confident, arrogant kid who claims he killed five men and sees Munny as a hero, someone to look up to and emulate, someone to impress and maybe even outdo if he can. As it becomes clear that Munny is not any more the legendary figure The Kid has held in his mind, he begins to grow contemptuous of him, and when they find Munny outside the saloon, barely hanging on to his horse after Little Bill has kicked the crap out of him, The Kid stares at his broken body wonderingly and tries to find an answer: how could this man, this desperado, this scourge of the railroad and thorn in the side of the law, have allowed himself to be beaten up so badly? He rationalises it by concluding that Munny must have been taken by surprise, not able to go for his gun. Had he been able to, the Kid feels sure whoever beat Munny up would be lying dead now.

Then he throws on an extra layer of contempt by stating proudly that nobody would take his gun from him! This contempt grows as he watches his idol, now seen to have feet of clay --- or worse, just mere human flesh ---- struggle to survive and come out of his fever, and as the question rises as to whether he will make it or not, The Kid seems only concerned that should Munny die, the two of them left would be hard-pressed to finish the job. At this point, he doesn't care whether Munny dies. All respect he had for him is gone, and he is no longer looking at a legendary gunfighter, but some old broken-down farmer clinging to his pathetic life.

Finally, after he has seen what Munny does when Ned is killed, The Kid realises that he is after all the legendary figure, but now, rather than be impressed, awed or humbled by being in his presence, he is afraid, even a little disgusted. That a man could do that, so coldly, so clinically, chills him and he knows that, having experienced his first ever kill and not wishing to ever go through that again, the last thing he wants to be is like this man standing before him. Better a life of obscurity and have a clear(ish) conscience than to end up a raging monster like William Munny.

The wheel has finally turned full circle. At the end, The Schofield Kid has found the man he was looking for when he first rode to Munny's farm, but now he no longer wants to find him, wants him to just leave him alone and let him try to forget he ever knew such a man, much less wanted to become like him. They say never meet your heroes: now The Schofield Kid knows why.

Two sides of the same coin?

It's interesting the way Little Bill and Munny view women. The sheriff, gazing down in mild concern at the cut whore, shrugs and wonders if she'll die, but as mentioned above he's more worried about what he'll have to do if this turns out to be a case of murder: even dead whores deserve justice. But more to the point is that when he's warning Ned, as he whips him, that the whores are not going to support his story he tells him “Well now I ain't gonna hurt no woman.” It's important to Bill that it be seen there are lines he doesn't cross, and hurting women is one of them, although with a temper and arrogance like he has, I would hazard that there is more than one woman who has felt the touch of the back of his hand, perhaps even his fist, in the past.

Munny, on the other hand, when accused of shooting women and children, does not deny it. He does not excuse it, he does not try to explain it and he does not even condone it; it is simply a fact, a fact that he cannot ignore. He evinces no sorrow or regret that he did such a thing, broke one of the oldest and most sacred conventions of the Wild West. This may of course not be a truism: Hollywood would have us believe that there was an unspoken code in the nineteenth century West that women were off-limits, although certainly they could be in for a good beating if a cowboy was upset with his woman. But kill them? We are told not: both women and children were objects to be guarded, protected.

But really, how true is this? We can never know, without having lived through it. Contemporary accounts are unlikely to mention such a thing, if it happened, and as I say the movie studios, western writers and TV executives have all constructed this rose-tinted view of what must after all have been one of the most brutal and lawless times in American history (remember, it encompassed the Civil War), and want us to believe that a code of chivalry existed. But did it, then or ever? We hear lots of tales of knights rescuing damsels back in the dark ages, and even here, Beauchamps's book would tell us that English Bob shot a man over a lady's honour. And yet, while surely there were those who would defend the weaker sex, down throughout history women have been oppressed and used by men, so why imagine it would stop with the opening of the New Frontier? In a world where there was little if any law, who was going to stop you?

Whether this then remains the truth or not, it is the version of the truth we have been fed, and we all see cowboys tip their hats and hold doors for ladies, while they flutter their eyelashes and curtsy, perhaps giggling coquettishly. The ladies, not the cowboys! So to Little Bill (and most everyone else) the idea of killing women and children is abhorrent, and yet Munny seems unconcerned. No, that's not even right: deep down he does regret it, but he knows it happened and he can't change it so why worry about it, or worse, lie about it now? He doesn't even, to his credit, try to blame it on the drink, though he has told The Schofield Kid that he was “drunk most of the time” in the old days. Chances are, he knew full well what he was doing. Perhaps he enjoyed it, revelled in it, but even if he didn't, he sure as hell isn't going to shrink from the memory of the acts he perpetrated in his youth now.

