True Grit (2010)

[randy_byers]

Well, the Coen Bros' True Grit is a true hit at the box office, already earning over a hundred million and still going strong. I saw it for a second time at the Majestic Bay last night. The first time was just over a week ago with ron_drummond and holyoutlaw, and I enjoyed it while finding it perhaps a bit slight somehow. Last night I saw it with jackwilliambell and holyoutlaw (whose third viewing it was), and no longer found it slight. It's actually perfectly structured and compact, packing a lot of story in a tight frame.

Because the movie is so popular, it almost feels like there's nothing much to say about it that hasn't been said before. The characters are well-drawn (even the minor ones), the language is beautiful and funny, the action scenes are exciting (and very violent in places). The humor was much more powerful the second time through, perhaps because the language is strange enough that I didn't understand some of it the first time. (Hillbilly Shakespeare, as someone has called it, which is also a pretty good description of the language in Ang Lee's Ride with the Devil, which oddly enough could feature a younger Rooster Cogburn in some scenes, at least in the world of fan fic.)

I think part of what felt slight the first time is that the action climax is not as interesting as the characters themselves and the coda seemed weak, but now I think the ending is actually quite complex in structure, even ignoring the mythically beautiful and mysterious night ride (in which Glenn Kenny has detected the influence of F.W. Murnau.) The coda on a second viewing felt more like the coda of No Country for Old Men -- a gesture at incompleteness and the unbearable lightness of being. The great adventure slips into memory and is lost in time.

One thing I haven't seen much commentary on is a couple of strange scenes involving non-white children. Well, I did see someone say that if John Wayne had kicked an Indian child in the original movie, he wouldn't have won an Oscar. But the even stranger scene, in some ways, and one that feels like it has the Coen Brothers' fingerprints all over it is when Mattie first mounts her new pony. There's a black stable boy helping her out, and it certainly rings strangely on my ears when Mattie says of her pony, "I'll call him Little Blackie." Then the stable boy gets off one of the funniest lines of the movie, although it only makes sense if you've seen earlier scenes. I can't see any point to the implied racial tone-deafness of the scene, and it just feels like one of those Coenesque moments of pointless squirmy uncomfortableness, like the strange scene in Fargo where Marge is hit on by her old high school classmate.

A signature moment, perhaps, but no more so than the brilliant and deeply moving night ride, which is truly one of the unforgettable sequences in films of the past year.

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not so sure about the "perfectly structured" thing. I know that Little Blackie must be ridden to death, because that's in the first movie too, but in this one, Rooster rides him past several perfectly good abandoned horses as he's first taking off from the scene of the snake bite. Rooster knows how far he's got to go to get to a doctor. He knows he's riding double on a tiny horse. He's got to be able to figure out that having a spare horse to switch off to would be an awfully good idea. Why does he not grab the reins of the dun horse that's just standing there as he rides by? It wouldn't slow him appreciably at all, and then he can switch off between the horses, or lash the girl to the saddle of one and ride the other.

Basically, having the spare horses standing around as Rooster rides away completely undermines the necessity of riding Little Blackie to death, and it annoyed the piss out of me, frankly.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I did notice on this viewing that they rode past Ned's horse, but it didn't really bother me. I'll grant you that it's a plot hole, but I don't think it's actually a structural problem. The way that Mattie pays for her revenge and the way that Rooster's ambiguous heroism becomes a matter of saving her life rather than helping her take somebody else's is why the scene works structurally for me. I can even see an argument for how the mistake of not stopping to take an extra horse, which costs the smaller horse its life, fits in with the larger themes of the story.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Personally, I can't reconcile "perfectly structured" with "has a giant plot hole". That really doesn't work for me. Sacrificing plot structure in the name of some thematic goal is not what I call good writing, so perfect is not even on the option list.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Okey-doke.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

When he rode past the horses, I figure he either is so focused on getting Maddie to Bagbey's that he isn't seeing them, or that there's something about horse behavior I don't know -- would he be able to take someone else's horse and use it as akirlu describes above? I don't know. It would be interesting to see how that scene compares to the original.

Anyway, there's a scene during the night ride that always makes me think of these lines:

It was if someone had spread butter on all the fine points of the stars
'Cause when he looked up they started to slip.

(From Birdland).

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

There's a very powerful sense in that sequence that they aren't moving at all under that big bowl of artificial sky.