“What Eastwood is after now is, in a word, simplicity...”

April 11, 2015 6:47 PM

The Trouble with Clint by Jacob Krell [Los Angeles Review of Books]

“Clint Eastwood is many things to many people, but contemporary critics tend to agree that he is an auteur, i.e., someone with real directorial insight, care, and reach, someone whose individual artistic stamp can and should be used as a heuristic lens. Insofar as so much of his early career as an actor found him traipsing through the storied landscapes of American westerns and action films, it’s hardly surprising that Eastwood’s own directorial mark is often constituted through toying with genre, as he’s done with the western, to acclaimed effect (Unforgiven); with the boxing drama, to acclaimed (and deeply manipulative) effect (Million Dollar Baby); and with the B-movie, to effect somewhere between perplexing and appalling (Gran Torino).”

Previously. Previously. Previously.
posted by Fizz (38 comments total)

I like Eastwood as an actor but I've found all of his directorial projects underwhelming. Even Unforgiven, although it's the best. He seems like a man who got all his ideas about how people work by watching (or acting in) other movies.
posted by atoxyl at 7:41 PM on April 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, count me in the underwhelmed camp. It's been a while since I've seen Unforgiven, but it didn't do much for me at the time. Eastwood's movies always strike me as competent, workmanlike, bland. Not unlike Ron Howard or...half a dozen other A-list directors who put out decent movies, but not much more than that. Eastwood is also pretty famous for being the anti-Kubric--doing just one or two shots for a scene and then moving right on.
posted by zardoz at 7:57 PM on April 11, 2015

I think Eastwood is definitely an actor's director. He gets terrific, naturalistic performances out of everyone in his films, and I think that he tries to keep a directorial style out of the way. That's a really good quality to have, but his projects are a bit more prestigious-seeming than this style can keep up with, so they seem rather flat. I'd love to see him take on a complex family drama or something else where a minimum of noticeable directorial choices would be an asset over a liability.
posted by xingcat at 8:07 PM on April 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

I pretty much stopped taking this too seriously when the author said that the Hmong don't sacrifice chickens. They sure do.

As for American Sniper, I didn't interpret it is as a justification of the Iraq war or the white race, for that matter, and a demonization of Iraqis. It is unabashedly from the point of view of the American soldier facing unpredictable attacks of Iraqi insurgents and increasingly seeing them as one as his battle stress turns into ptsd. It's not the movie from the point of view of invaded Iraq. But why would Eastwood make that film?

Showing only Kyle with his family heading toward his death, rather than the death itself, was clever emotionally manipulative filmmaking. Eastwood knew that showing less would be more affecting. It also elevates the film's hero/protagonist by separating his demise from all the other gun battles in the film.

It is hardly the case that the Kyle character just gets over it and goes on with his life in the film, as this critic writes.

The screenplay of American Sniper sanitizes Kyle and turns him into a cleaner hero than he was, based on what turned out to be correct commercial instincts. Liberal critics of American Sniper, on the other hand, cherry pick the most outrageous things he said in his book (and he was a bit of a provocative fabulist), so that they have a political and racial controversy to argue about in this extremely popular movie. I think that the truth is in between these two versions, and I don't see the defense of the invasion of Iraq in the movie, where Kyle has no answer when his brother calls the war a pointless waste.
posted by knoyers at 8:38 PM on April 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

I pretty much stopped taking this too seriously when the author said that the Hmong don't sacrifice chickens.

Yep, they do, and not just chickens. I wrote an article about it for the Humboldt State University student magazine in the 90s and it was a hard interview... the community there was not only dealing with the neighbors complaining about the sacrifices but also with not receiving medical care from PTSD stemming from fighting on our side in the Vietnam war. The woman I talked to said her husband hadn't really slept for 20 years.

For those who aren't impressed with Eastwood's direction, I'll just say 'The Outlaw Josie Wales,' thank you very much and goodnight.
posted by Huck500 at 8:55 PM on April 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Bounty hunter #1: You're wanted, Wales.
Josey Wales: Reckon I'm right popular. You a bounty hunter?
Bounty hunter #1: A man's got to do something for a living these days.
Josey Wales: Dyin' ain't much of a living, boy.

And goodnight.
posted by Huck500 at 8:58 PM on April 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

I know he has one more funny movie with an Orangutan left in him before his eternal reward.
posted by Renoroc at 8:58 PM on April 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

It's not the movie from the point of view of invaded Iraq. But why would Eastwood make that film?

Why would he make a film from the point of view of the Japanese soldiers fighting at Iwo Jima?
posted by asterix at 9:03 PM on April 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

I know he has one more funny movie with an Orangutan left in him before his eternal reward.