It can also be seen as a tool; a tool, if you like, of terror. When you meet a man who stands there, rifle in hand, dead men at his feet and calmly agrees that yes, he killed women and children, you know you are dealing with one hard bastard, and your fear of, and respect for him as an adversary increases. You know you have little chance against this man, to whom not even the innocent and unarmed are a barrier, as Little Bill has seen, when Munny shoots down Skinny, who has no weapon, and thinks nothing of it. Perhaps sometimes it's good to remind people that you have the reputation you have for a reason, that it's not all stories and tall tales grown out of proportion and distorted by the passage of time and failing memory, or the need to impress, or make someone into something he is not. William Munny, the cold, narrow eyes of this avenging dark stranger say, in a soundless voice of death, was the man they say he was, and tonight, for a brief moment, he is that man again.

So Little Bill wants it to be known that he has not, and would not, (he says) hurt a woman, and William Munny calmly and coldly admits that not only would he, but he has. And it is the latter who walks out of the saloon, leaving the sheriff and his deputies dead on the floor.

Motifs and Themes

I'm not that avid a movie-watcher and it's seldom I'll latch onto a theme in one, but here it's impossible to miss. Rain. Rain and storm and wind and in the end, too, fire. But rain mostly. When we first meet Munny, at his farm, the weather, while not exactly what you'd call clement, is at least dry. As he and Ned set out on what will be their last quest together, the storm gathers behind them, almost as if it is following them, like a murder of crows or a whatever of vultures, knowing that where they go, death follows and there will be much feasting. For probably two of the three hours the movie runs for, the sound of falling rain is a constant motif throughout. It seems almost endless. We see Little Bill emptying buckets of water that have caught the rain falling through the leaky roof of the jail, and when he goes to apprehend Munny in the saloon it is teeming down.

But though the rain may be Munny's companion, it is not his friend, and is no respecter of reputation. It pisses down as he is kicked out into the sodden street, and as he lies there, almost unable to breathe, and it just as gleefully sheets down in torrents as he approaches the site of his humiliation, passing the corpse of his friend displayed outside, and again, when he rides off into the dark, sooty night, even though fire rages about him, making him seem like some avenging devil or even Jesus at the Harrowing of Hell, the rain drowns out all other sound, sluicing down as if to drown the world.

The end result of which, I feel, is that the overall mood of the film is not only sombre and dark, but miserable. As I said, these are not the deeds of heroes being recounted. This is not “How the West was won”, or “Stagecoach”, or even “High noon”. There is no glory here, no satisfaction, no triumph. Munny has been forced back into the life he has tried so hard to leave behind, forced to remember what he used to be like and to use that knowledge, that skill and expertise he had thought, or hoped, had deserted him, to bring the old William Munny back for one last fight, or properly I guess, execution, as he never gives Little Bill a chance to draw. He doesn't care that he's unarmed; to him, the laws that govern others, the secret unspoken codes mean nothing to him. They don't apply, and he ignores them the same way we ignore a fly buzzing around our face.

But it could be said, too, that the rain is a metaphor for the sorrow of his wife, perhaps watching from the world beyond, as she sees that in the end all her attempts to change her husband were for nothing. He held out for a long time, but eventually he decided of his own free will --- nobody forced him --- to go back to the life he used to lead, to be the man she had tried to make him see he did not want to be, and that at the last, he gave in to temptation and let the devil claim him. Or, looked at another way, it could be that this is a cleansing rain which, like the fire he leaves burning behind him, will wash away the sins of his past, sweep the board clean, allow him another chance at the life he wants to lead for the sake of his departed wife.

Or, you know, it could just be that it rained all the time they were filming. But even if it was unintended --- and I think not --- it's a powerful image, a sobering backdrop and one that grounds the film in the most basic of reality, reminding us that sometimes, quite often, life just pisses on you.

It's what you do when that happens that ends up making you into the man, or woman, you are destined to become.

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Yes, yes, I know Christmas is just a distant memory, but I had no idea how many versions of "A Christmas Carol" had been made before I began this, and now it's run into January, and I still haven't watched all of them! Getting there though. Hey, just pretend it's still Christmas. Or next Christmas. Whatever works for you...

