Valor de ley (True Grit)

Few directors working today in America have mastered form like the Coens, I discover this with every new film they make. True Grit is a commercial film made to please but I don't see a compromise in the making and it's still a distinctly Coen film if you pay notice. Try to take out the Coen character from the film and the film breaks apart, it's that tightly woven in the fabric of it.

A Coen film works for me in the face of it, but I'm always on the lookout for what goes on behind, for the unseen cogs that grind out the fates of their characters. As with No Country, I came to this film looking to see is there a statement on violence, does it happen in a certain way and is the universe indifferent to it, is life worth a damn?

This one here works very much like the Henry Hathaway film from '69, except everyone's better, where John Wayne played a character, Jeff Bridges plays a man, and even Barry Pepper betters my beloved Robert Duvall's turn as Ned Pepper. This probably won't do it for Jeff Bridges because we've been accustomed to expect a certain degree of po-faced seriousness from a great performance (he snarled and staggered in Crazy Heart but he was serious about it), but he's one of the great actors of our times and I find this again in his Rooster Cogburn. Clint Eastwood also fell from a horse in Unforgiven and couldn't shoot a tin can to save his soul, but Munny "was" a scumbag, Cogburn still is and I like that. I like the courtroom scene where it's gradually revealed that he won't only bushwack those he needs to bring to justice, he will lie to make himself out to be the hero.

Another interesting aspect here is how the concept of the gunslinger and the western with it has evolved. When John Wayne played Cogburn in the Hathaway film the reward for the audience was the smirk of watching John Wayne be that drunken failure. The casting mattered in our appreciation. In the remake, most comments seem to point out that it's a fairly traditional/entertaining western. The dastardly revisit of something that was revisionist in the 70's oddly seems to give, in our day, a traditional western. We've been accustomed to heroes who are not heroes, and maybe the erosion of that heroic archetype says something about the way we view the world now, as opposed to 30-40 years ago. Then we were beginning to realize that wars are not gloriously, justly won but survived and endured, now we know there is no clear struggle between dual opposites and have grown disenchanted as that knowledge has failed to prevent the same wars. Now we know there is stuff about the legends that don't make the print, or we are suspicious enough about legends to imagine them.

Is this a traditional western then? Watching True Grit through the eyes of the brass 14yo girl reminded me of Winter's Bone, another film from the same year. In both cases a young girl is determined to plunge herself in a dark world of hurt and walk a path fraught with perils on all sides to achieve a moral purpose, both films maintain an appearance of realism, but what I get from them is a magical fantasy. This becomes more apparent when Mattie falls in the snakepit, but what about the hanged men who are really hanged high? The Hathaway film, ostensibly based on the same material, missed that note and played out a straight western. The Coen film unfolds as a hazy dream of that West. Although I wished for more open landscapes, it makes sense then that film narrows our gaze and clouds the margins. Perhaps we are even seeing the film as Mattie relives the experience in her old age, an affair shaped by memory and time.

This is the marvellous touch effected by the Coens on the material; the minute recreation of the Old West as a historical place and the odd, incongruous moments found within it annihilate any authority over the material.

The epilogue is important in that aspect.

It's not only that Mattie's revenge didn't accomplish anything, that it was for her merely another practical inconvenience to be bargained, paid for, and settled, like her father's ponies and saddle or the service of the US Marshall before, but that she clings to the memory of it so fiercely. What's horrifying then is not so much the violence of the West but the idealization of that violence. The film closes in a time around the turn of the century, people like Cogburn roosted in Wild West shows for a cheering audience, and Mattie is one of the people who lived to tell the tales. Out of those tales, the western of John Ford and Raoul Walsh emerged to print the legend. In a roundabout fantastic way, the Coens give us the true account, the creation myth behind the western.

I wasn't sure how to take the news that the Coen brothers were remaking the John Wayne film True Grit and I remained unsure even when it was clear that they were not so much remaking the film as making a different version of the original book. How would their humour and oddity sit in this story, how would their normal arch cynicism and cleverness work here? Well in reality it doesn't really come into play because they have made a film that is surprisingly free of that side of their work while also containing just enough in terms of characters and dialogue to make it their own. Mostly though what True Grit does is deliver an enjoyable story in an engaging and satisfying manner.

While I don't agree with IMDb observer-in-chief tedg's overall rating for the film, he is correct when he says that the western as a genre has really been thoroughly explored and it is hard to bring freshness to such a film. The Cohen's struggle with this a little bit because it doesn't feel like "their take" on a genre so much as it does just feel like a western full stop. This perhaps limits them in terms of their own style but it does mean that they are focused on the telling of the story rather than anything else they may have added for colour. The end result of this is that the film is actually a really solidly told story that perhaps doesn't soar or have flamboyance or colourful touches but it does still engage as a tale. The story will be known to those familiar with the Wayne film but the slant very much onto Mattie makes it feel like a different story, albeit with much familiar about it. It is well told though and I found myself engaged by it just as much as I was never really thrilled by it. It has heart in its main character, it has a forward motion and it has a nice touch of humour throughout.

