\u201cI call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.\u201d When was a better line ever uttered in a Western?<\/p>\n
What red-blooded American male doesn\u2019t love True Grit? I liked everything about the old movie (other than that truly awful song Glen Campbell sings).\u00a0 I like everything about the new movie (except for the awful politics of the actor who plays LaBoeuf).\u00a0 But until recently I had never read the source novel.\u00a0 Now, having done so, I have a renewed admiration for the film makers.\u00a0 The differences between the novel and movies are creative choices that must have required a bit of reflection on the differences between reading and watching.\u00a0 All in all, I\u2019m hard pressed to claim that the films are less than the book.\u00a0 They are each excellent.\u00a0 But ultimately, the book provides more of the protagonist\u2019s inner voice.\u00a0 Mattie Ross is the fictional autobiographer here.\u00a0 It\u2019s her story and she tells it from her very idiosyncratic point of view.\u00a0 If the main facts of the plot are outlined (young woman goes forth to avenge the murder of her father) it would seem obvious that enormous sympathy should exist for the heroine.\u00a0 But she\u2019s not the most sympathetic character.\u00a0 She takes advantage of her formidable lawyer to bully an innocent tradesman into paying her for damages he did not cause.\u00a0 She is pathologically self-righteous and judgmental.\u00a0 And she lacks any tact or charm.\u00a0 Basically, she\u2019s a jerk.\u00a0 But at the same time, she possesses courage, fortitude, energy and intelligence.\u00a0 She has worked out the situation around her father\u2019s murder and planned a campaign to redress it.\u00a0 She has not spared herself (or anyone else for that matter) and follows through with it without concern for pain, weariness or danger.\u00a0 She is a very original and convincing character.<\/p>\n
All through her odyssey Mattie meets up with a number of characters, some barely sketched, others carefully fleshed out. Most vivid of course is Rooster Cogburn. but others, Ranger LaBoeuf, Lucky Ned Pepper, Colonel Stonehill and even Tom Chaney, are fully drawn and interesting personalities.\u00a0 And here is where the movies don\u2019t let us down.\u00a0 The portrayals of Stonehill and Pepper in both movies are excellent.\u00a0 The actors are given a very small window to work in, just a couple of scenes.\u00a0 But both convey the personality we are meant to see in a specific setting\u00a0 that reveals interesting components of his character.\u00a0 At almost all points the plot mixes humor and drama in believable measure.<\/p>\n
The Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (pronounced by him \u201cLaBeef\u201d) is the foil for both Mattie and Cogburn. At every turn his opinion and motivations are at odds with one or the other or both of them.\u00a0 This allows for Mattie and Cogburn to develop some solidarity.\u00a0 The scene where LaBoeuf attempts to switch Mattie to force her to abandon the search confirms the respective places for each of these characters.\u00a0 In a strange way they resemble a family, with Cogburn as a sort of father and Mattie and LaBoeuf as younger daughter and older son.\u00a0 Now granted this would be a particularly dysfunctional family but considering the status of Mattie to her recently deceased father it is not unreasonable.\u00a0 It is this dynamic in the story that I think is chiefly responsible for the appeal of the story for women, but of course that is just one man\u2019s opinion.<\/p>\n
And finally (at least in this first installment) we come to the climax of the action. The Duel and the Catastrophe.\u00a0 If there is in all western cinema a closer analogy to a knightly duel I haven\u2019t seen it.\u00a0 The hero no longer needs to confront his enemy.\u00a0 The damsel is rescued, the aim of the quest (the capture of Chaney) is accomplished.\u00a0 But he is honor bound to conquer or die.\u00a0 A more perfect tableaux for the American West, I cannot imagine.\u00a0 And then the reversal, and another reversal, and another.\u00a0 By the time Rooster is carrying Mattie back to town and doctor we have reversed the journey from adventure to real life.\u00a0 Chaney\u2019s fate is no longer important, Ned Pepper and the other outlaws are debris on the field.\u00a0 Even Mattie\u2019s beloved pony Blackie is expended in Cogburn\u2019s single-minded endeavor to save her life.\u00a0 And here the new movie adds to what the original left out.\u00a0 The rattlesnake bite costs Mattie her arm.\u00a0 She recovers and grows up to be a wealthy spinster.\u00a0 And the last act of the book has her belatedly trying to meet up with Rooster at a Wild West Show that he has ended up in.\u00a0 Cole Younger, one of his fellow \u201cexhibits\u201d informs her that Rooster had died several days previously.\u00a0 She has his remains moved to her family plot.\u00a0 Thus completing the idea that Cogburn had become something of a father figure to her.<\/p>\n
I intend to discuss some other features of the True Grit movies and book in future posts.<\/p>\n
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