Okay, so much for finishing all the 20th century versions! I somehow forgot this classic, perhaps because it's not called either “A Christmas Carol” or, technically, “Scrooge”. Bloody Wiki! Anyway, one of the very best versions from the eighties and the only live-action comedy based on the tale.

Year: 1988
Medium: Colour
Starring: Bill Murray, Robert Mitchum, Karen Allen
Directed by: Richard Donner
Length: 101 mins

Brief comments: Well who doesn't know this cheery, funny take on the story? One of the classic comedy movies of the late eighties and yet another vehicle for the multi-talented Murray, directed by Richard “Lethal Weapon” Donner. How could you miss? A modern take, it features Murray as the president of a TV network (for once, the only film in which the main character is not called Scrooge) who are putting on a live performance of “A Christmas Carol” (which they annoyingly refer to as “Charles Dickens's classic Scrooge”!), and who of course does not know the meaning of Christmas. Hilarious and quite action-packed without going over the top, Donner reining himself in so as to preserve the main and important lesson in the movie, it features cameos from some serious players.

CHARACTERS
Scrooge: Murray is both hilarious, nasty and a little pathetic in the part, in the role of Frank Cross (his office, for instance, holds a legend: “Cross: a thing they hang people on”!) but his infectious humour shines through the film and, as expected, he steals the show. Has to be a 9, only dropping one point because he's not called Scrooge.
Marley: Not really a Marley, but Cross's boss comes back from the dead to warn him about the visitation he is to get, and the venerable John Forsythe shines in the brief part, with some very good special effects. Must be an 8.
Cratchit: Kind of none, though Cross's secretary Grace is placed in that role, along with her son who does not speak until the very end (a Christmas miracle), and for her portrayal, even if it is classic token-black-actor/actress nonsense, I need to award her a 7.
Tiny Tim: No much to say. Kid is quiet all the way through and not that much in it. 5
Others: A host of other cameos and bit parts, including Herman the down-and-out, Loudermilk the mad worker who gets fired by Cross and then has a series of increasingly bad times before going all Die Hard with a shotgun. Mitchum as the owner of the network is, well, Mitchum, and Allen as Cross's love interest, Claire, another shining light. So we need to add another 5 each, making 20
The Ghosts:
The Ghost of Christmas Past: Fucking brilliant! Tom Waits in a taxi cab! Stunningly original, fun and right to the point. No hesitation in awarding him a 10.
The Ghost of Christmas Present: Psycho fairy godmother, reminds me of Cyndi Lauper. Superb and out of her mind. Another 10
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Big scary animatronic hooded guy, but for the scenes and the effects, which are very good, a decent 8

Faithful to the novel: Not in the least. Based very very loosely on the tale, and although the stage performance mirrors the novel, that's only ancillary to the main storyline so I can only give a 4 here
Emotion level: Very much so, right near the end. Say 8
Puke level: Zero
Horror level: Zero
Soundtrack: It's okay; standard American feel-good movie soundtrack, though I guess I have to award points for closing on a song that is not a Christmas one (“Put a little love in your heart”) and yet very appropriate. Say, I don't know, 7.

So our total is 96. Starwise we're looking at Murray, Mitchum, Allen, Lee Majors, Robert Goulet ... you know what? There are too many stars here to add them all, and anyway, a host of stars doesn't necessarily make a great movie (although this is) so let's say a modest 15 for them all. But then, it's the only (live action) comedy version, so there's another 10 for that. That makes up to a
Grand Total of 121, the highest yet! And to be fair, it deserves it.

Year: 2000
Medium: Colour
Starring: Ross Kemp, Warren Mitchell, Ray Fearon
Directed by: Catherine Morshead
Length: 72 mins

Brief comments: Finally, a Scrooge tale that is completely different! I'm no fan of Ross Kemp, and had considered not including this since it's a modern take, but then I thought well so is “Scrooged” and I'm doing that, so what the hey! Kemp is Eddie Scrooge in this modern look at the story, and it's nice to see the only contemporary version other than Bill Murray's comedy take a good hard swipe at the tale, and do a fairly decent job too. I like the way Scrooge chooses to see his first visitation as an opportunity to engage in a “Groundhog Day”-like reliving of the previous day (Christmas Eve) and seems to intend to profit by it, though he has as yet learned no lessons. The murder-mystery woven into the plot is very good too. The lessons taught at the end pull right at the heartstrings, and it feels, you know, real.

