Great Director: Clint Eastwood article

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Million Dollar Baby does not start with a top angle shot of the boxing ring. Neither does it start with Morgan Freeman's voice-over, nor Clint Eastwood's wrinkled face. It starts with some acoustic guitar music. Music, which by itself could evoke a million different feelings. Along with the picture, it just feels like a slightly distant, soulful call. It remains simple, both in variation and structure, each note taking its time to sink in. It can be pinned down to no one central theme, like the film itself, which moves through layers of emotions.

Among the many things a director does is decide how smoothly he will move from one feeling to another. How much intensity will a single emotion exercise. Eastwood decides to access some vacuum of pain deep within. And the music and sound design are probably the most important in reaching that space. The guitar notes very gently give way to the ambience of a boxing competition. An invisible fade-in. As the first visual breaks in, the ambient sound level goes up a little, and we can hear more, and more clearly. But the change is very smooth. The sounds of the punches and the bell mingle well; distinct yet harmonious. Throughout, Million Dollar Baby remains a stunning achievement in sound design. Movingly expressive and soft, it is also very moody and painful. Sounds do not make an impact by volume, but by their haunting and hushed timbre.

The moment Morgan Freeman's voice-over starts, one realizes it's a great script. The words are simple and foreshadow many of the main characters' feelings. He says boxing is about respect. Unforgiven was celebrated because they said it's an antithesis to the violent western. This film then would be an antithesis to the conventional Hollywood idea of boxing as blood and bones. Where Raging Bull stylistically brought out those blood and bones to tell a story of ego and defeat, Million Dollar Baby hardly notices them, choosing instead to delve in the philosophy of regret, courage and redemption.

When it comes to treatment, one can always credit Eastwood with focusing on the deeper human side. One notices it most clearly in his two war films, Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Unlike most other war films, these two are not about the spectacle of war, but the men who fight it. He doesn't bother about the technical-wonder war that Hollywood has chosen to showcase all these years. He chooses, in the most natural of ways, to think about human lives. One way of making this decision is through the script. But what makes a film truly compassionate is the directorial craft. Eastwood makes technology unobtrusive in a way few other filmmakers have. Nowhere does Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) or the intricacy of sound design stand out or call attention to itself. When one thinks of it, no single element overshadows.  ‘˜Mt. Suribachi' in Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima is CGI. So is a huge part of Los Angeles in Changeling.

Another way to make it all more human is to literally, make it all human. Have great actors act out the story. Keep your grammar such that it brings out what all these actors have to offer. They have beautiful lines, beautiful faces and that something else that makes it sublime. Which is what Eastwood does with Bridges of Madison County. Shots constructed in a manner conventional and simple, long dissolves while they dance, and a straightforward slightly non-linear narrative. Nothing goes unexplained. In nearly all his films, there probably isn't a single actor who hasn't performed well. Thoughtful casting and a non-interfering style of directing actors is at the heart of most of his films. Again, Bridges of Madison County uses music beautifully to create mood. One is tempted to say; old fashioned. Maybe it wouldn't be incorrect.

Non-interference, it often seems, extends to other aspects of his craft. A very extreme close-up in an Eastwood film is rare. It feels like he doesn't want to intrude into the character's mind. A kind of respect. The feeling of distance his music so softly creates, his shot design upholds. It's almost like integrity. Neither does he have unnecessary camera movement, or unnecessarily fast camera movements. But a device he uses often is a very slow track as a character thinks or utters a dialog. Also absent is stylistic crane movement. Cut everything down to the barest of essentials, shorn of all style and ornamentation, and you are that much closer to simplicity.

White Hunter Black Heart is like an engrossing book. The conventional editing pattern of starting with over-the-shoulder shots at the beginning of a conversation and moving on to a point-of-view inter-cut as the conversation reaches an important stage stays unobtrusive. The film is astonishingly simple when it comes to directorial technique. But there are slight, masterful variations throughout, which create that unexplainable and thoughtful mood. The over-the-shoulder shots during some conversations are closer than others. And the distance of the camera from the character's shoulder too changes.

In Africa, in the hotel at night, a woman goes on and on about Jews. Eastwood tells her a story. The camera here is quite close to her shoulder. This takes us closer to Eastwood, who utters words crucial in establishing his admirable, irascible character. In other places the camera stays further away, showing us more of the person closer to us. A surprising low-angle shot of Eastwood when he first shows an interest in elephants seems to foreshadow his obsession in the later part of the film. And another striking one when he admits he could live in the hunting lodge forever.

But it's amazing the way these shots blend in so well with the rest. It's like Eastwood finds the thread of film grammar within the story and gives it the precise, slight variation it needs. The cutaways delightfully accompany the narrative. His love for ambient sound is evident here. Most of the music arises from the ambient sound itself. The music, mostly percussion, is spare. The slow tracks into characters' faces during moments of deep thought are there, taking us deeper into their souls.

