Review by Logan Kenny
There has been a constant, overwhelming feeling of finality throughout the last few decades of Clint Eastwood’s directorial career. From his initial goodbye to the western genre in his revisionist masterpiece Unforgiven to the disintegration of regressive Americana ideals in Gran Torino, so many of his late period works are about the end of a way of life – the end of a type of man that won’t exist anymore after the last true cowboys die. For years, there have been plenty of films that could have felt like the end for Eastwood as a director, a final statement of artistic intent where the man himself reckons with his image, his failures and what legacy he wants to leave behind. The most prominent of these is his 2018 film, The Mule, which is arguably Eastwood’s best work of the last 10 years. If there was ever a time to say goodbye and go out on a high note, The Mule was it, a perfect examination of a man trying desperately to make up for time and mistakes he’ll never get the chance to re-do. It is a wonderful hybrid of his instincts as a self-reflective dramatist and as a naturally relaxed, compassionate depictor of everyday human kindness. It balances the serious moments of heartbreak over his family with silly, sentimental interactions with strangers across America. There are few late-period works that feel as encapsulating of what a director has represented across their career as The Mule, and if it was the goodbye, it was a flawless one. But he didn’t stop making movies. Like with Gran Torino, Eastwood’s desire to provide his career with an exceptional coda has been overwritten by the fact he will neither retire nor die. The old dog still has something left in the tank, and since The Mule, he has directed the excellent Richard Jewell and now his latest film about saying goodbye to a specific, irreplicable way of life, Cry Macho.
Cry Macho is nothing new in Eastwood’s career. The premise is similar to Honkytonk Man, one of his earlier directorial efforts, and it’s embedded with a lot of the same tones and plot beats as The Mule. It follows a former rodeo star who travels to Mexico in order to return a delinquent teenage son to his long lost father but ends up bonding with the young boy and his pet rooster over the course of their shared journey. It isn’t a re-invention of the wheel or a subversion of what content you’d expect from a film from Eastwood’s sixth decade as a director. It isn’t a film that’ll transform the opinions of any audiences who find his 2010s work too slight and meandering, as it further leans into the quieter elements of his recent filmography. Cry Macho will not change your opinion or re-define what it means to be a fan of Clint Eastwood. But what it is is the most quintessential example of why Eastwood has resonated with so many audiences for all these years. A work that’s for the converts and the die-hards, something to watch in order to celebrate the life and legacy of one of America’s greatest filmmakers in the most calming way imaginable. It strips away conflict to the barest essentials, putting tension to the side in favour of lingering upon casual human interaction.
In many ways, it feels like Bob Dylan’s recent album Rough and Rowdy Ways, another masterpiece by an artist in their twilight years reflecting on things that’ll never return. Within the closing track, “Murder Most Foul,” Dylan describes landscapes, people, buildings and cultural signifiers that are not only gone, but will never be on this earth again. They exist only through the memories of himself and those that lived at the same time, but “Murder Most Foul” is increasingly aware that there will be a time when no one with exact memories of those periods is still alive. The memories transform into words and images, recreations and imagined ideas of what it was like to live there: to experience JFK’s assassination in real time or play in the old clubs that were eradicated by gentrification. Dylan will die one day, but his songs will remain. This album and that song are his ways of preserving a little bit of a time that will soon be ancient history. The collective consciousness will never truly know what it was like to exist then, but through 15 minutes of Dylan’s words, they’ll be able to imagine those faded streets and near-forgotten smiles.
Cry Macho isn’t as explicitly elegiac as Rough and Rowdy Ways, as it’s too relaxed and kindly compassionate to get totally lost in the sands of time. Cry Macho strips away the need to focus entirely on Eastwood and his protagonist Mike Milo, giving plenty of time to the supporting characters Rafo and Marta that are present throughout the majority of the film. It is less explicitly semi-autobiographical as The Mule and, in turn, chooses to focus more on the present and the future than what has come before. Whereas Rough and Rowdy Ways and other albums from once in a lifetime artists such as Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker are enraptured and haunted by the past, Cry Macho is the work of someone who has experienced great pain and will never be able to fully shrug off those regrets, but is able to dance and enjoy the momentary pleasures of existence while he’s still able to live it. It celebrates existence and aging as a path to peace, of being able to reconcile with the fact that there are decisions that cannot be changed and letting yourself find some happiness in a woman’s touch or a young man’s respect.
The major similarities between Eastwood and artists like Dylan and Cohen is that there are no contemporary artists like them – none with such a weighted understanding of how things used to be, and very few with the poetic ability to capture mundanity with a transcendent eye. Dylan and Eastwood are making stripped back, often meandering masterpieces that celebrate the traditions and iconographies of a time of great nostalgia, of youthful promise and endless potential. When they are gone, it seems hard to envision there being albums and motion pictures like the ones they’ve brought to life. The art will remain but the beings will not, and the future of the art we hold so dear to our chests will look different.
Cry Macho is a cinematic version of thinking about memory while you’re experiencing a moment in time. As we think of a specific moment and how it is destined to become nothing more than a memory soon, intensively reflecting on our exact place in the universe, it slips away from us. Over the course of days, we can think back to the moments where we knew memories would be made, little time capsules of our life and feel the sensations we experienced: the pain in your foot from walking 5 miles, the discomfort of a heavy bag resting against your shoulder, the feeling of satisfaction after drinking a glass of cold water on a hot day, or a sponge scrubbing against your back in the shower. But the reality of life is that experiences end quickly. The taste of food disappears moments after we’ve finished eating it; the sensation of being touched leaves our spirit as soon as the hand is lifted. We are blessed to be granted millions and millions of moments, and some of the best will last a while, but they will all reach their conclusion and their clarity will be blunted by the passage of time. After a few days, how many of us remember that nice meal we ate at an airport, or the brightness of the sun shining into our eyes as we drove down a highway? How many of the times we’ve travelled on the same buses or trains stick with us throughout our lives?
As a man who has lived for nine decades, Eastwood has experienced more moments than most of us will ever experience, more than we can possibly imagine at whatever stage of life we’re at. He has also forgotten more things than many of us will ever feel or experience. How many times will he have actively thought about the breeze through his hair decades ago, or the taste of runny eggs hitting the back of his throat? Our present becomes our past immediately and the tangible details disappear quicker and quicker with each year. It’s no surprise that our older masters lean into the past so much, clinging onto all the details and lives that remain intact. We don’t get to choose what we remember, what sticks with us as our existences progress forward, but we get to make the decisions for how we shape our lives in the future. That is really what Cry Macho represents. None of us know how much time we have left, but men like Clint Eastwood are more aware of how quickly time slips than the rest of us. It is so crucial to do something meaningful with what we’ve got, even if that’s Clint himself just having fun making a movie, having a nice time with good people in a beautiful country.