The Oscar Project Interlude #7: Best of the 1990s

by Chris Marshall:

Well, the 1990s are finished. This decade in The Oscar Project took place during a time of major change in my life. I watched the first movie of the decade in somebody else’s apartment in Columbus, Ohio, because my power was out, and I watched the last while lying in bed in Smithville, Mississippi. It’s kind of hard to imagine that I wrote the first post of this series two and a half months ago when I should have been paying attention in my hierarchical linear modeling class at Ohio State.

It’s been quite a ride. When I first started in late April, I’d seen 21/84 of the winners, or 25%. Now I’ve seen 80/84, or 95%. By Tuesday, I will have seen every single one of them, which I bet very few people are able to say. There have been some really bad movies, though not as many as I expected, and some extremely good ones, many of which completely took me off guard.

The Oscar Project #65: Unforgiven (1992)

by Chris Marshall:

Unforgiven is a work of genius, one of those rare films where I felt like I was experiencing greatness while I was watching it. I expected it to be good, but I was completely taken off guard by how much I loved it. It was nearly perfect.

Clint Eastwood is one of the immortal legends of American cinema, and his very presence in a film means something. That’s not to say that every one of his movies is good; that’s far from the truth. But particularly in the latter part of his career, his face carries such a heavy symbolic weight that he hardly needs to say anything at all. Of course, Eastwood is typically at his best when he’s silent.

Eastwood, as the “reformed” outlaw William Munny, has plenty of lines in Unforgiven, but he delivers them in a way that lets us know that he never says anything without contemplating it deeply. He has acquired a deep wisdom, both from his worst days and from his best days. But he knows he will never truly be a good man, for he has committed unspeakable atrocities, sins that he can never atone for.