The Mule

In Unfor­giv­en, a weary, weath­ered Clint East­wood plays a retired cow­boy killer called out for one last ride, and a reck­on­ing with his – that is, his character’s, and his career’s – his­to­ry of vio­lence. Hailed as an autum­nal mas­ter­piece, it was the 16^th film the sex­a­ge­nar­i­an East­wood had direct­ed in his 21-year career in the chair. In the 26 years since, he’s made 21 more.

That num­ber is up to and includ­ing The Mule, which, embell­ish­ing a true sto­ry of a 90-year-old drug run­ner for the Sinaloa car­tel, sends direc­tor and star East­wood out on an adven­ture into an even dark­er twi­light, for a final show­down – real­ly, tru­ly this time – with the costs of his own swag­ger­ing mythos. Bar­ring an unex­pect­ed suc­cess for the 118-year-old East­wood in Dirty Dia­per Har­ry: Did I Take Six Pills or Only Five? (2048), The Mule must sure­ly be his defin­i­tive late film.

Film crit­ics might mean any num­ber of things when we talk about ​“late style”, but one def­i­n­i­tion that can be reverse-engi­neer­ing around East­wood is a set of film­mak­ing con­ven­tions refined to such short­hand you can’t tell if the result is senile or tran­scen­dent. Tech­niques of expe­di­ence seem prim­i­tive, while tech­niques of clar­i­ty seem pas­sive, and yet the over­all gestalt seems inef­fa­bly grace­ful. The Mule is a qua­ver­ing echo of clas­si­cal Hol­ly­wood film­mak­ing: old-pro actors get their mouths filled with huge serv­ings of expo­si­tion; the music mir­rors the char­ac­ters’ feel­ings, which are big ele­men­tal yearn­ings; the cam­era points at the action. One thing hap­pens, and then anoth­er thing happens.

This can all feel tin-eared and unso­phis­ti­cat­ed com­pared to today’s hyper­scru­ti­nised block­busters, like maybe there’s nobody there behind the cam­era at all. Where’s Clint wan­dered off to? Does he not know how con­stant­ly you have to work to per­suade today’s audi­ences to sus­pend their dis­be­lief? These days, too, I’m haunt­ed by the bizarre banal­i­ty of Eastwood’s aes­thet­ic – his choice of loca­tions and unfussi­ness with light­ing, which, always util­i­tar­i­an, per­sists into some of mod­ern America’s ugli­est loca­tions: a car­pet­ed fly­over-coun­try hotel ball­room; a Waf­fle House; an inter­state high­way carv­ing up what was once the West, where an old man in a fisherman’s cap dri­ves a late-mod­el pick­up truck with more horse­pow­er than he needs, singing along to oldies radio, off-beat and off-key. I swear, it’s like if the ad agency that came up with the Marl­boro Man just kept pho­tograph­ing the same mod­el even after he got diag­nosed with lung cancer.

The retro pan­der­ing of The Mule is so clunky it’s poignant. Eastwood’s char­ac­ter Earl Stone is, like Gran Tori­no​’s Walt Kowal­s­ki, a Kore­an War vet and codger-camp icon. In the film’s first line of dia­logue, Earl roasts a Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can friend with a depor­ta­tion joke, East­wood at once bait­ing some imag­ined PC-police audi­ence and set­ting up his char­ac­ter as a man trag­i­cal­ly out of time. Earl Stone is a renowned hor­ti­cul­tur­al­ist, King of the Day Lilies and the biggest swing­ing dick at the local flower show. He cracks Via­gra jokes in a seer­suck­er suit and toss­es back Crown Roy­als, delight­ing in his hilar­i­ous­ly mea­gre rewards.

But he’s quick­ly aged up a decade, into a sketchy out­line of orner­i­ness filled in with befud­dle­ment. The ​“damned inter­net” has ruined Earl’s busi­ness, and he looks shock­ing­ly shrunk­en, with a shuf­fle in his walk, a tremor in his chick­en-bone arms, and a breathy voice rat­tling out of his fly­catch­ing mouth. Stooped and skele­tal, he’s bare­ly taller than his grand­daugh­ter Gin­ny (Tais­sa Farmi­ga). After a life­time of liv­ing it up on the road and neglect­ing ex-wife Mary (Dianne Wiest) and daugh­ter Iris (Ali­son East­wood), she’s the only fam­i­ly mem­ber who still talks to him, and with his house in fore­clo­sure, he allows him­self to be recruit­ed by a local car­tel affiliate.