CHARACTERS
Scrooge: Kemp is great in the role, a tight, pitiless, tough-as-nails moneylender whose idea of a Christmas present is to steal someone's TV and throw it over a balcony. Admittedly, he doesn't have to stretch his limited acting talent, as the part is not a million miles away from the other bad guys he's portrayed, but he does it well. I like the way he starts changing after the visit from the second ghost, but seems still to be doing it for the wrong reasons, so still needs one more shock. A high 8 for him.
Marley: Refreshing to see a black man in the role, and the modern idiom used is good too. Little cheap to use him as a two-for-one with the Ghost of Christmas Present though. I would say 9, except for the doubling-up, which loses him a point, so 8.
Cratchit: In the role as Scrooge's henchman, pretty well played. Not at all annoying. 8
Tiny Tim: Again, not at all annoying and best of all, he doesn't sing! 8
Others: Scrooge's love-interest Bella is very pivotal to the story, so she gets a 7 for her role; Marley's mother, never a character in the original for obvious reasons (Marley is much younger here, as is Scrooge) another star turn, so 6 for her, and the single mother, whose telly is taken by Scrooge at the beginning, another star, so 7 for her. Finally, Liz Smith does it again, third appearance for her in Scrooge movies, so she deserves a 5 for her part.
The Ghosts: The Ghost of Christmas Past: Scrooge's father (nice twist) played by the lovable Warren Mitchell (Alf Garnett), and the fact that he appears on Scrooge's TV set is both clever and a nod back to his son's confiscation and then destruction of the single mother's television. 7
The Ghost of Christmas Present: It's Marley, which while it's unexpected takes a lot of the impact away, as we've already met him. Not sure why they couldn't get a separate actor for this part like everyone else. 4
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Great twist, making him a kid. Even better twist, to make him Scrooge's as yet unborn son! 10

Faithful to the novel: In a general way, though the story is quite different. Innovative, and keeps the general idea there, but does it in its own way. I would have to say only 7
Emotion level: The only one I have actually cried at. Have to award this a 10
Puke level: Zero
Horror level: Despite it being a modern take, surprisingly zero
Soundtrack: Almost non-existent, so I'm afraid a low 3

So our total then is 98. However we also have to add in the stars, but though Ray Fearon is apparently a soap star I don't know him, so all I can really add is Kemp and Mitchell, so another 10 there. That would give a total of 108, but to be honest I was expecting so little from this version and was so blown away by it that it deserves another 10, so the
Grand Total is 118, which would normally have lifted it right into the next round, but it's pipped by three lousy points by Bill Murray's "Scrooged", which goes through. Pity: I would have thought this would have had a good chance against some of the others. Honourable mention though.

Year: 2001
Medium: Colour (Animated)
Starring: Simon Callow, Kate Winslet, Michael Gambon, Nicholas Cage
Directed by: Jimmy T Murakami
Length: 81 mins

Brief comments: Too many mice in this animated version. Again, the colours are very washed-out and dour looking. There's a lot of extra material added so that the proper story only gets going in about the twentieth minute. Somewhat rushed, given that it's over an hour long. Those fucking mice! What is the point??

CHARACTERS
Scrooge: Voiced by Simon Callow, he's nasty enough certainly but unaccountably kind ot the bloody mice, which is totally out of character. He's not nearly old enough. 4
Marley: Considering what they could have done with the animation, quite poor. The Marley on the doorknocker (oddly enough, this event happens after his ex-partner has visited Scrooge!) is more scary than the one who comes to see him. Very poor. 3
Cratchit: Annoying as ever. Bit of a caricature if I'm honest. 4
Tiny Tim: Not too annoying. Doesn't sing, so 5
Others: Not really. Even Robert Llewellyn (“Red Dwarf"'s Kryten) as Old Joe can't rescue this trainwreck.
The Ghosts:
The Ghost of Christmas Past: Decent enough; changes from young girl to old woman, good touch. 7
The Ghost of Christmas Present: Basic, but he does have the horn of plenty thing. 5
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: Quite scary for a cartoon. Decent enough. 7

Faithful to the novel: Hardly. There's a lot of extra stuff added as said, and the idea is that Belle was Fan's friend, which was certainly never mentioned. Fan died I believe before Scrooge even met her. Scrooge seems to think giving out oranges on Christmas morning is a grand gesture; he doesn't offer any money to the gentlemen collecting for the poor. The odd storyline with Belle and the hospital is ludicrous, and the reconciliation is just a mess. Talk about shitting on the story! Something of a confused interpretation. I've never done this before but I'm giving this a minus rating. -8.
Emotion level: Zero
Puke level: I would say zero but the fucking mice add in a -6
Horror level: Zero
Soundtrack: Not bad, what there is of it. Touches of The Alan Parsons Project in the music that accompanies the Ghost of Christmas Present, some nice piano music intervals, some choral singing and two songs specially written for the movie. Okay I guess. 7

So the total then is 28. The stars add another 30 which lifts it to a very undeserved
Grand Total of 58.

