Directed by: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen.
Written by: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen based on the novel by Charles Portis.
Starring: Jeff Bridges (Rooster Cogburn), Hailee Steinfeld (Mattie Ross), Matt Damon (LaBoeuf ), Josh Brolin (Tom Chaney), Barry Pepper (Lucky Ned Pepper), Paul Rae (Emmett Quincy), Dakin Matthews (Col. Stonehill), Jarlath Conroy (Undertaker), Domhnall Gleeson (Moon (The Kid)), Elizabeth Marvel (40-Year-Old Mattie), Roy Lee Jones (Yarnell), Ed Corbin (Bear Man).
True
Grit is the type of remake I would like to see more of. The original 1969 film
directed by old school studio hand Henry Hathaway and starring John Wayne (in
an Oscar winning role) already seemed dated when it was released. Wayne was
capable of greatness – in films as varied as Red River (1948), The Searchers
(1956), Rio Bravo (1959) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) among
others – but he was also had no real problem coasting on his iconic image.
That’s pretty much what he did in True Grit – which in his and Hathaway’s hands
was a nostalgic Western with a clear division between good and evil and a
simplistic way of looking at the world. In the same year that Sam Peckinpah’s
The Wild Bunch pretty much put a nail in the coffin of the traditional Western
as it had been made since the dawn of movies, Hathaway and Wayne pretty much
didn’t take notice, and made one the old way. The result is an okay film – that
would probably not be very well remembered today had the Academy decided not to
give Wayne his only acting Oscar for the role – a move largely seen as a
sympathy vote as Wayne had never won, and had recently been diagnosed with
cancer. The Charles Portis novel on which the film was based was not quite as
simplistic as the movie Hathaway and Wayne made out of it – Rooster Cogburn was
not quite the one dimensional hero Wayne played him as. The ending of the novel
was not supposed to be as triumphant as the 1969 film showed it as. If nothing
else, than the Coens 2010 remake shows that the world of True Grit is not as
black and white as we always assumed it was.
The
story is about Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) – a 13 year old girl whose father
has been gunned down by the cowardly Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) – who has since
teamed up with Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper) and his gang, and lit out for
the Indian territory. The Sheriff doesn’t care – he isn’t his problem anymore
as he’s out of town. And without an incentive, the U.S. Marshalls won’t spend
much effort tracking him down either. So Mattie asks the Sheriff who the best
Marshall they have is – and is told that Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) is
certainly the meanest. We are introduced to Rooster in a courtroom scene, where
he’s being cross examined by a defense lawyer who dwells on how many men
Rooster has killed in carrying out his duties. It’s so many Rooster isn’t quite
sure of the number. That’s enough for Mattie – who hires Rooster to track down
Tom Chaney for her – on the condition that she is coming along with him when
she does. They are joined by a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) who
doesn’t much care for Rooster. The feeling is mutual.
In many
ways, True Grit is the most straight forward of the Coen brothers films. They
have often worked in genre films, but take those classic genres and twist them
to make a film that is unmistakably their own. They don’t really do that with
True Grit – which to a certain extent is as much as a throwback to an earlier
time as the original True Grit was. This film would sit more comfortably
alongside the Westerns of the late 1960s and 1970s – when the genre was
becoming darker than it previously had been, and more cynical.
As played
by Jeff Bridges, Rooster Cogburn is not a straight ahead hero, as John Wayne’s
version was. He seems older, is certainly an alcoholic, and has the appearance
of a pile of old, smelly clothes. He is, as the defense attorney accuses him of
being, a cold blooded killer – but not one without a certain degree of charm
and humor – at least to the audience. As Mattie Ross, Hailee Steinfeld (in her
debut performance) is even better than Bridges – the movie is hers, and she
carries it effortlessly – from bargaining with a crooked horse dealer, to her
single minded pursuit of Tom Chaney, her Mattie Ross is tougher than Kim
Darby’s was in the original – more capable of taking care of herself, and less
willing to take a backseat to the men. Matt Damon, who unlike his two co-stars
wasn’t nominated for an Oscar (although he should have been) is their equal as
LaBeouf – a man whose tough guy act really is more of an act than anything else
– one that he uses to disguise his own insecurities. When he finally arrives in
the movie, Josh Brolin’s Tom Chaney is more pathetic than anything else – a sad
loser, unwanted by everyone. He is a “bad guy” to be sure, but not that hateful
of one.
To
watch the two different versions of True Grit is to see how completely
different two films that tells the same plot, have the same characters, and has
much of the same dialogue – both screenplays borrow heavily from Portis’ novel
in terms of dialogue. But the original film was a straight ahead, heroic
Western – that ends in triumph when Cogburn finally admits that Mattie Ross
really does has “true grit”. In The Coen brothers world, this same conclusion
is played on a note of sadness – a feeling that Mattie, not to mention Rooster,
have essentially wasted their lives. When we see Mattie in the closing scenes
of this movie as a 40 year old woman, she doesn’t seem to have changed at all
since she was 13 – she is still stubborn, still alone, still has the same
viewpoint on the world around her. She will, most likely, die alone, as we
learn that Rooster eventually did. As for LaBeouf, we don’t learn what happened
to him – and I take that as perhaps the only hopeful note in the films closing
scenes. He always did have slightly more insight than either Rooster or Mattie
– and perhaps he was smart enough to move on with his life.
As I
mentioned off the top, this is the type of remake I would like to see more of.
I see little point in simply remaking a classic film and simply repeating
everything the original film did the first time around. If you’re going to do
that, you may as well not do it at all, because the original film already did
it. But when you remake a film like True Grit – one I don’t consider to be
particularly good in the first place – you can find interesting differences to
explore. That’s what the Coen brothers do in True Grit. As a Western, True Grit
is exciting, action packed, old school entertainment – with great performances
and cinematography. Perhaps the Coens simply made it because they were sticking
to the old formula of “one for you, one for them” – and True Grit was the most
successful of the brothers film at the box office. Or perhaps they did it
because they wanted to make an old fashioned Western – or because they felt
Portis’ novel deserved better than it got from Hathaway and Wayne. I really
don’t know why the brothers made it – and I really don’t care. Perhaps, as some
have said, True Grit is the least personal of the brothers films. Fair enough.
It doesn’t quite have the hallmarks we normally associate with the Coen films –
unless you include in those hallmarks great performances, fine storytelling and
amazing Roger Deakins cinematography, in which True Grit certainly delivers. It
may well be the least “Coen-esque” of all of the Coen films – but that doesn’t
mean it isn’t a wonderful film in its own right.
No comments:
Post a Comment