It’s funny: I watched my favourite film of 2010—the Coens’ True Grit—on the first day of 2011. Two weeks earlier, I’d seen Henry Hathaway’s original. The latter is a good Western, the former an amazing one. The ’69 version does have its comparative strengths (Mattie’s horse bartering scene is longer and easier to follow, the first Act is more substantial, and there is more action, in the sense of characters doing things: Mattie tumbling, not walking, down a mountain before meeting the coward Tom Chaney by the river; the convict in the cabin de-feathering a turkey, rather than simply sitting, before turning on his friend, etc.), but the remake has it beat on almost all other counts.
I won’t dare say that Jeff Bridges is a better Cogburn than John Wayne, which, in addition to being blasphemy would also be untrue, as John Wayne is Rooster Cogburn and Jeff Bridges is, in that sense, playing John Wayne as much as Rooster, but Hailee Steinfeld and Matt Damon are both more entertaining as their respective characters than Kim Darby and Glen Campbell. It’s a defense of sorts that the characters they play are more refined and, in Damon’s case, better-written than their original counterparts, though such an argument, taken too far, threatens to take away from the performances. Damon’s LeBoeuf is a hoot and given a respect that the first film unfairly denied him. He’s still funny, but he’s no buffoon.
And lest I forget that films are made by people behind the camera, I’ll add that Roger Deakin’s cinematography is expectedly lush and gorgeous. True Grit is one fine-lookin’ movie!
I haven’t read Charles Portis’ novel, but have read that the Coens are more faithful to it. Perhaps as a result their film has a tighter narrative logic than the lighter, more frolicking, Hathaway version. Then again, I’ve heard the Coens’ (and Portis’) “years later” coda called silly and their film dubbed “emotionally unengaging”, a criticism that, given my own experience (as emotionally caught up as in no other film that year), I don’t understand one bit. To each her own.
Maybe I’m way off on my own little crazy island, but there’s a sadness that permeates the story and is underlined in the true ending. Rooster lives out his days, and he lives to be quite old, as a traveling attraction. Mattie enters middle age alone and with no prospect of togetherness. Hence, as much as anything, True Grit is the story of the tragic impossibility of their romance. They are, in a spiritual sense, perfect for each other; yet they were born too long apart. I yawned during The Notebook. Here, I held my breath.
There’s one scene in the new True Grit that cranks up the surrealism and threatens to take the film down a more familiar Coen path. It doesn’t, and, on the basis of that restraint, we have a great way to spend two hours. Because whatever that film might have been, this one is better. Lesson: sometimes it’s good to do the conventional; and do it to perfection.
PS: My favourite scene is the river crossing. In the original, Rooster watches with admiration as Mattie, stubborn and determined, emerges on the other side—commenting, “She reminds me of me.” In the remake, there is no spoken explanation. There’s just a look.
This Defeasible Life 