Dirty Harry in "Every Which Way but the Rue Morgue" perhaps?
posted by umberto at 9:06 PM on April 11, 2015 [10 favorites]

I hate a love hate thing with Josie Wales. Love it as a well-crafted Western with some truly great lines (especially from Chief Dan George) and half a dozen "fuck yeah" gun battles. Hate it because of its white supremacist origins.
posted by Ber at 9:39 PM on April 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Unforgiven is a great film.
posted by Golden Eternity at 11:35 PM on April 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

Renoroc: “I know he has one more funny movie with an Orangutan left in him before his eternal reward.”

To be perfectly frank, I'd much rather get one last look into the life of Bronco Billy.
posted by ob1quixote at 12:22 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

The thesis of the article is not whether Clint Eastwood's later films are good or bad or un/watchable or well-made, etc., but rather, that the movies he's been making are harmful to the social fabric of America.
posted by polymodus at 12:31 AM on April 12, 2015 [5 favorites]

American Sniper’s Myths and Misrepresentations.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:19 AM on April 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

The amazing thing about Eastwood is that he could make those movies which are fairly good and effective and then so badly misjudge the chair thing. It makes me wonder if the competence actually comes from somebody he works with rather than himself.
posted by srboisvert at 5:37 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

Some people in wheelchairs are asked if they think of killing themselves because of their disability. I was spared that question from people around me, but then I got in te face when I saw that movie.

Thanks Clint. You fucking elderly child.
posted by angrycat at 7:21 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm talking about MDB. Fucking evil piece of shit movie.
posted by angrycat at 7:26 AM on April 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

Chris Kyle was a lot more than a "provocative fabulist." He was an outright, court-proven liar, whose lies included (allegedly) frank admissions to the cold blooded murder of US citizens in Texas and Louisiana. (Lies, one fervently hopes.)

Eastwood is the provocative fabulist. Always was. Not one shred of his vision of America rings true except for the righteous badass white guy killing everyone around him part in oh, every movie he ever made except Midnight in the Garden (which just sucked as a movie).

Difference is, that guy isn't a hero in my America.


I used to respect Unforgiven, but viewed as an entry in the oeuvre of a racist artist who glories in representing violence as justice, I no longer do. Every other movie he has made has struck me as pretty much technically shit, as well as morally shit. I thought MDB was the most dishonest movie of his body of work, but I haven't seen the last few on purpose. Fuck him.
posted by spitbull at 7:41 AM on April 12, 2015 [3 favorites]

Whatever you think of its ideological implications, Play Misty For Me is in no way technically shit. Directorially, it is highly efficient.
posted by Wolof at 7:48 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

When I look at the list of his director's credits, I like most of the films in the first half of the list, and I don't care too much about most of the second half. 'Unforgiven' is around the middle of the list. 'Unforgiven' is visually not very flashy, but it stands out mostly because it has a really exceptional script.
posted by ovvl at 8:47 AM on April 12, 2015

As noted before the fpp doesn't analyze Clint's fucking dialogue. It's analyzing Clint's use of good guys bad guys narrative and how Eastwood will be dishonest in service of that narrative.
posted by angrycat at 8:56 AM on April 12, 2015

And the moral flaccidity of Clint Eastwood as an artist
posted by angrycat at 8:58 AM on April 12, 2015

Unforgiven is a masterpiece. It's the most honest film about violence I can think of. The scene of Eastwood and the kid under the tree while they wait for the money is probably my favorite scene in any movie ever.
posted by Bonzai at 9:37 AM on April 12, 2015 [2 favorites]

Why would he make a film from the point of view of the Japanese soldiers fighting at Iwo Jima?

What I meant and should have written is, why does Eastwood have to make the movie about the Iraq war from the Iraqi point of view? Telling a story from the point of view of a specific character with no pretext of being unbiased, rather than one attempting to focus equally on all sides of a story or event, is right, not wrong, for a movie. Eastwood did make a brave attempt at a story from the opposing point of view [to America] with his Iwo Jima movie, and that wasn't necessarily a successful experiment for him.

I'm talking about MDB. Fucking evil piece of shit movie.

A movie where an athlete becomes suicidal after being paralyzed and suffering amputation isn't an insult to all handicapped people either. Also, Hilary Swank was devastating. Bradley Cooper's performance in American Sniper isn't in the same league at all.

Chris Kyle was a lot more than a "provocative fabulist." He was an outright, court-proven liar, whose lies included (allegedly) frank admissions to the cold blooded murder of US citizens in Texas and Louisiana. (Lies, one fervently hopes.)

There is no evidence at all that any of that happened (stories of shooting armed looters for the government after Katrina, or killing a robber who carjacked him). Which makes him a "provocative fabulist." Jesse Ventura apparently wasn't harmed by him either. He told made-up stories like a child but there is no evidence that Kyle ever harmed anyone, outside of his service as a soldier, or that he committed any crime as a soldier.

