Death Becomes Her (1992)

 

Death Becomes Her is a wry commentary on aging in Hollywood, particularly as it pertains to women. Overall, the film seems pretty misogynistic to me since it suggests that women will go to any length, no matter how risky or dangerous, to remain attractive (while men are more reasonable or rational about the consequences of aging). That doesn’t mean that it didn’t deserve its Oscar win for Best Visual Effects. Aside from a few laughs, mostly at the expense of the two primary characters, it’s the visuals that stick with you after viewing the film. Goldie Hawn plays Helen Sharp, an aspiring writer whose fiancé gets stolen by her long-time rival, Madeline Ashton (played by Meryl Streep). Madeline, an egotistical actress (is there any other kind in the movies?), doesn’t really find Dr. Ernest Menville (Bruce Willis) attractive physically; she just knows that having a plastic surgeon like him will help her stay younger looking. Their marriage isn’t a happy one. After losing Ernest to Madeline, Helen gains a lot of weight and becomes very vengeful. Seven years later, when they arrive at a party celebrating Helen’s new book, Madeline and Ernest find her transformed into a beautiful, youthful woman, quite a difference from the somewhat dowdy woman she was in the past. Madeline, now desperate to look younger herself, goes to a strange mansion and obtains an expensive magical potion from a woman named Lisle (Isabella Rossellini) who claims to be 71 years old, but who appears to be in her late 20s or early 30s. Of course, Lisle doesn’t really share all of the relevant details until after Madeline has downed the potion; one of the side effects is that you become, in essence, a zombie once you die. You only get about ten years to look youthful before you’re expected to disappear from public view. Hawn’s Helen tries to steal Willis’s Ernest back from Madeline, but to be honest, I kept wondering why these women are interested in him. He’s not particularly attractive, but his talent for making corpses look alive must be sufficient. The real appeal of Death Becomes Her is the masterfully done special effects. The transformation of Madeline to a younger version of herself is shot in a mirror, and it’s amazing. However, when Madeline falls down a flight of stairs, her body gets twisted and she has to walk backwards because her head is now on backwards. During a fight, Madeline blasts a hole in Helen’s stomach. (That’s when we learn that she, too, has taken Lisle’s potion—if we hadn’t already figured it out, that is.) Seeing through Hawn’s stomach is revelatory; that effect alone must have taken some time to accomplish. The film also has a few funny moments at the expense of the stars. For example, Helen calls Madeline a “bad actress” at one point, a nod to Streep’s reputation even then for possessing a singular talent for acting. And Madeline warns Ernest about what happens to “soft, bald, overweight Republicans in prison,” so knowing that Willis, who was already balding at the time, is a Republican only makes the joke funnier. Of course, as I stated earlier, the film treats men and women quite differently in terms of aging. Women are more obsessed with youthfulness and more inclined to do whatever they can to look younger, but when Ernest is offered the same potion as the two women, he refuses because he doesn’t want to live forever even if it would mean that he looks young. I realize that this film has become a cult favorite since its release, and some of the performances veer quite readily into camp, but it’s tough to watch this movie and not sense that it treats its female characters very badly overall.

Oscar Win: Best Visual Effects

Unforgiven (1992)

Unforgiven, the winner for Best Picture of 1992, is one of my favorite Westerns of all time. It's an amazing film with some of the best dialogue ever written. And it features one of the greatest of Clint Eastwood's performances; he was never better than he is in Unforgiven. I realize that this is a revisionist Western, but it uses the symbolism of earlier films so astutely and so thoughtfully that even fans of the classical form of the genre will admire it.

Eastwood plays William Munny, a "retired" gunfighter who has been reformed by his wife (now dead) and who lives a rather unsuccessful life as a pig farmer. He hears of a reward for the deaths of two men who are responsible for cutting the face of a prostitute in Big Whiskey, a reward offered by her fellow prostitutes, and soon joins the Scholfield Kid, an untested gunfighter, and Munny's partner from his past, Ned Logan. Ned is played by Morgan Freeman, and he gives another of his exceptional performances here. He is, at turns, funny and serious and cunning and deceitful.

As soon as the three men arrive in Big Whiskey, however, they are confronted by Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett, a brute of a man who uses his deputies to inflict pain and terror. (Daggett is played with glee by the great Gene Hackman.) They have a rule requiring everyone to surrender any firearms upon entering the city, and that frequently causes problems for people who are attempting to collect the reward money. Munny and his friends, though, are a bit too stubborn to leave quickly, resulting in several encounters with Daggett's men. You know there's going to be at least one shootout--it is a Western, after all--but how the final confrontation plays itself out is a masterful sequence.

This is certainly a violent film at times, but all of the violent acts have a context. They have meaning. Munny is also no heartless killer. He struggles throughout the film with the competing desires of living up to his dead wife's wishes and his own desire for money to help with his children's future. It's no simple-minded, formulaic approach that the screenwriter, David Webb Peoples, has taken here. Eastwood serves as director as well as star, and this film demonstrates the maturity of his vision as a filmmaker. He has directed numerous great movies over the past several decades, but his achievement in Unforgiven still stands as the high mark of his career, in my opinion.

I've mentioned the dialogue, and I want to give just two brief examples. After the Scholfield Kid kills a man for the first time, Munny tells him, "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever going to have." Those are my favorite lines in the film, actually. Earlier, after spending some time with the scarred woman who is the central figure in all of this action, Munny tells her after initially rejecting her sexual offers, "You ain't ugly like me. It's just that we both have got scars." Simple dialogue, really, but when you watch those lines spoken in the context of their scenes, they are intensely powerful.