It’s hard to imagine cinema without Clint Eastwood. Born three years after the first “talkie,” the American actor and director has been around almost as long as the medium itself. After finding a rare success western actor Having shaped an entire genre in his own hard-boiled image, Eastwood has become one of the most prolific and celebrated filmmakers around, directing everything from jazz biopics (Bird), to war dramas (Heartbreak Hill), romantics (Madison County Bridges). Next year Eastwood will be 95 years old. His latest film is a Hitchcockian legal drama Jury #2its 40th. A thoughtful cover fitting for a truly remarkable career. So why was this movie “buried” then?

At least that’s the word floating around. Jury #2The film, which stars Nicholas Hoult as a pregnant father on the jury in a murder case, is being released on only 50 screens across the US. It is also being released in limited numbers in the UK. Perhaps this is a sign of how Eastwood’s stock has fallen in recent years. It might be weird to suggest this to a man. won four Academy Awards He doesn’t get the respect he deserves, but in Eastwood’s case, that may be true.

Criticisms of Eastwood’s acting date back decades. The late Ray Liotta once called Eastwood the most “overrated” actor of his time, and there were certainly others who agreed. It’s true, of course, that Eastwood has his tics as an artist. Squinting, steely stoicism: it’s no wonder it became such popular fodder for the Impressionists. But Eastwood’s best roles were also performances that required considerable skill; Like few others, he could convey touching and mysterious things. Criticisms of their filmmaking mastery are somewhat more recent, however; It is a reaction to the moderate post-film efforts.Million Dollar Baby In 2004.

When you look back at Eastwood’s late-career output, you can see where this disdain comes from. anti-racist drama Gran Torino (2008) was trite and problematic; paranormal drama Hereafter It was confused and dull. Hoover drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio J Edgar It was a complete disaster. There was a critical rise in 2014 American SniperThe film features Bradley Cooper as a sanitized version of real-life Navy Seal Chris Kyle; but the film’s six Oscar nominations were overshadowed by troubling racial politics and a truly laughable scene involving a fake baby. Drug trafficking drama Mule It was rightly mocked for including the almost 90-year-old hero (Eastwood) in not one but two complete threesomes.

However, not all of Eastwood’s recent films can be written off so easily. Sully (2016), starring Tom Hanks as Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the beleaguered airline pilot who crashes a plane into the Hudson River, was a perfect win; It’s a taut and surprisingly moving drama, played like a meatier version of Robert Zemeckis. Flight. Richard Jewell (2019) was another headline-grabbing drama starring Paul Walter Hauser as a naive security guard accused of orchestrating a terrorist incident. It’s a propulsive film, backed by a terrific central performance. Replies Jury #2 It was mixed, but some reviews rated it as Eastwood’s best in decades. For all its editing, it is a masterful and very powerful work, made all the more interesting by being thoroughly old-fashioned. It’s the kind of movie that no one makes anymore; A drama that would have seemed unfamiliar 80 years ago.

But that may be part of the problem. The problem a lot of people have with Eastwood is that he’s old-fashioned. His films tend to be low-key and classical in approach, even when dealing with contemporary stories and ideas. As a filmmaker, Eastwood sits somewhere on the border between auteur and hired gun; more of an idea man than a stylist. As a man, Eastwood is also politically unfashionable; a solid Republican in an industry where liberalism rules. One of Eastwood’s enduring images in recent years was the actor addressing an empty chair at the Republican National Convention in 2012 as if he were Barack Obama. (He later dismissed the much-discussed stunt as “that stupid thing at the Republican convention.”) But Eastwood did criticize Donald Trump, a warning that would temper his left-wing credentials a bit. circles.

To some extent, Eastwood is a victim of our need for a neat narrative. What do we do with a man who has left his own legend behind? In 1992, Eastwood directed and starred in the revisionist western film. unforgivableA masterful reflection and deconstruction of the eponymous genre. The film is Eastwood’s greatest achievement as a director; A work that brings together the two halves of his career, retrospectively deepening and enriching all the musketeers before him. There could be no more appropriate swan song than this, and the cinema community knew it. unforgivable It won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director and saw Eastwood nominated for Best Actor.

Of course, this bittersweet farewell wasn’t actually a farewell. Twelve years later Eastwood repeated the feat with these words: Million Dollar BabyA moving sports melodrama in which he plays a seventy-year-old trainer who takes a courageous female boxer (Hilary Swank) under his wing. The film won Best Picture and Best Director for Swank and Morgan Freeman, as well as Best Actress and Supporting Actor, and another nomination for Eastwood’s performance. ThisAs it turned out, it was his swan song after all, a touching triumph for an actor and filmmaker who was then in his seventies. If you had told people back then that Eastwood still had 15 more movies in the tank, they would have thought you were absolutely crazy.

It is estimated that Jury #2 Really will It will be Eastwood’s last film. Sources close to Eastwood initially told media outlets that he planned to retire after the film was completed; Toni Collette, who starred in the film, later claimed that Eastwood was focusing on his next project. At this point, he has nothing left to prove and no explanation to give. But no matter what, he continues to make films. This is the morality he has lived by for decades.

It is only after he is gone that Eastwood’s career can be appreciated in its vast, tortuous totality. But exactly how much he brings to the table in his absence remains to be seen. He is a relic in the best and most impressive sense of the word, an artist from another life who lived to see and discover modernity. It’s a good thing his career wasn’t over when he rode off into the sunset; There was still a brand new day to enjoy.

‘Jury #2’ is in theaters now