PG-13 | 1h 50min | Western, Drama | 2010
The first thing you see when you’re watching “True Grit” (2010) is not a picture on the screen, but a proverb that’s more a lamentation than a lesson: “The wicked flee when none pursueth” (Proverbs 28:1).
Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), a 14-year-old girl from Arkansas, watches cowardly ranch hand Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) flee after killing her father. She promptly hires a washed-out deputy U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to hunt down Chaney and see him hanged in Arkansas. Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) joins the search, but wants Chaney tried in Texas for the killing of a state senator, rather than hanged outright.
Masterful Storytelling
The opening five minutes build Mattie’s character. She’s strong-willed, clear-headed, creative, confident, and courageous. Cast while still a 13-year-old, Steinfeld was a find—apparently from a casting pool of 15,000 girls across the South.One of the earliest scenes shows Mattie’s tiny frame relative to a man’s; the camera looks down at her as if to prove that point. Her staccato style of speaking and her narrowed eyes when she spies an opening in conversation show she means business. No ums and aahs. She maintains solid eye contact, doesn’t wave her hands around or shake her head about. Her spine’s ramrod straight. Her face sports hardly any makeup. Her pigtails and babyface are about the only way to tell that she’s a child.
Mattie’s three-minute verbal jostle with Col. Stonehill (Dakin Matthews) over money and horses is an acting masterclass for any wannabe actor or actress. Watch her eyes glaze over when she first feigns closing the gate on their little chat, then hustles him until he gives in.
Mattie’s courage stems more from her contempt of cowardice than from any bravado. Recalling her father’s killing, Mattie says with a quiet fury that, although Chaney fled, he needn’t have; he could have “walked” his horse, for no one in town cared enough to pursue him.
Cinematically speaking, the directors—Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan—use a sort of eye-patch perspective to introduce the hardened, one-eyed Cogburn. The camera takes its time, dwelling on Mattie walking up to a courtroom where Cogburn’s testifying in a case. We hear his voice even before we see him.
First, the camera offers only a glimpse, through Mattie’s eyes, blocked as she is by the burly shoulders of men crowding the room. As she cranes her neck to see him through a haze of cigar smoke, we do too. And, as Cogburn speaks, the camera inches closer to his face, sentence by sentence, a gripping introduction to the man who will transform Mattie’s life.
Cogburn doesn’t want to like anyone and doesn’t want to be liked. He’s past craving shiny badges for his work or stealing credit from the work of other men. But he’ll move heaven and earth to battle alongside the powerless. It’s from there that he draws his power.
While on Chaney’s trail, Cogburn sees two idle kids hassle a tied animal for the fun of it, and he angrily unties it and whacks the kids. His lone eye brightens when he spots a feisty underdog and, oh boy, does it light up when he sees Mattie. He sees himself in her, and senses that she shares his own “take no prisoners” fighting spirit.
Chaney (Josh Brolin) rides with the dreaded Ned (Barry Pepper) and his gang. For all his villainy, Ned breathes a beguiling warmth—yet even he is unable to hide Chaney’s contrariness, who'd rather be mean than concentrate on trying to escape from Cogburn.
Faithful to the Novel
This film is based more rigorously on Arkansas-born Charles Portis’s 1968 novel than it is on the 1969 film of the same name that stars John Wayne, Glen Campbell, Kim Darby, and Robert Duvall. Here, the Coens don’t try to be extra clever or weird with their film. They play it straight and simple. And it shows.Given how respectful the Coens are of the Western genre, this film is less an exploitative remake than a sincere reimagining of Portis’s story. Amid a horde of populist Westerns that are centered around men, this film is deliberately centered around a young woman.
It’s a girl’s story all right, even if she’s surrounded by men, but her life is shaped by them, almost as much as she shapes theirs.
The set design, costumes, color tones, and lighting give every scene a “clean” look. Every shot is lovely, like a painting. Even the dialogue here is more faithful to the rhythm and diction of the time than to the 1969 film.
Some critics complain that the film is almost too clean for a Western, and could’ve done with a bit more raggedness. A lot could happen to a girl surrounded, even hounded, by men in the open country, but that doesn’t happen.
Carter Burwell’s soundtrack is elegant, but largely an orchestration and treatment rather than an original score; the Coens preferred that he build, instead, on 19th-century church music and hymns. After all, Mattie’s spunk comes from a belief that God guides her hand. So, there’s a hymnal grace to the tracks that matches Mattie’s courage under fire, and a nobility to them that salutes Cogburn’s steely grit.
To write Mattie Ross’s theme, Burwell improvised on the renowned hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” but clearly with less everlasting arms in mind. Watching Mattie put her trust in Cogburn, this soothing track has a special ring to it.
If tears fill your eyes, let them fall.