So that makes "Scrooged" the winner of the penultimate set of the first round. Barely, but it scrapes through against Ross Kemp, proving perhaps that comedy is stronger than being tough? Anyway, one more round of this to go and then we'll be into the knockout stages.

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Unknown Soldier

Looking forward to your Star Trek month, even though I think you'll need 2 or even 3 to do it justice.

Btw a great review of Unforgiven a fantastic western and Richard Harris as English Bob

Also bear in mind that Sergio Leone impacted in the 1960s and not the 1970s.

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Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Trollheart

Oh don't get me wrong: I'm not in any way trying to squeeze all of Star Trek into one month. That would be insane. All I'm doing is kicking off coverage of the three series I'm doing, reviewing as many of the movies as I can manage, and running features like top tens, the odd smackdown and anything else I can think of. It's gonna be fun, but I know the actual coverage of the Star Trek material will extend way beyond and probably for years to come. After all, there are a total of seventeen seasons between the three!
Thanks man. Glad someone appreciated it. That was a LOT of work!
My bad. I didn't see too many of the Leone movies...

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Unknown Soldier

You need to invest in watching Leone and Corbucci the two Sergios, as both redefined the western.

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Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History

Trollheart

Episode Three, in Which Arthur Learns some Uncomfortable Truths, is Reunited with an “Old Friend”, Walks the Surface of a Planet That Does Not Exist, and Mysteriously Hurts his upper Arm.

Zaphod Beeblebrox believes he has located the fabled planet of Magrathea, which used to be the centre of a vast planetbuilding empire which constructed custom-made planets for the galaxy's super-rich. Ford does not believe it: Magrathea is a children's tale, he tells his friend. It does not exist. Trillian is more interested in feeding her pet white mice, and is most upset when they escape after the ship has been, against all logic, attacked from a dead planet by an automated missile system. Unlike most missile systems this does not destroy the ship, but then that's because this ship is, remember, the Heart of Gold, which possesses the infinite improbability drive. When there seems no way to escape the missiles Arthur, in a rather uncharacteristic act of both bravery and logic, pushes the button that engages the drive. The missiles are thereafter changed into a bowl of petunias and a large sperm whale.

Having successfully avoided the attempt to stop them landing, the guys bring the ship down to the surface of Magrathea, Zaphod convinced that the wealth of the galaxy lies therein. Arthur is told to stay behind on the surface with Marvin while Trillian, Ford and Zaphod go down a tunnel and into the interior of the planet, Zaphod having remembered that the inhabitants all lived inside the planet. When Arthur asks him if this was due to some natural catastrophe or pollution, he returns “No. They just didn't like it very much!” It is Arthur who seems to make contact though, as the man whom they saw on the hologram advising them of the missile attack walks along the beach and invites him to accompany him.He calls himself Slartibartfast, and advises Arthur that the planet is alive with industry again, awoken from its millennia-long slumber to undertake one custom job.

Arthur is more than amazed to see that the special, custom planet under construction is none other than his home planet, the Earth. Or, as Slartibartfast corrects him, the Earth Mark II. He tells Arthur that the original planet which was his home was one of their creations. He is further amazed and aghast when he is told that the Earth (and the new Earth Mark II) were commissioned and paid for by white mice! Slartibartfast says that the destruction of the original Earth was “a shocking cock-up: the mice were furious!” Even after all he's been through, Arthur can feel his grip on reality slowly slipping away like quicksand beneath his feet.

QUOTES
The Book: “In those days, spirits were brave, the stakes were high. Men were real men, women were real women, and small blue creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small blue creatures from Alpha Centauri.”

Ford: “Magrathea?”
Zaphod: “Yeah!”
Ford: “You found it?”
Zaphod: “Yeah!”
Ford: “Zaphod, Magrathea is a fantasy planet. It's a fairy story that parents tell their children when they want them to grow up to become economists.”
Zaphod: “No. We're in orbit around it!”
Ford: “Zaphod, I can't help what you may personally be in orbit about, but ...”

