Posted on 12/31/2010 12:28:39 PM PST by Kaslin
"True Grit" is a tale whose time had come and gone. It's the good fortune of a new generation that its time has come again. The novel by Charles Portis, which sold only about 25,000 copies between 2007 and 2009, has been bought by 10,000 new readers since the new version of the movie opened this month.
In an age when twittering conversation is limited to 140 characters, where children become chubby couch potatoes changing channels with a remote control or playing war games moving fantasy soldiers around on a screen, Mattie Ross is an authentic heroine -- lean, mean, articulate and downright inspirational at the toughened age of 14.
Old codgers who loved the 1969 movie for the character of Rooster Cogburn as portrayed by John Wayne will be disappointed by Jeff Bridges as Rooster. He plays the raspy drunk with too much spillover from his role in "Crazy Heart" -- but the character of Mattie is much improved. This time, we get to hear Mattie's voice as the older woman, a spinster recalling the great adventure of her youth. The cadences and perceptions in her speech are richer and more mature because they're often lifted word for word from the novel.
The Coen brothers made the movie first of all because it suited their sensibility of a Western unusual in its mix of ruthlessness with rectitude, irony with sentiment, satire with dead seriousness, and all in the service of delineating the black, white and gray coloring of good and evil. They wanted kids to like it, too. Unlike most of their graphically violent other movies, "True Grit" got a PG-13 rating.
The novel reads like a memoir. Charles Portis' crisp Southern idiom, poetic cadences, sense of place and specificity of detail lends verisimilitude in a tale from the vanishing American frontier. The novel was once required reading in American literature classes, taught along with "Huckleberry Finn" and "Tom Sawyer," where it belongs. Mattie, however, is made of sterner stuff than Mark Twain's creative children. She has been described as "Ahab's little sister" for her unrelenting pursuit of her father's killer. Tom Chaney, "a short man with cruel features," is her Moby Dick.
Mattie's character draws everyone in close with the opening of her story as remembered a half-century on:
"People do not give it credence that a 14-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood, but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just 14 years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money, plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band."
The novel got lost somewhere in the past two decades as America moved into the post-literate age, reduced to a period piece. Readers lost an appreciation for Mattie's voice and her deadpan perceptions that are rife with comic understatement and ripe with universal insight. The moving prose (and the moving picture) show how Mattie's Presbyterian primness combined with Rooster's ruthlessness inevitably prevail. Duty and discipline ultimately fence in disorder by imposing justice, one way or another. "True grit" is the stuff of courage, preserving a fertile seedbed for the next generation as the Wild West is diminished to a rodeo spectator sport.
In the theater where I watched this latest version of "True Grit," I was struck by the sight of families there to watch it together -- children, parents, grandparents and friends of different generations. The adventure story has that kind of sweeping appeal, and the story is even more exciting in the written word. Americans once grew up on literature like this.
Rooster Cogburn is politically incorrect and revels in it, a "one-eyed fat man" who takes pride in his Confederate service and in having ridden with William Clarke Quantrill, the notorious border guerrilla. Rooster loves to pull a cork and rides into battle with reins between his teeth, blasting away with both guns. Spiderman he is not.
Mattie Ross grows up to be a one-armed spinster and a small-town banker in "Dardanelle, Yell County, Arkansas," who would sneer at the suggestion that she is "physically challenged." She is instead "a woman with brains and a frank tongue," but "feminist" doesn't apply either. She loves her church and her bank, expresses Scripture and platitudes of Presbyterian piety with black humor, and triumphs as a woman we can all admire. The new movie should revive the literary attention the book deserves.
I was horrified when they announced the remake, and scoffed at the notion of Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin being cast in their respective roles - three lefties in an American classic is worthy of derision.
I went in with the lowest of expectations, and wanted to dislike it, but I loved it. The actors were hidden by the characters, which is the point of acting.
I also know why leftist reviewers don’t like this version. Unlike conservatives who will love the original and scorn the new, the leftists don’t like the introduction of faith. The concept of flawed people having a moral obligation to bring justice to evildoers doesn’t sit right with them. Having faith in God and depending on the Scriptures is a completely foreign concept.
I don’t like Bridges’ politics either. His refusal to accept an invitation to screen a movie (was it Seabiscuit???) at Bush’s White House seemed exceptionally petty and made him look like an ass.
But if you let the leftwing politics of entertainers prevent you from enjoying movies, tv, and music, then there would be pretty much no movies or tv for you to enjoy these days..
For me it just depends. Most of the actors I just ignore, but some of them could ruin anything with their presence, like Rosie O’Donnell.
agreed....but I might add a Alec Baldwin and most definitely a Michael Moore to my Shiite list.
***So which is it? Arkansas is Southern. Have a great new year FRiend of the South!****
Simply because a state is in the south does not mean the people speak Alabaman or Mississippian.
My kin in New Mexico do not speak like Californians and my family in Nashville, Tennessee most certanly do not speak “southern”.
I heard my first real southern dialect when stopped at a store in Memphis 40 years ago! The girl must have been from down Mississippi way as my wife’s kin and other Memphis area residents do not speak “southern”.
And since Mattie was from Dardanelle in YELL county(thriving river boat towns) she most certainly did not speak north of the river Hillbilly.
“The new TG looks like Oklahoma in winter”
We live in Oklahoma. I made this very point to my wife after we saw the film.
Everytime I go home to Charleston that is always on my list!!
Check your local library to see if this book is available for borrowing from your county library system.
Shame that this article gave away the most shocking part of the film, that Mattie loses her arm. I figured this was not in the original film and now see that confirmed by the comments. Glad I was not spoiled before seeing the film, which was very good. In any case, I highly recommend this film. I needed to see a film about characters with true grit, determination and integrity.
I love the original and will get the remake on bluray when it becomes available...
I had not read the novel but knew of the difference between the two movies...I am sure I will like both for different reasons...
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