As deep as the ocean...

Rating: 10/10 (2 February 2005)

Though many claim that 'Unforgiven' is a masterpiece, Clint Eastwood has never quite managed to get there for me. But this is finally it. Using a story bordering on the clichéd he has plumbed the depth of the human soul in a totally unforgettable film.
Many great works of narrative art have structuring absences. Here we have the absent daughter whose loss has defined the life of Frankie Dunn. In a moment of unforced but powerful emotion, we see a shoebox full of returned letters. This defines the yawning emotional chasm at the centre of Frankie's life.
The joy this wonderful film gives us for its central section is precisely the joy of filling that chasm with the love and closeness to his, initially, unwanted protégé, Maggie Fitzgerald. The three lives at the centre of the film, Frankie, Scrap and Maggie live, essentially, solitary existences, and Eastwood uses a leisurely approach to character development that only very gradually reveals the pain and pride of Frankie, the regret and loyalty of Scrap and the feisty determination of Maggie. But it is this slowly-paced, methodical and austere approach that makes the film so powerful. It goes in slow - but very, very deep.
We have seen the rise of great boxing champions many, many times in the cinema... but this is, for me, the greatest of them all (and I am not forgetting 'Raging Bull', because it is not, ultimately about boxing. Frankie says it at the beginning of the film. 'Boxing is about respect - keeping it for yourself and taking it away from your opponent'. And so, when Frankie's agonising moral dilemma is forced upon him, he has only one possible course of action.
So that is what the film is about: self-respect, and by the end both central characters, Frankie and Maggie, have it in the most tragic and ironic manner imaginable - her by her death, him by losing the one thing that made his life worth living.
Anyone looking for the best film of the year doesn't need to even think about anything beyond this luminous masterpiece.