Yuna@yuna_y

Follow

The Good the Bad and the Ugly cemetery scene

Most Westerns are lucky if they get one thing right. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which came out in 1966, gets everything right, and I am tired of pretending otherwise. Sergio Leone built the whole thing around greed, around war, around three men who could not be more different, and somehow none of it dates. What I keep coming back to is that last scene in the cemetery. The closest a movie has gotten to something I would actually call religious. And the person holding it all together is not the guy you think. Eastwood is cool, sure. Van Cleef is genuinely scary. But Eli Wallach as Tuco is the reason the movie works. He is a disaster of a human being, ridiculous and petty and mean, and then out of nowhere he is the most human one on screen. Nobody else could have pulled that off. The part people underrate is how much of this is a war movie. Leone keeps pulling you away from the gold and back to the Civil War, back to all the killing that adds up to nothing. "I've never seen so many men wasted so badly." That one lands harder every time. The treasure is not the point. People being stupid is the point. So the plot: three ruthless men, during the Civil War, hunting $200,000 in buried gold across a ruined landscape. Alliances form. Betrayals pile up. The greatest treasure hunt in movie history, and the person next to you is the most dangerous thing in it.

1h

Yuna@yuna_y

Follow

The Good the Bad and the Ugly cemetery scene

Most Westerns are lucky if they get one thing right. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which came out in 1966, gets everything right, and I am tired of pretending otherwise. Sergio Leone built the whole thing around greed, around war, around three men who could not be more different, and somehow none of it dates. What I keep coming back to is that last scene in the cemetery. The closest a movie has gotten to something I would actually call religious. And the person holding it all together is not the guy you think. Eastwood is cool, sure. Van Cleef is genuinely scary. But Eli Wallach as Tuco is the reason the movie works. He is a disaster of a human being, ridiculous and petty and mean, and then out of nowhere he is the most human one on screen. Nobody else could have pulled that off. The part people underrate is how much of this is a war movie. Leone keeps pulling you away from the gold and back to the Civil War, back to all the killing that adds up to nothing. "I've never seen so many men wasted so badly." That one lands harder every time. The treasure is not the point. People being stupid is the point. So the plot: three ruthless men, during the Civil War, hunting $200,000 in buried gold across a ruined landscape. Alliances form. Betrayals pile up. The greatest treasure hunt in movie history, and the person next to you is the most dangerous thing in it.

1h