Here are some rambling thoughts that arise out of my motive for watching the two True Grit movies within a week of each other. I was interested in not only the historical period but in particular the characterizations of the 14 year-old protagonist Mattie Ross. Both movies are treatments of the Charles Portis novel, but that aside, I wanted to compare how the movies portrayed her and whether the portrayals reveal anything about the movies' sociocultural contexts, the generations to which they speak, that of the late 60s and the new millennium.
Mattie Ross was played by Kim Darby (b. 1947) in 1969, and for me, at the time, it seemed like a breakthrough role for young women. She is played by Hailee Steinfeld (b. 1996) in the 2010 movie written and directed by the Coen brothers. Steinfeld plays an even younger looking, feminine, very saavy, somewhat sassy Mattie Ross. The sassiness was not a part of the Kim Darby character in 1969.
I would characterize the Darby portrayal as daring, but more submissive, or respectful, if you will, in tone, to the dominant males. An example might be that she is depicted riding her horse behind the two males she accompanies into the wilderness. But Darby's Mattie is also less strident in the way she delivers her lines. It's as if she implicitly respects authority, whereas in the case of Steinfeld's Mattie, she respects adults only when they earn her respect.
In the 1969 version the young Mattie Ross character uses the 1880s elocutions, and the Coen brothers' screenplay also faithfully replicated and even played with the Portis novel's period language. I think the young Mattie Ross of '69 exercised her self-confidence through and because of her literacy and her ability to articulate her thoughts, make decisions, and execute her plans. She was quick of mind as well as quick on her feet.
The Coen brothers' movie is presented in their own inimitable style, but it is yet another movie that belongs to our contemporary times, and as such it characterizes Mattie Ross as a young girl who behaves as an adult, and in her case often better than one, and negotiates her way with them in business-like manner. She seems to sometimes distance herself if feeling grief or fear, for she does not express emotion. She is singular-minded, focused on and relentless toward pursuit of her goal, and in this she is corroborated by the otherwise badly behaved Rooster Cogburn.
Fight to the death, but survive if you can, seems to be the message of the day. And, the 2010 Coen movie, though not as fully dark and brutal as some of their other films, is nonetheless darker in terms of ramped up and more graphic violence. The snake in the pit is not sleeping on a shelf but coiled up in the bowels of a dead man's hollowed out abdomen and as Mattie pulls on the brittle bones of the corpse to try to get at a knife the snake unwinds and strikes her. She then also finds herself surrounded by snakes.
The movies end differently. The 1969 ending is sentimental. Mattie is still portrayed as quite young when Cogburn visits and she insists that upon his demise he be put to rest in her family plot beside her. The 2010 movie both begins and ends with voiceover. At movie's end we also see Mattie as a grown woman of about 40, missing one arm (a result of the snakebite) and clothed in a long black dress, as she travels to see Cogburn in a traveling Wild West Show only to learn he recently died. She has his body exhumed and lays it to rest in her family's plot where she can visit. She has never married or had children and is portrayed as a rather stark wan and lonely yet nonetheless strong figure who has outlived the rest. Frankly, I don't know just what young girls now would think of this ending. It would be interesting to know.
