John Wyane would be proud: True Grit - some thoughts

If you’ve seen the new movie True Grit by the Cohen Brothers, you have to start wondering whether they have any flaws. Maybe it’s the philosophy degree. What seems like a lifetime ago, John Wayne played the part of Rooster, winning himself the academy award. Now, Jeff Bridges takes the reigns with a charismatic youngster and one Matt Damon hitching along. What distinguishes this movie from its grandfather is its loyalty to the book. The events unfurl about as naturally as The Watchmen did with its graphic novel. Where the first movie was a vehicle for a living legend to spew his brilliance, the second is a vehicle for a story to spew the brilliance of the characters. You can’t fault the movie for being anti-climactic, or for the characters not doing what you’d expect them to do. You can’t fault someone for something they did on purpose. And what was that purpose? Realism? Loyalty to the book?

An unmistakable signature for any Cohen Brothers movie is the dialogue which is as crisp and witty as any they’ve churned out over the years. I found myself enjoying the half-gibberish of Rooster and laughing out loud at the parts I caught. The little girl is a feisty sensation. She haggles with a professional horse salesman with scalding rhetoric and handles herself around adults with a flare and confidence the belies her hard life. Damon’s character is a little more complex. I feel he is on the verge of an identity crisis. He is duty-bound to catch the murderer of the little girl’s father, but not because he murdered her father; he also murdered someone in the government whence Damon came. He can’t get it into his head that this little girl could actually be swaying the turn of events in any way. Torn between an adult tongue and her status as a child, he doesn’t know whether to argue with her as an equal or spank her as a brat. Bridges is terrific as Rooster, an endless of well of liquor, tobacco, and a wisdom disguised as the banter of a pitiful vagabond/hit-man.

To watch the relationship between the girl, Damon, and Bridges mature is a delight and an education. It makes you wonder about how tough it was for orphaned kids at the time, or how children on the cusp of adolescence are called upon, because of the unpredictable wiles of fortune, to step up and do what it takes to fend for family and self. True to the title, True Grit is a gritty film set in a barren land, dotted here and there with that rest stop for traveling cowboys, or that sudden and rude greeting by a crag after miles of pasture. Oddly shaped landscapes are the background for this western odyssey.

It’s a sign of virtue for a movie if we can, without even thinking about it, sign off on the dialogue for a second and gaze into the background at some majestic mountain or the expanse of a grassland. I love how the Cohens let the scene do the talking for us. When the little girl and Rooster come up on the site of a hanging, there is a long shot of them looking up at the corpse swinging from on high atop the branch of a beautiful tree. No music enhances the scene. All you hear is the creaking of the rope around the branch and breeze sifting through the leaves. Realism. I appreciated that.

I can’t remember a time when a character was so enjoyable to me. Rooster is so self-deprecating in his appearance, but he comes to his own defense by justifying his way of life as noble or his aim with a pistol as admirable. He is a paradox.