On May 19, 1992, 17-year-old Amy Fisher walked up to the Massapequa, New York, house that belonged to her married lover, 35-year-old Joey Buttafuoco. When Joey’s wife, Mary Jo, answered the door, Fisher treated her to a concocted story about her even younger (and non-existent) sister having an affair with Mary Jo’s husband–and then shot Mary Jo once in the head.

Not even a month prior to this “Long Island Lolita Incident,” four white Los Angeles police officers were acquitted of assault charges after having been videotaped viciously beating Rodney King, a black man pulled over for a traffic violation. The acquittal sparked intense rage and violence in cities across the U.S. and led to the L.A. Riots in which more than 3,000 fires were started, over 50 people were killed, about 4,000 were injured, and approximately 12,000 were arrested.

Both Mary Jo Buttafuoco and Rodney King survived their attackers, but their assaults were, sadly, just a couple of notable occurrences of violence in a year that saw a film that is also preoccupied with violence win the Academy’s highest award. Although New York and L.A. are certainly not part of the Wild West that features so prominently in Unforgiven (1992; Warner Bros. Production, Warner Bros.), the film’s focus on intoxication and its consequences, gun possession/violence, murder for hire/conspiracy, and police corruption/brutality echoes in the real-life events of both the year of the film’s release and our own present time. Unforgiven asks what it takes to kill another human being–and what that act costs the killer. It examines the role–or, maybe “plight” is a better word–of women in society. It looks at how people are haunted by their pasts and how we cannot escape our previous deeds. It explores what defines each of us as human beings.

Unforgiven beat out major BP contenders such as A Few Good Men and Scent of a Woman to take home Oscar’s big prize. All in all, it won four Academy Awards out of nine nominations: Film Editing, Actor in a Supporting Role for Gene Hackman as Little Bill Daggett, Directing for Clint Eastwood (who became one of only a handful of actors to win an Oscar for his work behind the camera, a feat he would repeat in 2004 with BP Million Dollar Baby), and Best Picture. It failed to win in the categories of Art Direction, Cinematography, Sound, Writing (Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen), and Actor in a Leading Role for Clint Eastwood as Bill Munny.

Unforgiven was only the third Western film to win Best Picture, after 1930/31’s Cimarron and 1990’s Dances with Wolves, and it opts for the approach of the latter more than that of the former–attempting to picture the West as it actually was, rather than creating an idealized form of the American frontier. The result is visually stunning, but morally disturbing at parts–two facts that undoubtedly contributed to both the complexity of the film as well as its Oscar success.

For more thoughts on Unforgiven and its significance, please check out this weekend’s post!