From The Living Church-If the flinty gaze and violent oeuvre of Clint Eastwood have long been your guilty pleasure, rejoice. Sara Anson Vaux has redeemed your little secret. Dirty Harry, it turns out, had an ethical vision. That .44 Magnum was just a trope, a means by which Eastwood could remind us of the wages of sin and the bloody consequences of lex talionis.
As Vaux says in her preface: “Seen along a forty-year continuum, Eastwood’s movies reveal stages in an unfolding moral ontology — a sense of being in the world.” Eastwood, it seems, is interested in the narrative exploration of “justice, confession, war and peace.” So it is time for all of his closeted fans — you know who you are — to come out and enter into conversation with this irascible, iconic and gifted filmmaker.
Of course Eastwood’s oeuvre is more than Dirty Harry or the avenging angel characters of his many westerns. His work consists of an astonishing number and variety of films: J. Edgar, Invictus, Gran Torino, Letters from Iwo Jima, Million Dollar Baby, Mystic River, The Bridges of Madison County, and a host of other projects many of us have never seen. Whatever your view of Eastwood, he is more, much more, than you might suppose. He has directed 31 films to date. His filmography, as listed on IMDb, includes 605 entries, an amazing body of work. Eastwood has been as prolific as he has been influential. And as Vaux makes clear, his artistic and moral vision has constantly evolved, while the themes that interest him have remained remarkably consistent.
More here-
http://www.livingchurch.org/eastwood-and-moral-theology
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