2010, screenplay Joel and Ethan Coen, Dirs. Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, with stars Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Hailee Steinfeld.
1969, screenplay Marguerite Roberts, Dir. Henry Hathaway, with stars John Wayne, Kim Darby, and Glen Campbell.
It hardly gets better at the movies than an evening of melodrama with bold little Miss Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinberg) riding her pony Lil Blackie alongside the gruff and aging US Marshal Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and a Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) name of LaBoeuf, in search of outlaws in 1887 on the Arkansas prairie. Miss Mattie has determined to avenge the death of her father and so hired Cogburn, the surly alcoholic marshal with a reputation for ruthlessness, to track the killer into Choctaw territory. Cogburn will have the $50, wait, make that $100, but has an axe to grind, too—the capture or killing of an outlaw leader with whom the killer is riding. The ranger also wants the killer, in order to collect a reward, and the three set out on a harrowing adventure.
I recall news of the 2010 movie but I didn’t remember it belonged to brothers Coen until I saw the names scroll away on final frames. It all made sense then—the grim and brutal backdrop against which the world weary Cogburn fights evil and perhaps seeks redemption, rescuing and saving the girl. I thought when I sat down to watch the classic 1969 version that this film was about the girl, as vaguely I remembered that much. Aged 15, myself, in 1969, it was Mattie, played then by Darby, who impressed me. But John Wayne was, at that time, sixty-something, making a comeback in movies. In the 2010 Coen brothers’ movie, Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn, a character that harks back a little to his disenchanted alcoholic country singer in Crazy Heart. And, for what it’s worth, I would mention the protagonist in the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, starring Tommy Lee Jones as a sheriff growing old and facing a formidable serial killer who operates off a law of randomness. Male character turn out to be more dominant in True Grit than I remembered, too, but the character Mattie, who is self-possessed, shrewd at business, and above all, determined, has her own true grit.
The movies of Portis's novel True Grit, however faithful to language but less faithful to the novel's essence (jameswharris, 2011) do in their own ways testify to the audacity of such characters as they portray, who rode through the valley of death on razor's edge, bearing this world's injustices and searching for righteousness. This ain't just any old west story and both versions of this movie render it in style. And, the cinematography is spectacular, too.
