Revisionist Western Night

A western with a Native American – a fan of esoteric poet William Blake – as one of its leads? Two bank robbers who take off with the loo, laughing and killing as they go with not a good guy in sight? Think of Dead Man by Jim Jarmusch and George Roy Hill’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and, you know: the laws of the Western are there to be broken.

Koolhoven & Simons are your guides to so-called revisionist Westerns: a broad term for films that do justice to the gritty reality of the Wild West. Standard Westerns with their simplistic good guy vs. bad guy or rancher vs. Native Americans scenario was already re-written by the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and 1970s. In Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood takes it to the next level. On classic, analog, 35mm celluloid no less.

Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, US 1992, 130')

Anti-Western that questions the violent morals of the Wild West. The film garnered four Oscars in 1993 (among other things for Best Director and Beste Male Supporting Role), Clint was nominated for Best Male Lead. The meeting between a former gun for hire who is forced to take on one more job by circumstance and the sadistic sheriff Little Bill (Gene Hackman) is chillingly memorable …