Through a Screen Darkly by Jeffrey Overstreet

Author:Jeffrey Overstreet [Overstreet, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Motion pictures—Religious aspects—Christianity, Motion pictures—Moral and religious aspects
ISBN: 9781441224286
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-12T00:00:00+00:00

Betrayed by Legends

If W.W. Beauchamp, the gunslingers’ biographer in Unforgiven, were a screenwriter today, he might have written Man on Fire.

When we meet Beauchamp, he is accompanying a would-be assassin, English Bob, by train into the town of Big Whiskey. Beauchamp is so enraptured with the glory of these vigilantes that it’s likely his writings have influenced the Schofield Kid’s romantic notions about trigger-happy heroes.

We watch as English Bob talks big, describing his own leg endary exploits with such drama that the imagination reels. Saucer-eyed, Beauchamp scribbles them down in his journal, raw material for a book he intends to publish as The Duke of Death.

“The Duck of Death,” laughs Little Bill, the Big Whiskey sheriff, after he has beaten English Bob half to death and then locked him up in a holding cell. Shaken, Beauchamp can only sit and listen as the sheriff debunks tales of English Bob one by one, revealing to the writer what a wretch, a coward and a drunkard Bob really is. In doing so, of course, Little Bill begins to set himself up as the true champion of Western justice. You can hear him shift from belittling Bob to the beginnings of his own campaign to be seen as a hero. “I do not like assassins,” he dramatically intones, “or men of low character.” He says it boldly, but slowly, so Beauchamp can write it all down.

We have seen Little Bill’s low character, however, and we know the truth. In their zeal to become the deliverer of God’s judgment, men sometimes forget that they themselves depend on God’s grace and can end up becoming too much like the monsters they abhor. So long as they have good PR men at their side, though, they can do damage control and make themselves the stuff of thrilling rumors. They can strike awe into the hearts of folks like the Schofield Kid.

And so it is that, long after the hollow shell of English Bob has been exported from Big Whiskey, Little Bill goes on to teach other assassins the hard lessons that he thinks they deserve. The Kid, having learned the hard way what killing is really about, sobs quietly on the hilltop, gulping down whiskey to silence his dismay.

“It’s a hell of a thing, killin’ a man,” Munny states flatly. “Takin’ away all he’s got, and all he’s ever gonna have.”

“Yeah.” The kid takes another swig of the bottle and searches for a rationalization to appease his conscience. In his mind’s eye, he can see the face of the man he killed. “Well,” says the kid. “I guess he had it comin’.”

“We all have it comin’ kid,” says Munny.

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