We spend time ruminating on Clint Eastwood’s career in this week’s show:
The Film Talk – Part 48 – Gran Torino and the Films of Clint Eastwood
With that in mind I take a look at the image above from Clint’s first directed pic ‘Play Misty for Me’ and a frame from his last ‘Gran Torino’.
In the image above Clint is social, to a degree. He’s in a bar, playing an imaginary game with no rules, designed to pique the interest of the curious female. He’s playing the game with Don Siegel, himself a game player; the director of Eastwood in Dirty Harry.
A woman looks on. Notice how she’s framed – almost as if she’s at the centre of a dartboard.
She becomes intrigued, introduces herself to Clint and terrible events follow. What Clint doesn’t know is that he’s being played, the woman is predator not prey.
In the film Clint’s character is a narcissist; he sleeps around the small town of Carmel, he’s easy-going but really it’s all about him. He has friends, but not really. Just acquaintances that he uses, the barman for drinks, the black buddy for tips on jive.
It catches up to him in the film, but does it really? The monster is killed and Clint is free to go on, maybe just sticking with one ‘good girl’ rather than sleeping around, but I don’t buy it. He doesn’t learn anything.
Compare with the image below.
Clint is at the end. A framegrab from Gran Torino, but we might as well call it the last Dirty Harry film.
Eastwood is alone, he’s past sex, no longer has the desire to spawn, and so what’s the point of company? There’s nowhere to go for him.
He can’t escape his legacy. The legacy of films that celebrate, if not propagate violence, misogyny and racism. He’s face to face with himself. Sitting in a pool of darkness.
He does the right thing.