The Book: “Arthur's next question is very important and valid, and Zaphod's response to it is wrong in every important aspect.”
Arthur: “Is it safe?”
Zaphod: “Of course it's safe! Magrathea has been dead for over five million years!”

Slartibartfast (in hologram): “It is most gratifiying that your enthusiasm for our planet continues unabated, and we would therefore like to assure you that the guided missiles now converging on your ship are part of a special service we extend to all of our most ... enthusiastic clients. And the fully armed nuclear warheads are of course merely a courtesy detail. We look forward to yoru custom in future lives.”

Zaphod: “Hey! This is terrific! They're trying to kill us! You know what that means?”
Arthur: “We're going to die?”
Zaphod: “Yeah! No! Maybe... look, it means there's something down there they don't want us to have. And if they don't want us to have it that bad, I want to have it worse!”

Ford: “Well, can you fly the ship?”
Zaphod: “No. Trillian?”
Trillian: “No.”
Zaphod: “Fine. We'll do it together.”
Arthur: “I can't either.”
Zaphod: “I guessed.”

Trillian: “Zaphod, do you think we could stabilise our X zero zero if we split the flightpath tangentially across the sum and vector of 9X7G8 with a 5/3 inertial correction?”
Zaphod: “Wha? Oh, yeah, yeah! Just do it, will you?”
Ford: “Hey it worked! Where did you learn a stunt like that?”
Trillian: “Going around Hyde Park Corner on a moped.”

Zaphod: “Hey! Did you do that Earthman?”
Arthur: “Well, all I did was ...”
Zaphod: “That's a pretty hoopy piece of thinking, you know that?”
Arthur: “Well, it was nothing really...”
Zaphod: “Was it? Oh, forget it then.”

Trillian: “What are you supposed to do with a manically depressed robot?”
Marvin: “You think you've got problems? What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot? No don't try to answer; I'm fifty thousand times more intelligent than you and even I don't know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level!”

Marvin: “Life! Loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.”

Arthur: “Night's falling, Look, robot! The stars are coming out.”
Marvin: “I know. Wretched, isn't it?”
Arhtur: “But that sunset! I've never seen anything like it in my wildest dreams! Two suns! It was like mountains of fire, boiling into space!”
Marvin: “I've seen it. It's rubbish.”
Arthur: “Only had the one sun on my planet. I come from Earth, you know.”
Marvin: “I know. You keep going on about it. It sounds awful.”
Arhtur: “Oh no. It was a beautiful place.”
Marvin: “Did it have oceans?”
Arthur: “Oh yes! Great big, wide, blue, rolling oceans.”
Marvin: “Can't bear oceans.”
Arhtur: “Tell me, do you get on well with other robots?”
Marvin: “Hate them.”

So this is it, we're going to die

Not surprisingly, Arhtur says this as it seems they cannot avoid the missiles that have locked onto them from the planet Magrathea. Well, you can hardly blame him really, can you?

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Trollheart

Episode three

Urquhart is back at the Palace, where the king is incensed to find the Prime Minister is still delaying announcing the date of the general election, which he announced some time ago he would hold. As he says in the quote section, Urquhart engages in some verbal fencing with the monarch, clearly enjoying his discomfort and happy to string him along. What he is not happy about, however, is that he knows that the King has been trying to organise opposition against him; principally members of the opposition, as well as some of his own party. His eyes are very cold as he tells the King he will not accept this attempt at a bloodless coup. He has had, as he probably had expected, no success in changing the King's mind ––– his Majesty now intends, apparently, to go on television, making his own television programme ––– and refuses to show Urquhart a draft of the script. He says it's still in production, but of course we know that's not true: he just doesn't want the Prime Minister editing, censoring or changing any part of it. Urquhart goes to see the King's ex-wife, the divorced Princess (who is never named) and explains the dangerous path that her ex-husband is now treading. He is fully aware that she has no interest in saving the king, or dissuading Urquhart from his path. In fact, she would probably be happy to see him destroyed ––- as long as her son, the king in waiting, gets to ascend the throne after he is gone. She makes this clear when they meet; Urquhart now knows that he has another very powerful ally.

