Partner and I saw “True Grit” last week. I was doubtful at first that this movie needed to be remade; then I realized that all I remembered from the 1969 original was John Wayne's eyepatch, and Kim Darby (of whom no one had ever heard, and about whom we never heard again).
We liked the new version. It looks like the American West (and I should know): washed-out, sepia-toned. Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn is funny and gruff and grumpy and earnest, and (best of all) he doesn't try to imitate John Wayne. And there's no reason he should. The original “True Grit” was a star vehicle for Wayne. The new movie doesn't fall into that trap – well, at least until about twenty minutes before the ending, but we'll talk about that later. Hailee Steinfeld is grave and intelligent and bloodthirsty and a general pain in the ass and very funny. Matt Damon is vain and silly, but almost as brave and tough as he thinks he is, and he's adorable. And Josh Brolin, the villain who only appears late in the movie, is perfect: bland, venal, amoral.
This is a strange Western. You can see it as a myth if you like: the maiden America moving West into Indian territory (and literally kicking the Indians aside), encountering three different American types: the tough handsome (and unreliable) daddy, the vain handsome (and unreliable) loner, the dangerous handsome (and very unreliable) outlaw. She rejects all three. She kills one of them, she loses track of the other two.
Or you can make it a religious drama. Rooster is Jesus, redeeming us. He dies three days before Mattie finds him again. He has one eye, like Wotan. Yeesh. Let's leave that interpretation lying on the ground where we found it.
Or maybe it's no myth at all. The 1969 version had heroes and villains. This version has characters. Nobody's perfect. Stuff happens. Everybody dies.
Unfortunately, as I said, the last twenty minutes of this movie fall apart. There's a delirious sequence which seems (unlike the rest of the movie) unreal. Then there's a sudden jump of twenty-five years, narrated by a character who seems to be telling the story from even further in the future. It's not quite satisfactory.
But all in all it's quite a movie. The images and the performances are very beautiful. I found myself dwelling on several scenes, even days after seeing it.
Go see it, you low-down varmints.
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