The key to it is the performance from Steinfeld. She may well have been put forward for Supporting Actress in a political move by the studio but she is the heart and soul of this film. Her performance makes her Mattie a stubborn youth but one with juts enough vulnerability about her to suggest some of it is a front to cover herself in this regard. While she never struck me as a person that would exist within this story, she did convince me as a character and she was a delight to watch – this is her story and she makes it such. This puts Bridges in the supporting role and he is great there, having fun with the role and adding colour to things. Damon underplays wisely – sparking nicely off Bridges but letting these two having the light. Brolin, Pepper and others all deliver solid turns without stealing anything. Perhaps aware of what the genre is best known for (the landscapes) Deakins is restrained; where he made art with Jesse James, here he focuses on the smaller moments – the light from a campfire, the falling of snow – and he captures them excellently. At some point he will win his Oscar – maybe this is it but certainly his body of work cries out for it.

True Grit is not quite the brilliant piece of work that the "for your consideration" campaign would have you believe but it is a great piece of storytelling. The Coen brothers deliver some fine dialogue and colour but leave the telling free of cynicism or snideness (not a word, but you know what I mean). The story engaged me and is only made better by the strong pair of performances in the lead – but particularly Steinfeld, who makes this film in the same way that Portman made Black Swan this year.

If there's something to be said for classicism, it's certainly proved in Joel and Ethan Coen's 2010 Western drama True Grit. The adventure begins in 19th century Arkansas, where 14 year old tough-as- nails cowgirl Maddie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) sets out to avenge her father's murder at the hands of outlaw Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). With the most relentless local bounty hunter by her side in Reuben J. Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), she is determined to bring justice to her cause. Complications arise when the pair cross paths with the hotshot LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), a Texas Ranger who is confidently taking aim at the same man. After a series of alliances and realignments Maddie finds herself face-to-face with Chaney; her quivery hand clutching a silver pistol and her mind wrestling with the most important decision yet.

True Grit is a more than worthy successor to it's 1969 predecessor, as the Coen Brothers have followed more strictly the original 1968 novel by Charles Portis. The retention of the female narrator gives the plot an intimate personal aspect, encouraging the audience to root for Maddie throughout her adventure.

Hailee Steinfeld is a surprisingly mature newcomer to the screen, holding her own next to the incomparable talents of Bridges and Damon. With cowboys, outlaws, gun fights and plenty of hard boiled dialogue, True Grit is a classically made conventional western, whose brilliantly raw cinematography transports the audience to the dusty plains of the old west; a land of revenge, passion and grit.

The least "Coen" of all of the Coens films is also one of their finest. It has a few Coen inflections to it (Damon's twang of a voice, a few random mustached characters crossing paths with our heroes) but for the most part it's a lot more straight forward and less humored. Surprisingly this doesn't detract from the film at all, which is a riveting character journey in classic old school Hollywood fashion. And while generally "old school Hollywood fashion" would be something I would cringe and run away from, the Coens make it enjoyable, emotional and breathtaking. The technical qualities are all astounding; fantastic costumes, a beautiful score and some of the most exquisite cinematography I have ever seen, courtesy of the always reliable Roger Deakins. It's such an entertaining film, with some emotional power that resonates afterwards. There's a lot of twists that I didn't see it taking and none of the characters ended up being what I initially expected them to be. There's a real lack of obvious arcs for these people and that was a nice surprise. The Coens do what they can to avoid Hollywood conventions in what is, at it's core, a very Hollywood film.

Above all else, the film is a character piece and what a wonderful one it is. Unsurprisingly, these people are written very intelligently, given lots of depth and room to grow and surprise. There's a constant battle over what grit truly means and over the course of the film the balance shifts back and forth over which of the three has the truest grit. From the very opening, we see that Mattie Ross has a whole mess of it, this headstrong girl who won't back down to anyone, despite her small stature. Hailee Steinfeld is remarkable here, an actor with talent well beyond her years. She's entirely convincing, taking a character that could have been this annoying little brat and making her simultaneously strong, whip smart, endearing and adorable. I enjoyed watching her in every second. Jeff Bridges was different than I had expected, but I love his arc throughout the film. Maddie goes to him because she believes he has the most grit of all and that he is the right choice for her, but as the journey goes on she doubts her decision and Rooster Cogburn plays with our perception of him quite a few times. Bridges was my least favorite of the three, performance-wise, but that's not a huge slant given how highly I thought of the other two. Matt Damon gets arguably the most interesting role, a character who is detestable when we first meet him and then has the large task of making us realize that he just may have the truest grit of all. LaBoeuf is a silly man who thinks too highly of himself, but as the film progresses it becomes very hard not to care for him. He's a good man at his heart, as are Maddie and Rooster, and it makes it easy to root for all three of them to come out of this alright.