With no interference from Urquhart ––– although he can't say it was from lack of trying ––– the King's broadcast goes out on television. He speaks about the poor, the homeless, the jobless, and a new spirit of caring that needs to be fostered throughout the country. His speech, if you will, is a direct challenge to and confrontation with the government and Urquhart does not like it one little bit. He puts a brave face on it the next morning, in front of the reporters, but once the door of 10 Downing Street closes behind them that smile vanishes and he flies into a rage. He is particularly savage with Stamper, blaming him for not keeping the tabloids and the popular press under his heel, as Urquhart had instructed him to do. Stamper is not happy: not only is he chewed out by his boss, it happens in front of Sarah, which adds to his embarrassment and humiliation. When he asks Urquhart for a private word, he is savagely denied. It seems like FU is laying all of, or at least most of, the blame at the feet of the man who used to be his right hand, and who (perhaps foolishly) believed he was also his friend. He is beginning to realise now that Urquhart has no friends ––– he has people he uses, as long as they are useful to him; and when he has no further use for them, he throws away like a crumpled up cigarette packet. In the case of Stamper, it would seem that Urquhart is either giving up smoking, or about to open a fresh packet ––– a pack with Sarah Harding's name on it.

Intending to take out his anger on Brian Brynford-Jones, the newspaper boss he sees as having betrayed him, Stamper is perhaps surprised to find that he ends up more pouring out his heart to him, talking about how "Francis has changed". He's obviously torn between loyalty and a pathological need for revenge. And yet, it's almost as if Stamper is Judas, agonising over betraying Christ, trying to find a different way but really knowing there is none. In the end, as we all know, Stamper will do what is best for Stamper. The friendship he had with Urquhart will be sacrificed to ensure his own survival: exactly as FU would have and will do in his position. He is however rather surprised to find that he may have friends where he did not realise he had any: Brian tells them that, were he to try to fill Urquhart's shoes, he may indeed have supporters and backers. Seems the whole country is getting a bit tired of Urquhart and his policies: a lot of people think it really is time for him to go.

The King's speech has gone over extremely well, so much better than he had expected to it to. But then, when you tell people what they want to hear, when you tell them everything will be okay without actually telling them how you're going to make everything okay, when you throw out grandiose phrases, ideas and promises without any real plan behind what you say, you'll always be popular with the people. Anyone could make such a speech: it's backing it up that's the hard work. It does however cause a serious swing against Urquhart's government, for which he is extremely annoyed and determined to redress the damage. David Mycroft has turned up, after his romantic tryst with his new best friend, and as he, Chloe and the King discuss the performance of the monarch on the television, and the pretty much overwhelmingly positive reaction from the public to that speech, they are unaware that they are being monitored ––– one can only assume by Urquhart or some arm of his government ––– as Chloe tries to push the King further down the political path, telling him in no uncertain terms ––– telling him word for word in fact ––– that Urquhart is his enemy. The King, however, knows that as a constitutional monarch there is only so far that he can go; he has no intention (he says) of taking on the government, much less the Prime Minister.

When the King angrily dismisses Chloe for suggesting that Urquhart is his enemy, and he should go on the offensive against him, David Mycroft, completely unaware that they are being monitored, tells the King that Urquhart will use any and every tactic against him in the coming battle. He agrees with Chloe that Urquhart is the King's enemy, and rather than have this news used against the King, he begins to tell his Majesty about his own homosexuality. It's a brave move, a courageous move, but unfortunately it will backfire spectacularly, as those who now listen in on the King's private meeting with his closest advisers are about to suddenly, and rather unexpectedly, have some major ammunition delivered right to their door. Sadly for them, and luckily for Mycroft, the King holds up his hand and says no: your private life is yours, none of my business, has nothing to do with your job. At that point, as much as the listeners must hate the King for preventing them from finding out what Mycroft was about to tell him, David must love the King even more for being so understanding and so circumspect.

Urquhart finally names the date for the general election, after resisting many calls to settle on a date, from the opposition to the king himself. However he is concerned that the groundswell of support for the king could reflect a backlash against his government, sweep the opposition into power, and he and his party into the gutters of history. Things are further exacerbated when Quilley of all people stands up in the House of Lords and makes an impassioned speech in favour of the measures proposed by the king. Always a bastion of the government, even this high house has now begun to turn on Urquhart and his unpopular government. Things go from bad to worse for Urquhart when off his own back Stamper sets one of the junior ministers, John Staines, to raise a point of order in the House of Commons. As this point of order concerns moral rectitude, decency, family standards, family values and so forth, it is rather unfortunate (and Urquhart knows this, and is fuming about it) that Staines is almost immediately afterwards arrested and charged with sexual crimes against underage boys. Staines has mentioned in his point of order speech that "foxhunters get a better view of things from their high horses, I suppose": it's pretty ironic that his own moral point of view is almost right away shown to be very much more flawed than those of the occupants of the House of Lords.