He becomes ​“Tata”, their prized tran­sit man. At first he asks no ques­tions about the assault rifles they car­ry, the bags they throw into his trunk, or the burn­er phone he’s instruct­ed to answer (and on which he only grad­u­al­ly and begrudg­ing­ly learns how to text). But maybe Earl is sli­er and less out of it than he appears. Maybe East­wood is, too.

Despite the omi­nous trail­er, and the pres­ence of Andy Gar­cia as a pol­i­tick­ing drug lord, drip­py with grav­i­tas, and Bradley Coop­er as a buz­z­cut, soft-spo­ken DEA agent, The Mule is large­ly a lacon­ic road movie, with Earl dri­ving past bill­boards, mum­bling along to ​‘Ain’t That a Kick in the Head’, and snack­ing. Even sus­pense sequences have the drawl­ing molasses com­e­dy of that oth­er late-life heart­land picaresque, The Straight Sto­ry, like when he makes up a sto­ry about a dog named ​“Dook­ie” to get a high­way patrol­man off his tail. Earl’s dod­der­ing is the per­fect cov­er – who’d sus­pect him? – and the per­fect jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, too: sure­ly he’s just a guile­less dupe, right?

But it also allows him to get what­ev­er he wants: to play con­fused in a cri­sis; to win over his han­dlers until they raise their hands at his harm­less intractabil­i­ty and let him pull over for junk food when­ev­er he wants; to appear fogey­ish and good at heart to the strangers he meets, whose approval he needs with a trav­el­ing salesman’s des­per­a­tion. Maybe he’s even fool­ing himself.

His moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for going out on the road are increas­ing­ly flim­sy: to raise some mon­ey for a local char­i­ty; to pay for the open bar at his granddaughter’s wed­ding; to ​“be some­body,” to soak up affec­tion from any source, even if it means being a mas­cot, danc­ing like a mor­bid mar­i­onette and mak­ing heart-attack jokes when attend­ed to by a cou­ple of pros­ti­tutes beside a drug lord’s pool. There’s no lim­it to how piti­ful­ly he’s will­ing to self-dep­re­cate, as long as it means he doesn’t have to go home from the par­ty while oth­er peo­ple are still hav­ing fun.

East­wood nev­er appears quite as abject as anoth­er vain­glo­ri­ous geri­atric drug-run­ner, Burt Lan­cast­er in Atlantic City, cry­ing out, ​“I’m a lover!”, but The Mule is quite delib­er­ate in its self-crit­i­cism. This is due in equal parts to Nick Schenk’s script and Eastwood’s direc­tion. Earl keeps buy­ing things he doesn’t need, and the cam­era only seems to notice once anoth­er char­ac­ter does. Wiest is the first to notice a gold bracelet on his wrist. A long-lens POV shot when Earl is under sur­veil­lance is when the film real­ly reg­is­ters his appetite for sex­u­al con­quest, undi­min­ished by his evi­dent phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al frailty.

Late East­wood films like Gran Tori­no or The 15:17 to Paris are tan­ta­lis­ing­ly ambigu­ous because the unruf­fled, creaky film­mak­ing allows us to see the musti­ness of their unques­tioned assump­tions about mas­culin­i­ty, about vio­lence, about Hollywood’s role in Amer­i­can myth­mak­ing. The Mule, like Unfor­giv­en, sees East­wood in a more open­ly wary, intro­spec­tive mood. While the ear­li­er film sec­ond-guessed the genre that made him a star, this one hits clos­er to the heart, to Eastwood’s own roller­coast­er per­son­al life.

And so the old-fash­ioned sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty of the end­ing – the puri­ty of the les­son that Earl at last learns about humil­i­ty, love and fam­i­ly, and the broad­ness of the humour that leav­ens it. It feels at once ful­ly earned, and deeply sus­pect. Is this just that iras­ci­ble Grand­pa Clint’s last, most art­ful dodge? The Mule is a beau­ti­ful, trou­bling film. It is a pearl formed around a grit of unease in the oys­ter of our nostalgia.