Posted on 12/31/2010 12:28:39 PM PST by Kaslin
"True Grit" is a tale whose time had come and gone. It's the good fortune of a new generation that its time has come again. The novel by Charles Portis, which sold only about 25,000 copies between 2007 and 2009, has been bought by 10,000 new readers since the new version of the movie opened this month.
In an age when twittering conversation is limited to 140 characters, where children become chubby couch potatoes changing channels with a remote control or playing war games moving fantasy soldiers around on a screen, Mattie Ross is an authentic heroine -- lean, mean, articulate and downright inspirational at the toughened age of 14.
Old codgers who loved the 1969 movie for the character of Rooster Cogburn as portrayed by John Wayne will be disappointed by Jeff Bridges as Rooster. He plays the raspy drunk with too much spillover from his role in "Crazy Heart" -- but the character of Mattie is much improved. This time, we get to hear Mattie's voice as the older woman, a spinster recalling the great adventure of her youth. The cadences and perceptions in her speech are richer and more mature because they're often lifted word for word from the novel.
The Coen brothers made the movie first of all because it suited their sensibility of a Western unusual in its mix of ruthlessness with rectitude, irony with sentiment, satire with dead seriousness, and all in the service of delineating the black, white and gray coloring of good and evil. They wanted kids to like it, too. Unlike most of their graphically violent other movies, "True Grit" got a PG-13 rating.
The novel reads like a memoir. Charles Portis' crisp Southern idiom, poetic cadences, sense of place and specificity of detail lends verisimilitude in a tale from the vanishing American frontier. The novel was once required reading in American literature classes, taught along with "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer," where it belongs. Mattie, however, is made of sterner stuff than Mark Twain's creative children. She has been described as "Ahab's little sister" for her unrelenting pursuit of her father's killer. Tom Chaney, "a short man with cruel features," is her Moby Dick.
Mattie's character draws everyone in close with the opening of her story as remembered a half-century on:
"People do not give it credence that a 14-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood, but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just 14 years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money, plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band."
The novel got lost somewhere in the past two decades as America moved into the post-literate age, reduced to a period piece. Readers lost an appreciation for Mattie's voice and her deadpan perceptions that are rife with comic understatement and ripe with universal insight. The moving prose (and the moving picture) show how Mattie's Presbyterian primness combined with Rooster's ruthlessness inevitably prevail. Duty and discipline ultimately fence in disorder by imposing justice, one way or another. "True grit" is the stuff of courage, preserving a fertile seedbed for the next generation as the Wild West is diminished to a rodeo spectator sport.
In the theater where I watched this latest version of "True Grit," I was struck by the sight of families there to watch it together -- children, parents, grandparents and friends of different generations. The adventure story has that kind of sweeping appeal, and the story is even more exciting in the written word. Americans once grew up on literature like this.
Rooster Cogburn is politically incorrect and revels in it, a "one-eyed fat man" who takes pride in his Confederate service and in having ridden with William Clarke Quantrill, the notorious border guerrilla. Rooster loves to pull a cork and rides into battle with reins between his teeth, blasting away with both guns. Spiderman he is not.
Mattie Ross grows up to be a one-armed spinster and a small-town banker in "Dardanelle, Yell County, Arkansas," who would sneer at the suggestion that she is "physically challenged." She is instead "a woman with brains and a frank tongue," but "feminist" doesn't apply either. She loves her church and her bank, expresses Scripture and platitudes of Presbyterian piety with black humor, and triumphs as a woman we can all admire. The new movie should revive the literary attention the book deserves.
....back in the late 1960s when the book came out John Wayne read it and immediately bought the screen rights...he had been in the movie business long enough to know a good western when he saw one....and he knew this was going to be his baby all the way....at his age and with his experiance in the genre, there has never been an actor more perfect for a role.
Good except the ending - did not care for it. They should have done the same ending as the original movie.
I love John Wayne—True Grit and most of his other movies.
I also love the Coen Brothers. I expect this movie will be very different from the Wayne movie, but also worth seeing.
We really enjoyed the movie. My 21 yo son came away impressed with the performance of the actress playing Mattie. He liked it, but really was moved by her.
...but the Coens, from what I hear, have put 'the novel' out there on the screen...and not the Hollywood evisceration of a novel...as I hear the original movie was...(though I love the original immensely)
I loved Wayne as Rooster...he earned his oscar. and I do not like the politics of Mr. Bridges.
so I will wait for the Bluray, watch it on my own ‘big screen’ and probably enjoy it as the trailer looks great...and I love most things ‘Western’
I know John Wayne is a legend; but, I felt Jeff Bridges did an excellent job as Rooster. Matt Damon was certainly better than Glenn Campbell; and, the girl playing Mattie was very good.
My two girls liked the movie (I call them girls tho both are in their 20's.), but, I don't think Westerns are a genre that the young are tuned into anymore. Unlike my husband and myself who grew up with westerns on t.v. and the big screen.
It’s good. Go see it.
I call that bold talk for a one eyed fat man.
Wayne was crushed, had to go to Wallis and plead with him to do the role of Rooster Cogburn.
John Wayne read a book?
I just might join you in that. Wait until it comes out on Bluray. And, if you love most things "Western", have you seen "Appaloosa"? If not, check it out as well on Bluray.
Hey! I have two eyes...
Hollywood is totally bankrupt of ideas.
Yeah, John Wayne read books. Just like Reagan and Sarah Palin. What’s your point, Pilgrim?
The main thing I liked about the original (besides the Duke himself, of course) was the affection that developed between Rooster and Mattie. I didn’t get that same sense from the new one. And the commercials and previews before the movie were horrible!
Sorry, I know the first film and book pretty well. With certain exceptions - Mattie doesn’t lose her arm - the original movie is very close to the novel. Not at all a “Hollywood evisceration.” And when you have Strother Martin, Jeff Corey and Robert Duvall back you up, who gives a damn what is changed?
FReeper Cinnamom Girl has written a very good and persuasive review of the movie:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2648074/posts
The ending is based on the book, not the movie. So it's actually more correct
I see it yesterday and thought it was a great movie. Jeff Bridges, I thought did a fantastic job as Cogburn and I'm not a Jeff bridges fan
I ADORE the novel Little Big Man. So different from that dopey movie!
The novel is complex - very hard on the Indians and hard on the white man. Custer is a hero in the novel - something most people would not know since his bravery and military smarts have been denigrated and suppressed.
Have you read its sequel? I have it and am slowly working myself through it.
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