Two Faces of Clint

Clint Eastwood's career has been defined by two "roles". There was the anti-establishment cop, "Dirty" Harry Callahan, which he played in several films. He also played essentially the same character "the man with no name" in Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns. These Westerns were especially interesting, because they defied traditional Westerns with clear-cut good and bad guys. Clint's cowboys were often not that much better than the guys he fought. Films like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly have an epic quality that doesn't resemble the traditional shoot-em-up Western.

While Eastwood continued to act, he also started directing films. Clint Eastwood is just on the border of being a great director. Most people say Unforgiven is his best film, possibly by a longshot, enough so that some question whether it was a fluke. The popular critics tend to afford him a bit more respect. The Academy recently gave him best picture for Million Dollar Baby.

Eastwood's now about to pull his equivalent of Spielberg and Peter Jackson at the same time. He's filmed two movies, but unlike the sequels that most people film when they do back-to-back films, he's also culled the spirit of Rashomon, telling the story of the Battle at Iwo Jima in two films, one told from the American perspective, titled Flags of Our Fathers and one told from the Japanese perspective, Red Sun, Black Sun.

He has an opportunity with these two films to top his accomplishments with Unforgiven, and to see whether, the sum of two films told together build something in the viewer that is greater than either film told apart. The films appear to have the gritty realism of a Spielberg film and yet also an oldish quality resembling David Lean. The Japanese version is likely to be subtitled and, like Gibson's Passion of the Christ or Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, released in spoken Japanese.

Eastwood's view of the world has generally been murky. His characters are not good, and some are quite flawed, even in an attempt to do good. Certainly, he's not likely to produce flag-waving patriotism, at least one that the audience can join in on.

If Spielberg has issues with greatness, it's that he sometimes delves into the comical even in his most serious films, or he gets way too maudlin. For example, it would have been too tough, given his background, for Spielberg to have filmed Downfall about the last days of Hitler. The ending of Saving Private Ryan tries to echo the ending of Schindler's List, involving tears of regret.

The first film is expected to release in late October. The second in December. It will be interesting to see if both films end up being nominated for best picture. Eastwood may not always be considered the greatest living director, but the Academy has liked him in the past, with nominations or wins for Unforgiven, Mystic River, and Million Dollar Baby. I'd imagine one, if not both, films would take a shot at the title. The second would be quite interesting, especially if it won, since there's not been a foreign language film that's won (even if the director is American). (Life is Beautiful was nominated in 1998, Il Postino was nominated in 1995. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was nominated in 2000.)

Although Eastwood can be an uneven director, the trailer for the film looks good, and although it speaks to a time when Americans thought what they did was fight evil, it may have something to say about the United States today by bringing to light events of a war we thought was justified, showing a side most Americans weren't told about.

Let's see how it turns out.