Birthday of the Stars of Hollywood – An icon of the cinema is 90 and stumbles, none has dealt in-depth with American heroes, and myths than Clint Eastwood. And yet, in his latest feature film “Richard Jewell” under an embarrassing Schnitzer runs to him.Hans Jürg Zinsli11 Kommentare11Spezialist for American Heroes: Clint Eastwood in a recording of 2013. 31. May, he is 90.Photo: Keystone

“He has this indescribable Something, which represents the Best of America. He is direct, strong, resolute and honest.” The film’s Director Don Siegel, Clint Eastwood said, after he had staged his Star in the Sixties and seventies, almost nonstop.

at that time, Eastwood after he did in Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western as the taciturn anti – hero of the breakthrough on the way to Superstar. And seal formed from the huge athlete a grim asphalt cowboy (“Dirty Harry,” 1971), he let him argue with a fake nun in the desert (“Two Mules for Sister Sara”, 1970) and put him as a sufferer nature with the outbreak of the plans to the high-security prison (“Escape from Alcatraz”, 1979).

the Different roles of the same type: Eastwood embodied – in contrast to the myriad of flawless Hollywood heroes before, the advocate of his own legislative ideas. You could be for or against him, you could admire its not on all doubt sublime morals, or despise. He spoke for all and said often, not a word.

Clint Eastwood: His career in the Video-fast-forward.Video: Sacha Black/Webvideo Tamedia

the actor Eastwood built on the own myth, before the Director Eastwood began the Mythical to America to Shine through. He himself once said: “Every actor needs something Special. Only this makes him to be a Star, while a whole lot of damn good actors is overlooked. But the audience is only due to Stars at the box office.”

The more you are surprised, when in the East woods latest Film lingers the camera on a overweight Average guy: Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser), in the eighties, a simple office messenger, pushes his cart through the aisles and overheard the lawyer, Watson Bryant (Sam Rockwell), who appears just a politician on the phone together. Silence, Amazement, Embarrassment. Jewell is noted; he admits that it is to listen was not appropriate, and soon, you’ll see the two in the game hall together on the video Game Aliens shooting at them.

It could be a weird buddy story, the Clint Eastwood developed as a Genre, he has recorded also, for example, in “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” (1974) next to the young Jeff Bridges. But if you consider the East woods to the Output of the last couple of years, is self-evident that it must also go in the “Richard Jewell” in the first line to the heroes question.

From hero to scapegoat

It is East woods is life, and there are in the U.S. anyone who has had it illuminated so comprehensively as the tireless Californians, the on 31. May 90-is-standing – for example, in his great Western disenchantment “Unforgiven” (1992), where a washed-up swineherd again picks up a gun. Or in connection with the Second world war, where Eastwood the happenings on a Pacific island American (“Flags of our Fathers”), and once from the Japanese perspective (“Letters from Iwo Jima”, both in 2006) reflected.

Hero or anti-hero? Friend or foe? This question leads in “Richard Jewell” to soon that fate 27. July 1996. It is the day of the now as a security guard, which is active Enough on the visit to the site of the Olympic games of Atlanta, discovered a suspicious backpack. A pipe is the bomb and it explodes.

Richard Jewell (Paul Walter Hauser, center) tries to prevent a bomb explosion at the 1996 Olympics. Photo: Warner Bros.

But thanks to Jewell, has sounded the Alarm and the evacuation help, the number of dead and injured is relatively low. For three days the man who still lives with his mother (Kathy Bates) is celebrated as a Hero. Then, however, the mood flips: What if Jewell has placed the bomb? This Redneck fits due to his appearance and his Hobbies (of weapons) not exactly to the offender profile? The FBI starts to investigate, the media is a shoot on him.

Typical Eastwood, I would like to think. And Yes, this “Richard Jewell” gets a whole compendium of the East wood’s epics, in memory, especially “Sully” (2016), that movie about the pilot Chesley Sully, the notwasserte 2009, a passenger plane on the Hudson River. Also Sully was hailed as a Savior, until he fell by the flight safety authority is under attack – it is the Central conflict in that Film.

However, there were also voices that Eastwood and his screenwriter Todd Komarniki accused to have been the work of the investigating authority to be unrecognizable distorted. The Problem here is that Eastwood is a Director known for straightforward and to the stage without many repetitions (and most of the time the good) comes. But in real figures, the risk of falsification, there is always, in the worst case, the dramatic aggravation of the situation shortened the biographical model for the cartoon.

In the case of “Richard Jewell” relates to the not in the cross fire of the heroes, but the journalist Kathy Scruggs (Olivia Wilde). She was the one that drew in the newspaper “Atlanta Journal-Constitution” the bomber is suspected of being on Jewell. However, the journalist receives the information necessary in the Film because she does a FBI investigator sexual advances. And then she is also unable to write the article yourself – this is what a colleague takes over.

It is the emancipation of the Defenseless, the must Orient itself in the midst of a media smear campaign new.

These scenes, as you can imagine, fictional, guaranteed, you are nowhere. The more you may be surprised that the Director has taken such a stale clichés of his screenwriter Billy Ray (“Captain Phillips”, “The Hunger Games”) not to worry.

Where Eastwood has proved in his films many times as he circumnavigates the cliché traps, and uses it to his advantage; most clearly, perhaps, in “The Bridges of Madison County” (1995), where a housewife falls in love on the Land (Meryl Streep) in a travelling photographer (Eastwood). It is a melodrama, this would be well-spaced in the case of any other Director, to the Kitschy. Eastwood, however, uses this love story to tell of a native American dream: the Film is about The search for self-determination and happiness – and by the inevitable Fail.

“Richard Jewell”: 6. June in the cinema

The Failure of the latest Film is also in the East woods a key component: You can see that, if the bona fide as loquacious Richard Jewell themselves then answer questions from the FBI, as it has forbidden him to be less-than-stellar lawyer (with whom he shot once on Video-Aliens) for a long time. But this Hero can’t do otherwise, than to speak in front of a loud authority of hearing to the head and neck.

So Eastwood has added to his stately American character Arsenal another showpiece: the emancipation of the Defenseless, the must Orient itself in the midst of a media smear campaign new; a geek, the struggling back to life. And this story is so powerful and clear that you can believe it, after two hours of play hardly, like that stupid Episode with the reporter in this was otherwise flawless late work.

comments please Log in to comment