Analysis: "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly"

Musical Bonus
As you may have noticed in my series of Oscar Reaction articles, in each of the entry's titles I referenced Italian director Sergio Leone's famed Dollars trilogy, which includes A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More (spoofed by NBC's Community in the episodes "A Fistful of Paintballs" and "For a Few Paintballs More"), and the final "prequel" film, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. The movie's title has entered the public lexicon, and has given birth to some truly awful offspring sayings, predating the internet meme by at least twenty-seven years. Despite the fact it is such a well-known saying, I have found in my own experience that not a great deal of people know the plot of this excellent film, and it's pretty straightforward. Three men, "Blondie" or "The Man with No Name" (Clint Eastwood)- the good, "Angel Eyes" (Lee Van Cleef)- the bad, and "Tuco" (Eli Wallach)- the ugly. Set during the American Civil War, it follows each man as they attempt to find a fortune in Confederate gold. The film is also known for being incredibly long, clocking in at nearly three hours, and influencing a variety of future directors, including Eastwood as he became a director and one of my personal favorites, Quentin Tarantino, who hails the film as being "one of cinema's greatest achievements." Even though it looks like some sort of dime-store exploitation flick, it actually goes significantly deeper than it appears. Leone was an avid history buff and a perfectionist- all important qualities to a filmmaker. It even goes deeper than some modern day films, by analyzing basic human tendencies. Most so-called Spaghetti Westerns are actually revenge flicks, such as Leone's earlier work, specifically For A Few Dollars More, The Outlaw Josey Wales, and homages like Kill Bill, Vol II, Django Unchained, and Unforgiven all deal in revenge of some sort. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, however, focuses on human greed and deceit. Each one of these men are not particularly "good" men; the closest is Blondie, and he just shoots bad guys, when you get right down to it. Each of them is willing to result to trickery, torture, murder, and backstabbing just so they can get their hands on some gold. Angel Eyes kills a poor farmer just so he can gather some intel on the location of the gold, and Tuco tortures Blondie in the desert by starving him and drinking water in front of Blondie, tantalizing him. Angel Eyes even disguises himself as a Union officer during a battle, all so he can, yet again, get intel on the gold's location. The three participate in Civil War battles, switching sides at their convenience, and engage in gunfights, so they can get closer to the gold. And who can forget the final Mexican standoff in the graveyard where the gold is located, leading to the death of Angel Eyes and Blondie's escape with a share of the loot, leaving Tuco restrained and tantalized by the gold. I believe Leone had two goals in mind here: he wanted to satirize the popular, American view of the Old West, and to show the lengths man will go to for material possession, culminating in crime and greed. The Old West has been romanticized in American culture to the point where the actual plight of the settler has been so diluted that we seem to care only for the widespread tales of heroic gunslingers and cattlemen that we ignore the disease that afflicted travelers and the widespread crime in the region, primarily robbery, gambling, and other unsavory deeds. We also tend to forget that the Union side during the American Civil War was not the perfect defender of liberty we picture it as. They also ran horrific prison camps and committed just as many atrocities as the Confederated States of America, it's just that the winner writes the history books. War fosters brutality on both sides (Inglourious Basterds deconstructs this trope surprisingly well), and we tend to ignore that. But I'm getting off-track, back to the film at hand. Leone decides to take the common American Western, take out the false heroic elements, and show what conniving rats these assorted bounty hunters and criminals were. They were greedy, like the California settlers who were looking for gold, who sparked the era of the West in America (perhaps an unintentional allegory), and took advantage of others and their situation so they could get rich and live out the rest of their lives without a care. Here is where Community becomes important. In the episode "A Fistful of Paintballs," the students are competing for $100,000 dollars in a paintball tournament sponsored by Pistol Patty's Cowboy Creamery, tapping into their innate greed. Of course, it turns out to be a plot by City College to destroy Greendale Community College, the show's main setting. Though it transitions from a Western to Star Wars scenario, it still shows a human's innate desire for material possessions and success at all costs, be it through a real or paintball shootout. Of course, I might be overanalyzing this. Either way, be sure to check out next week's column on why Smokey and the Bandit is secretly about chauvinism and the male ego.

All movies have themes, even bad movies like Plan Nine from Outer Space, and while they may not necessarily be good themes, they, the themes, are there. While my tastes are very eclectic, most of my favorite films dig into the darker side of the human mind, be it The Dark Knight, Death Proof, or Vertigo. The best ones out of this bunch are the ones that actually appear shallow but dig deep regardless. This is what makes The Good, The Bad and The Ugly so fantastic. It appears to be nothing but a shoot 'em up, but really analyzes deeper issues regarding man's own basic desires and satirizes the cultural foolishness of the West.