Clint Eastwood's artlessness

I swear that when Clint Eastwood made Unforgiven, he had more ability than the brute efficiency with which he makes movies now.

The latest example of this I’ve been exposed to is American Sniper, the best picture nominee from 2014. It’s not a bad movie, but it rarely clears the artistic bar of presenting a sequence of scenes in a particular order. Which is basically what Clint Eastwood is nowadays.

I swear it didn’t used to be like this. However, the next time I watch Unforgiven, which is one of my top 20 films of all time, I will make a note of whether I was wrong, and that’s really all he had back then – just a better screenwriter, cinematographer and editor.

Eastwood has been working with not great versions of those things recently, though I won’t haul out their names to shame them, especially since I’d probably discover that some of them are actually quite accomplished. Even the accomplished ones, though, are probably limited by Eastwood’s famous “cut-print” approach to filmmaking. He doesn’t do second takes, which is a limitation that is seriously exposed with a movie like last year’s The 15:17 to Paris, which starred non-professional actors. Though to be honest, the performance of Jenna Fischer stood out as needing a second take more than those of the non-professionals.

American Sniper is not without interesting things going on from a filmmaking perspective. To simulate the way that Chris Kyle’s four tours of duty in the Middle East were interspersed with his home life, Eastwood will occasionally go directly from a battle scene to a scene of home life – not because Kyle is thinking about his home life during that battle scene, but because the narrative has chosen to jump forward to that next scene without the traditional markers of leaving a tour of duty, liking climbing on a large military transport with a duffel bag over his shoulder. I applaud that idea, but because it’s Eastwood and because he has lowered my expectations, the decision strikes one as an artless transition rather than an intentional artistic choice.

The abruptness of Eastwood’s endings is what I’m starting to notice is bothering me, combined with their tendency toward corny, unironic patriotism. Even a film I really like, like Sully, struck me as stumbling at its very ending, as the characters chuckle about something inconsequential and the credits just start rolling. If you saw Sully, you probably know what I’m talking about.

The 15:17 to Paris and American Sniper are both pretty terrible in that regard. I don’t recall the exact contours of the Paris ending, since I saw that some eight months ago, but Sniper’s ending is of course fresh in my memory. And I’ll give you a small spoiler alert in case you haven’t seen this movie or aren’t familiar with Kyle’s story.

The last action of the movie involves Kyle (Bradley Cooper) meeting another veteran outside his house, with his wife (an unrecognizeable Sienna Miller) closing the door slowly and ominously with a foreboding she could not possibly have, but which movie characters inevitably have to lend extra gravity to a moment that surely didn’t have any. There’s a fadeout (that’s another artless and very old school technique Eastwood likes) and then you see a funeral procession starting with the words on-screen: “Chris Kyle was killed that day by a veteran he was trying to help.” The very next words, barely three seconds later, are “Directed and produced by Clint Eastwood.” It lands with the same kind of thud as “Poochie died on the way to his home planet.” I had to read up on Wikipedia to find out what actually happened to Kyle, and though Eastwood surely didn’t want to give any spotlight to the actions of Kyle’s killer, there was clearly a better way to do it. I was wavering on three stars for American Sniper until this dud of an ending reminded me of Eastwood’s weaknesses and convinced me that 2.5 was the more appropriate rating.

And as it does in most of his movies, that forlorn score, often composed by Eastwood himself, kicks in, reminding us of the sacrifices of good Americans or some such.

There are a couple problems with the perspective I’m currently offering. One is that Eastwood is my political foe, a true believer in Republican politics and likely all the things it stands for, though I’d like to think his time in Hollywood has given him a bit more social liberalism than most of his political allies. Another is that Eastwood is old. I should not be expecting a now 88-year-old man to be quivering with creative vibrancy, even if he was only 83 when he made American Sniper. Maybe he does those takes so quickly because he’s worried he will die before he finishes the movie. Still, Ridley Scott is 81 and he can still make movies where an obvious attention has been paid to camera setups, editing, and other important aspects of filmmaking as an art.

And it’s not like this has always been Eastwood’s MO. Although I’m listing myself as unsure on Unforgiven, as it has been about five years since I’ve seen it, I feel a bit more confident in saying that films like Letters from Iwo Jima and Hereafter show a considerably greater aptitude for craft (even though it’s been longer than that since I’ve seen Iwo Jima, and even though Hereafter is an actually bad movie – though it has a fantastic opening sequence). Although I haven’t seen Jersey Boys, I figure that since it’s a musical, it’s probably got some panache as well.

I guess part of the reason this is worth commenting on and writing about at all is because I think of Eastwood as someone who does have these instincts toward Filmmaking with a capital F. It’s one of the reasons I raise my eyebrow a bit in interest every time I hear there’s a new Eastwood movie coming out. But it may all just be a mirage, and maybe I need to start going into Eastwood movies expecting less.

I may not get many more opportunities, at least among movies that have not yet been released. Eastwood is rumored to be making a movie called The Ballad of Richard Jewell, but given that it’s midway through 2019 and is still only a rumor, at the very least it will represent an unusually long layoff for the prolific director (who made two films in 2018). He’ll be lucky if he gets it out before his 90^th birthday. Then again, if he decided to start making it tomorrow he could be done with it in three weeks.

There are plenty of Eastwood movies in the past I haven’t seen, and feel like I’m still interested in seeing. I still haven’t seen his most recent, The Mule, which is also supposed to be not great.  Then there’s Jersey Boys, and going back further, Flags of Our Fathers, Space Cowboys, True Crime, The Rookie, White Hunter Black Heart, Bird, Heartbreak Ridge, Pale Rider, Sudden Impact, Honkytonk Man, Firefox, Bronco Billy, The Gauntlet, The Eiger Sanction, Breezy and (breathe) Play Misty for Me. Whew. The guy has been making movies for a long time.

Hopefully some of those movies will showcase the art Eastwood has since lost.