This is a film that I enjoyed even more than I thought I would, a Coen film in the most un-Coen of ways (which was a nice change of pace given that their previous effort, A Serious Man, is probably the most Coen film out there). I enjoyed living with these characters very much and wish that there had been more time to just be with them on their journey. The final confrontation with the men they are hunting is turns suspenseful, surprising and a little too short-lived. I didn't much care for the epilogue, but with the wildly entertaining journey that came before it, I can't fault the film that strongly for it. It's a real cinematic piece, surprisingly Hollywood for the Coens, but it doesn't fall into a lot of the traps that it could have. In fact, it does the opposite, jumping into holes where it could become clichéd and sentimental and then digging it's way out, surprising at every turn. I like that the story doesn't quite end after the basic plot is resolved, because it's not about hunting down the man that killed Maddie's father and hoping to bring him to justice. It's about so much more. It's about these characters and finding out who they really are when it all comes down to it.

Let's get the comparisons with Henry Hathaway's version of the Charles Portis novel out of the way. The Coen Brothers certainly knew that, however much they want to 'go back to the source material,' their film would play against Hathaway's version.

The Hathaway version, while tampering with details from the Portis original, remains strikingly true to its story and theme. This is most clear in the dialog - the decision not to tamper with Portis' language was decisive for the making of that film. The Coens' tampering with the novel is more subtle than Hathaway's film, but no less an interpretation.

Approaching the characters and composition of the Coens' version without reference to the Hathaway film apparently proved impossible. For instance, the shoot-out at the dug-out cabin was re-written for a night-scene, but the camera angles remain pretty much the high-elevation shots Lucien Ballard provided Hathaway, inter-cut with full body shots of people getting wounded and horses running (etc.)also similar to Ballard's.

Two performance stand out as striking examples of reference to the original film. Dakin Matthews seems to struggle mightily not to recreate Strother Martin's interpretation of the horse-trader Stonehill - and fails. Apparently Martin had the character down pat and there's nothing but to reproduce his interpretation. Far more to the point is Barry Pepper's interpretation of the desperate outlaw chief, Ned Pepper - it is pure Robert Duvall. Pepper can only match Duvall's self-aware determination - and he does - but he can't surpass it; nor can he find another interpretation to set off against Duvall's.

As for the Coens' own re-interpretation of the Portis novel, what was most noticeable to me were the minor points simply dropped out of the story telling. The most irritating to me were a pair of lapses that are interconnected and combine to make an important point about the characters. 1. We never get to see Mattie tell Rooster that Chaney has linked up with Ned Pepper (later Rooster does remark the fact, but how did he learn of it?); 2 We don't get to hear Rooster's remarking how he shot Pepper through the upper lip (because he was aiming at the lower lip). These two incidents combine to let the audience know that Cogburn's hidden agenda on the Chaney hunt is really Ned Pepper, he and Pepper have something of a feud going on - which information fills out the background detail for their final shoot-out. Except here we don't have that connection.

Finally, the whole Mattie - Rooster issue: many critics are saying that Mattie is more at the center here than in the Hathaway picture, which focused attention on John Wayne's Cogburn. Not true. When we add up screen time and lines of dialog, we discover that Mattie not only has as much time and dialog in the Hathaway film but it is in much the same proportion to Cogburn's as in this one. If most remember the Hathaway film as a 'John Wayne film,' that is due simply to Wayne's bravura performance.

Well, enough of the comparisons. Does the Coens' version measure up as film worth seeing on its own accord? Yes; we are presented here with a beautiful, frightening, amusing piece of 'Americana.' There are scenes approaching dream-like states, as in the meeting with the bear-man, and during Rooster's desperate drive to get Mattie to a doctor. Hailee Steinfeld is quite engaging, and Matt Damon develops an intriguing complexity that makes one wish he had more screen-time. Bridges' performance is the most problematic - Bridges plays Cogburn as a a kind of whimsical brute - as he rambles on with his life-story on the trail, we get the gnawing sense that, if we were not along for a dangerous manhunt and dependent on his abilities as a master man-hunter, Cogburn would be someone we would not like to know. This develops a distance between the audience and Cogburn that is actually rather on par for the Coens - there are no 'heros' in the Coen universe.

Perhaps that's a good thing here. Mattie in her experiences with the wild men of the old west has encountered something larger than her life on the farm could ever get her. These are men who make their own laws and are not bound to statutory codes or biblical decrees, and adapt their own law to the wilds of the frontier that surrounds them. Mattie is a confirmed church-goer with a good lawyer, and if she weren't so determined on her revenge, she would actually be impossibly small-minded and dull. This is a subtext to the novel that both films attempt to convey, but neither quite captures, because it's difficult for any film maker to admit that the central character of the story is the least interesting.

The age of such wild-men has passed. It is not that wild-men do not exist - wild-men show up quite frequently in Coen Brothers' films in contemporary settings - but now they are corrupted by moving outside the law and outside the commonplace, they grow sick and psychopathic. The killer in "Fargo" feeding the partner he's killed to a wood-chipper is as wild as one could get, but he is no longer larger than life, and evokes only the sickness at the heart of modernity, not any adaptation one would want to live with.

We look back at historical moments like those of the Old West because anything seemed possible to them, whereas very little is possible for us. But that might simply be a wishful delusion - and the Coens' clear suspicion that it is really determines the limits of what they accomplish here. They don't present the West as 'it really was,' nor do they present what we want from it, rather they present a disappointment with it. Rooster Cogburn is indeed 'larger than life,' but we wouldn't want to spend any more time with him than we do.