True Grit

Written/Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Hailee Steinfeld 

The Coen Brothers like to redeem the most unlikely people. Their characters are always believable, but seldom people you would want to be. The main characters of  O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Raising Arizona are both ex-convicts. In keeping, True Grit’s Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) is a one-eyed U.S. Marshall with a less than savory past. His life of bizarre showdowns and drunkenness is interrupted by a 14-year old girl on a mission. Maddie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) wants picture-perfect revenge for her father’s killer, and she wants Rooster to help her see it done. 

Ethan and Joel Coen direct

When the movie first begins, it feels too slow and rambling. There is little to like in the gruff, carelessly violent Rooster, or the rather aloof Texas Ranger LeBeouf (Matt Damon). Even Maddie could seem like an annoying little girl who doesn’t know her place. But as the roads get tougher and the dangers nearer, all three characters emerge with an increasingly endearing display of grit that is not unlike the gradual and halting evolution of their own relationships. 

True Grit received ten Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture, yet the movie is anything but showy. Joel and Ethan Coen convey a sense of dusty sparseness that is both realistic and alien. They almost deglamorize the wild west. Everything about the movie flees sentimentality and emotion.  The only sense of intimacy we feel with the characters is during the moments of humor that flawlessly dot the script. All of this, including the formal speech (it is instead of it’s) used in the script seems to separate us from the characters, as if we are supposed to focus on something else.

What is beautiful about the film is that the central theme of revenge morphs inconspicuously into something like salvation. In saving Maddie’s life, we get the feeling that Rooster is trying to atone for his failures. The directors aptly capture the realism of such a story in the lack of a triumphant victory. There is nothing about the revenge in the end, it is about the friends made on the journey.  The film does not build into a neatly packaged climax or conclude with all the loose ends tied. The ending is abrupt and pragmatic, as if Maddie herself had written it; for as she says, “time just gets away from us.” So it does, and maybe the Coen Brothers are doing their best to focus on the things that are really worth the time we have.