Not one shred of his vision of America rings true except for the righteous badass white guy killing everyone around him part in oh, every movie he ever made except Midnight in the Garden (which just sucked as a movie).

And how is this different from about half of Hollywood movies?

American Sniper is one of numerous Oscar-thirsty biopics that bend the truth and whitewash the story of the main character while reducing their life to or in many cases, inventing, a narrative where the volatile main character is redeemed by a long-suffering partner like Sienna Miller's boring character. A Beautiful Mind, the Johnny Cash movie with Joaquin Phoenix, Ray, Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking, etc. All of these types of films are basically fictionalized whitewashes that warp the character into the person that Hollywood believes audiences want to see.

There is a critically acclaimed, Oscar nominated, supposedly respectable film that is actually guilty of much of the accusations of American Sniper's critics. That is the mendacious, history distorting apology for the Bush administration's torture, Zero Dark Thirty, the work of a far more politically liberal director. American Sniper is a Michael Moore documentary in comparison.
posted by knoyers at 1:07 PM on April 12, 2015

A movie where an athlete becomes suicidal after being paralyzed and suffering amputation isn't an insult to all handicapped people either. Also, Hilary Swank was devastating

In the below, let me apologize for anything that comes off as rude. I'm trying not to be. I've heard this defense of the movie from several respectable corners, and for that reason I guess I have the more anger at it, because it doesn't address the central argument that people with disabilities have made about the movie.

It's interesting, because I went with a lefty friend who had been with me in my transition from able bodied to disabled, and she commented on how she thought the movie did a disservice to poor people in its cartoonish depiction of Hillary Swank's family.

I remember at the time that she didn't see how disturbing it was with someone with a similar injury -- I guess my injury was lower than hers, but I still lost tons of function at young age.

Anyways, Eastwood wanted to put his character in the position of choosing between his Catholic faith, which said that he must not kill, and Swank's desires.

Swank wanted to die. A lot of people in that situation do. Because when you go through a loss of function, a tremendous physical shock like that, emotional lability is common. I honestly don't remember wanting to die, in part because I think I was high as a kite on pain pills, but I do remember mourning my inability to walk again and the dysfunction that came with it in a truly existential way.

The issue isn't that she was suicidal; that is realistic. The problem is that Eastwood's character treats her wish for death as reasonable and that is the argument of the film

If the audience doesn't believe that death is best for Swank's character, then the moral conflict faced by Eastwood's character - the one the film tries to frame -- it doesn't work.

Hence, baked into the movie is the idea that, hey really, if you are that disabled, you are better off dead

Or, do we only make exceptions for Stephen Hawking? Do physically disabled people need to have a brain that makes discoveries about the universe in order to justify their existence?

The answer that the movie provides is, more or less, yes. Why don't we kill ourselves? Why live through chronic pain, impediments to mobility, all the little humiliations that come with paralysis and other major disabilities? (BTW the pressure sores she endures? SIGNS OF NEGLECT PARALYZED PEOPLE GET THIS BECAUSE OF NEGLECT)

And that's what pisses me off.

And we are not talking about whether or not Swank is amazing. Of course she was fucking amazing.

And I just read the distortions he put into American Sniper. What a fucking tool bag of shit.
posted by angrycat at 2:00 PM on April 12, 2015 [7 favorites]

Eastwood did make a brave attempt at a story from the opposing point of view [to America] with his Iwo Jima movie, and that wasn't necessarily a successful experiment for him.

I will say that watching Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima back to back was ... affecting. And what I took away from it was a complete antidote to all this 'lone macho gunslinger solves things with violence' to an almost traumatizing degree.
posted by Zalzidrax at 2:14 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]

And the moral flaccidity of Clint Eastwood as an artist

Heh. I think of Clint Eastwood having a massive moral hard-on, actually. I don't agree with his morality, but whenever I see his work he seems to be waving his particular ethical viewpoint in the viewer's face.
posted by AdamCSnider at 5:04 PM on April 12, 2015

Jesse Ventura apparently wasn't harmed by [Chris Kyle] either.

So, I guess you missed the news about Ventura winning a seven-figure sum in a lawsuit against Kyle's estate? There's also the less quantifiable but nonetheless real potential of other people dying because they think that the only thing that Kyle did wrong in taking Routh out target-shooting was in not making sure that his buddy was watching his six.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:54 PM on April 12, 2015

If the audience doesn't believe that death is best for Swank's character, then the moral conflict faced by Eastwood's character - the one the film tries to frame -- it doesn't work.

Why so? As long as the audience believes that Eastwood's character believes that (a) Swank's character believes that death is preferable and (b) he has no right to gainsay her, it works just fine; most of the film is dedicated to building a scenario in which his holding both those beliefs is plausible.

