Unforgiven (rewatch) — 4/5
Wow!! What a difficult movie!!! Just an incredible thickness to the proceedings. The thing that sticks with me within that is this: what is the cost of justice? And does that cost justify it? There are two characters here who are maybe outright a bad guy — the man who cuts up the woman and the bar proprietor — but the rest of them are, in any other movie, a potential protagonist: the formerly bad man looking to take care of his family by picking up his gun to kill a newly minted bad man, the man who still thinks he may have some badness in him, the man who wants to have a badass in him, the bad guy turned law enforcer, the deputies bad at their job, and the women who do bad things but want to be treated as though they're worth more than a horse. Pick your poison but be sure — it is poison. So was it best just to leave things alone? I struggle with an idealism to be right and correct in all things (lest cancer form), and what feels to me a truth that mistakes will continue to be made, on and on, here to eternity. A functioning civilization will have law in the center and flaws at the edges, and it's those frayed threads that unravel the whole affair. Lately, I am stuck on this notion that society is a thing that is always constantly only ever so barely hanging on.
The other thematic element at play here is the stories we tell ourselves and others. Bill Munny is chasing a truth, exaggerated, and all those potential protagonists are telling themselves stories about what they are, were, and could have been. A lot of stories, all bending the corner towards 'lie,' but the only real undisputed truth in them is that in the end, a lot of people die.
This movie is about the edges of morality, and how they form a very sharp corner.