Urquhart has Sarah draw up a new plan ––– his response to the King's attempt to, as he sees it, drag England back into the days of the welfare state ––– but Sarah is facing problems at home, both from her husband, who has not surprisingly figured out what's going on, i.e. that this is not just a professional relationship ––– ("I can smell him on you!") ––– and from a mysterious voice on the telephone, which warns her not to poke into affairs that don't concern her, specifically enquiries relating to Mattie Storin, unless she wants to end up sharing her fate. Rather than scare her off however, the threat only spurs her to look deeper into the story behind Mattie. She ends up speaking to John Krajewski, Mattie's old friend from the Chronicle, who tells her what seems to be a lot of conspiracy theory: about offices and buildings being bugged; people disappearing, shadow projects, the usual thing. But John knows what he's talking about. He warns her she is in great danger if she is investigating Mattie's death; he tells her that he believes that Urquhart murdered Mattie (or had her murdered), and when she expresses ––– not surprisingly ––– disbelief at this theory, he says that he knows that Urquhart had his hand in the death of Roger O'Neill. But he can't prove any of it as Mattie's tapes were stolen when she died. He believes that he is soon to die himself, and says he just wishes they'd get on with it: he knows too much, and he is a loose end which will have to be tied up. He leaves Sarah in a state of disbelief, but growing suspicion and perhaps just a modicum of acceptance of what must be a dark truth to be revealed.

Urquhart calls in Bruce Bullerby, whose newspaper's coverage has been less than, shall we say supportive? He shows him some photographs, taken of him and the Princess, and Bullerby knows that he is being blackmailed. But it's not as simple as money ––– it never is with FU --- no, Urquhart wants something completely different. First of all, more support from "their friends in the media", a position Bullerby is quite happily to adopt. But that's not all. He now tells Bullerby to release and print the memoirs of Princess Charlotte. Bullerby is understandably reluctant to do this: after all, she only agreed to let him write her memoirs on the understanding ––– the strict understanding ––– they would not be published until after her own death. There are some very embarrassing, damning, humiliating revelations that have been made known to the newspaper editor, and the Princess, apart from her own embarrassment, has been warned that if she exposes royal secrets she could be very much in danger. The promise not to expose her memoirs until she dies had been given to her by Bullerby when they began this enterprise. Now he is being asked ––– ordered really ––– to go back on that arrangement, and to ultimately betray the Princess, who he has actually begun perhaps to have feelings for, or at the very least, not to hate. But as ever, when it's his skin or someone else's, Bullerby will sacrifice whoever needs to be sacrificed. It's the pictures ––– the embarrassing revealing pictures of him and the Princess ––– to be published, or the memoirs. It's his choice. He too now realises he has been played, used by Urquhart, as the man uses everybody.

Krajewski's prophecy turns out to be true when his body is dumped on waste ground, his killing seeming to bear all the hallmarks of an IRA execution. When Sarah hears this on the radio, she is understandably shaken: after all, the last time she saw him the journalist intimated that she might be next. And when she tells Urquhart about it --- and if she's honest with herself, looking deep into his cold, almost reptilian eyes, she must feel the hand of death on her shoulder --- it's pretty clear that the Prime Minister is not happy that she has been researching his ex-lover, and we all know how far he will go to protect his secrets…

Armed with his new weapon, his ace in the hole, Urquhart goes to the King, explaining that should His Majesty toe the line and withdraw from confrontation with the government, and with him personally, Urquhart will be able to "persuade" the paper to refrain from running the article, and thus save the reputation of the Royal family. But of course the price of this deal is the King's silence and allowing himself to be reined back in by Urquhart. The King, somewhat surprisingly perhaps, tells Urquhart to publish and be damned. He will not be blackmailed, and believes he has enough support among the people to be able to take on Urquhart. He tells him that people are tired of muck-raking and scandal, that his tactics will not work. Furious, Urquhart leaves, realising that perhaps once again, he has underestimated the young king. More drastic, serious measures will have to be taken if he is to retain his grip on power.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018