For what it's worth, I personally hold neither of those beliefs but still found MDB plausible, powerful and affecting.

I read MDB as a classical tragedy that follows from the specific relationships of the main characters, much as Othello does. I'm not sure that it has much that is useful to say about athletics, disability or morality in any wider sense, except possibly as a cautionary tale.
posted by flabdablet at 11:24 PM on April 12, 2015

Ber: "I hate a love hate thing with Josie Wales. Love it as a well-crafted Western with some truly great lines (especially from Chief Dan George) and half a dozen "fuck yeah" gun battles. Hate it because of its white supremacist origins."

Care to elaborate?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:07 AM on April 13, 2015

Asa Earl Carter aka Forrest Carter
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:31 AM on April 13, 2015

fiadablet, quite a few people who don't have broken necks wish themselves dead. Sometimes it's because they are depressed, they are bullied, they are indigent. If you think that a friend helping someone in those situations die is "tragic" along the lines of MDB, then that's consistent I guess. Otherwise, you're segregating people with permanent disabilities away from these other cases. That's pernicious.

(I do support the right of terminally ill patients to take their own lives -- but that is not what is at issue here.)
posted by angrycat at 3:13 AM on April 13, 2015

If you think that a friend helping someone in those situations die is "tragic" along the lines of MDB, then that's consistent I guess.

Let me just present the dictionary.com definitions for "tragedy" so we're clear on what we're talking about here:

1. a dramatic composition, often in verse, dealing with a serious or somber theme, typically that of a great person destined through a flaw of character or conflict with some overpowering force, as fate or society, to downfall or destruction.
2. the branch of the drama that is concerned with this form of composition.
3. the art and theory of writing and producing tragedies.
4. any literary composition, as a novel, dealing with a somber theme carried to a tragic or disastrous conclusion.
5. the tragic or mournful or calamitous element of drama, of literature generally, or of life.
6. a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair; calamity; disaster: the tragedy of war.

When I wrote that I read MDB as a classical tragedy, I meant that in senses 1, 2 and 4.

In real life, the act of helping a dear friend achieve what both of us viewed as a necessary death would certainly count as a tragedy in sense 6, regardless of whether or not the reason had anything to do with permanent disability.
posted by flabdablet at 5:06 AM on April 13, 2015

And again, let me restate that I do not read MDB as any kind of morality play; nor do it see it as advocating the view that quadriplegia must necessarily make continued existence pointless (a view which I certainly do not hold myself, for what that's worth).

Swank's character makes the judgment call for herself that living the way she does is intolerable, but I can't see how it's reasonable to jump from that to claiming that the film as a whole promotes such a judgment as universal, inevitable, normal or desirable.

The point of the film is the point of all good drama: to encourage the viewer to step into the shoes of each of the central characters and think about what we'd do if confronted with the same circumstances. And I think MDB actually does a really good job of not pushing the line that the choices made by any of its characters are in some way universally "correct".
posted by flabdablet at 5:34 AM on April 13, 2015

One final clarification and I'll shut up: I support the right of any person of sound mind to take their own life; I don't believe that a compelling desire to commit suicide must necessarily disqualify a person from being of sound mind; I consider every suicide a tragedy (sense 6) whether the person involved was of sound mind or not.
posted by flabdablet at 5:51 AM on April 13, 2015

What would I do as Eastwood?

Get her medical attention. I would generally seek that option before offing somebody.

I'm out; arguing on behalf of the disabled is exhausting and often, because able bodied people regularly fail to recognize their privileged status, futile
posted by angrycat at 8:26 AM on April 13, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would generally seek that option before offing somebody.

As would I.
posted by flabdablet at 8:42 AM on April 13, 2015

“And the moral flaccidity of Clint Eastwood as an artist”

Woody Allen and Roman Polanski on the other hand…

I have no problems separating the work from the artist. Given the givens. I mean, John Wayne Gacy trying to sell his paintings from prison is very different from Joe Director who's personal life I don't agree with making a movie.

Where Krell is going though I don't know.
Eastwood's speech was stupid. I'm not on board with a lot of his politics. But his movies are pretty entertaining. And once people get a certain amount of money and influence behind them, they typicaly start thinking whatver it is they think are unimpeachable truths, whatever those truths are.

But just because I like Radio Days or Chinatown doesn't mean I'm pro-child molestation or that those films have to be viewed through that lens. Bitter Moon is a very disturbing film that has some strong ties to Polanski's life (e.g. his wife was cast in it) but even if it is what's in Polanski's mind, it doesn't mean the viewer has to accept it as a valid message, or anything more than something meant to capture our attention.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:55 AM on April 13, 2015