A surprising directorial decision one gets to see is his visual treatment of Africa. There are no ‘˜beautiful' shots of African landscapes and its animals except those the characters actually come across in the story. The temptation many face while shooting in Africa is to fit in a few stunning ‘˜Nat Geo' shots to enhance the feel of the location. Eastwood doesn't succumb to it. I don't think he even cares. Africa is seen from an extremely visually realistic point of view.

Unforgiven is dark. His love for gloomy images probably started with Bird. And it stayed throughout Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby and onwards. Dark images are ideal in accompanying feelings of distance and introspection. Leave considerable parts of your visual dark and you create a depth of mood. That, along with the music is enough to pull the viewer in. Scenes of his house in Unforgiven, the campfire, the bar, and the end, are all quite dark. The day exteriors are relatively more cheerful. But the crucial exterior scene between Eastwood and the Kid after the kid has killed the cowboy and they wait for the payment, is darker. And it works because the weather in the story changes. A storm arrives.

What also creates that beautiful flow, common to all his films, is the consistency of his mise-en-scene. The relationship he creates between background and foreground within a frame is essential, given the camera doesn't move without reason. The camera doesn't speak on its own, like that of other great filmmakers, but chooses to move only if the characters move. There is a belief some share, that the camera should move at the same pace as the actors, if moving at all. Eastwood follows it smoothly. The camera itself remains a silent window. Unforgiven uses more close-ups, but none of them uncomfortably close.

In many places the visual volumes are enhanced by selective key-lighting. All not just within the boundaries of reality, but following that reality as an end in itself. The landscape long shots are exposed in conventional ways. It is also interesting how Eastwood takes his characters through lovely terrain. Both with Unforgiven and The Outlaw Josey Wales, the characters travel through beautiful lands photographed in picturesque long shots. This is unlike many Sergio Leonie westerns where the land is all dry and dusty. This juxtaposition of great natural beauty and souls in turmoil give these films that lyrical feel. Again, as with all Eastwood films, one has to think about the music of Unforgiven. Soft and minimalist, it can tell the tale by itself. With that bare melody, Eastwood and Lennie Niehaus express deep sorrow.

One of the best things Eastwood does in Letters from Iwo Jima is create a wise and compassionate hero out of Gen. Kuribayashi. Kuribayashi is composed powerfully in low angle shots. During the first round of disagreements between him and the other officers, where he asks them to coordinate with the army, the difference in treatment is clear. Kuribayashi is shot low angle, important objective shots, while the other two officers are either over-the-shoulder or slight top-angles. It continues, on to the dinner scene between Kuribayashi and Col. Nishi, where they share some Johnny Walker. Here too the low angles for the General. Everywhere the point-of-view cannot be low angle. So often the low angle is a well-chosen objective shot. And that works. It works because if the point-of-views were low-angle, Kuribayashi would seem to be a man who dominates his officers. And not as the team man and incomparable friend that he is. By choosing objective low angles Eastwood creates that admirable personality, as a subtle judgment made by someone present, but not in the frame.

Eastwood's images have progressively become darker. Letters from Iwo Jima utilized every bit of that darkness. Tom Stern lit up the tunnel interiors in extremely realistic ways. That dug-out cave darkness not only heightened war tension, but also provided that mood of moral dilemma as soldiers torn between their duty and their hearts died one after the other. The desaturated colors made it more stark. In the first suicide scene where Kuribayashi's orders were ignored there is some sharp yet very soft and distant background music. There are so many elements in that one scene. Yet it flows like a troubled stream down to its weary, painful end.

Eastwood wields the point-of-view remarkably. Like in the scene between Col. Nishi and the injured American soldier as he asks the wounded man where he is from and tells him about being in the Olympics, the point-of-views give us that feeling of being in the soldiers' place. A little later Nishi reads out a letter from the by now dead soldier's mother. Here we see another technique which Letters from Iwo Jima puts to great use; the reaction shot. Even in Million Dollar Baby reaction shots tell a huge part of the story. They seem essential to Eastwood's directorial craft. When Nishi reads that letter, one can hear the sound of the sea waves. From the beginning they melt in with the rest of the sound design. It's funny; the beautiful sound of sea waves moving along with the shattering blasts of war.

This is probably the only war film which is not loud. The sound edit is near-perfect. At the end, when we return to the archeologists finding the sack of letters which narrate the story, they empty the bag. And we see the words which took us through this tale tumbling out and falling on the cave ground. Slow motion. The voice-overs overlap as the letters slowly reach the ground. Mt. Suribachi and the sea waves, and the piano takes over. It would be an understatement to call the music beautiful, and the film sublime.

Clint Eastwood's directorial style, simple, precise and old-fashioned, bothers only about the story and the characters that live it. The slight variation is probably the only thing one can call visual style. The performances in his films and his direction of sound and music are essential to the dark, deep and painful moods he attempts to create. He is a great director. The first shot of Clint Eastwood at home as he bends down to pray, in Million Dollar Baby, is from behind the open door. The camera doesn't venture into his room, or too close to the man who remains an enigma throughout. The pain starts growing in now, still distant and deep.