True Grit.
Jan. 5th, 2011 16:53![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyTrue Grit. Dir. Joel & Ethan Coen, 2010.
I've never seen the original movie, and I have absolutely no interest in doing so now or ever; I enjoyed this one thoroughly for itself. The Coen brothers are still asking, as I think a good many serious artists are, What the hell is wrong with (white) America? and this time the question leads them to Arkansas and the Choctaw nation it borders not too long after the Civil War, where Maddy Ross's father has just been murdered in cold blood by his hired hand Tom Chaney. Maddy, being the hard-headed frontier girl that she is, sets out to see her father's murderer brought to justice, and hires U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, and falls in with Texas Ranger LaBouef, along the way. She's heard that Cogburn has true grit, but their adventure beyond the state's borders proves that all three of them do, regardless of appearances.
I think if there's one thing that the Coen brothers know well it's that law and violence are fundamentally constitutive of one another, but I was struck by the range of people's responses to it, as always: the coward Chaney whining about his position and plotting to murder Maddy versus Ned respecting her instantly for her capability for it. How awesome is Maddy, seriously? SO AWESOME! She gets what she wants, and pays the price for it, and doesn't complain, and for all of that, I loved her a lot. That said, I wasn't surprised by the ending; it seemed very Coen brothers, and very this movie, to deny us a true and proper resolution. Instead all we get is the climactic violence and its aftermath, both short and long, and it seems to me that there's an ugly meaning in that, and in the respect the two law-men find for each other despite the fact that they fought on opposite sides of the war.
Unlike most of the rest of the audience, I wasn't amused by the Choctaw man being given the drop without the chance to say his final words, or by Cogburn bowling the Choctaw kids off the railing of the store when he goes in and out. In that too, and in the Chinese shopkeeper Cogburn rents a cot from, there's the sort of documentary realism the Coen brothers do so well, presented without directorial comment in the text of the film itself. I found this movie less bleak than many recent Coen Bros. films, though nothing like the happiest movies they've made, where you can almost be fooled into thinking you're in a comic (clairant) universe until you start actually paying attention to what's going on--my dad and sister are obsessed with Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, and I watched the second half of it with my dad on Sunday night. I was struck again by the whole Ku Klux Klan scene in that film; it's narratively convenient that everyone opposing the characters except Poseidon is in the Klan, but despite the happy ending, the Coen Bros. are in earnest about what they're doing with it, and it's not played for laughs, though the audience may be tempted to laugh anyway, out of discomfort as much as anything. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here, other than that True Grit is very much of a piece with their previous oeuvre, and that there's an extent to which I wish they were more confrontational, rather than just representational.
I've never seen the original movie, and I have absolutely no interest in doing so now or ever; I enjoyed this one thoroughly for itself. The Coen brothers are still asking, as I think a good many serious artists are, What the hell is wrong with (white) America? and this time the question leads them to Arkansas and the Choctaw nation it borders not too long after the Civil War, where Maddy Ross's father has just been murdered in cold blood by his hired hand Tom Chaney. Maddy, being the hard-headed frontier girl that she is, sets out to see her father's murderer brought to justice, and hires U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, and falls in with Texas Ranger LaBouef, along the way. She's heard that Cogburn has true grit, but their adventure beyond the state's borders proves that all three of them do, regardless of appearances.
I think if there's one thing that the Coen brothers know well it's that law and violence are fundamentally constitutive of one another, but I was struck by the range of people's responses to it, as always: the coward Chaney whining about his position and plotting to murder Maddy versus Ned respecting her instantly for her capability for it. How awesome is Maddy, seriously? SO AWESOME! She gets what she wants, and pays the price for it, and doesn't complain, and for all of that, I loved her a lot. That said, I wasn't surprised by the ending; it seemed very Coen brothers, and very this movie, to deny us a true and proper resolution. Instead all we get is the climactic violence and its aftermath, both short and long, and it seems to me that there's an ugly meaning in that, and in the respect the two law-men find for each other despite the fact that they fought on opposite sides of the war.
Unlike most of the rest of the audience, I wasn't amused by the Choctaw man being given the drop without the chance to say his final words, or by Cogburn bowling the Choctaw kids off the railing of the store when he goes in and out. In that too, and in the Chinese shopkeeper Cogburn rents a cot from, there's the sort of documentary realism the Coen brothers do so well, presented without directorial comment in the text of the film itself. I found this movie less bleak than many recent Coen Bros. films, though nothing like the happiest movies they've made, where you can almost be fooled into thinking you're in a comic (clairant) universe until you start actually paying attention to what's going on--my dad and sister are obsessed with Oh Brother Where Art Thou?, and I watched the second half of it with my dad on Sunday night. I was struck again by the whole Ku Klux Klan scene in that film; it's narratively convenient that everyone opposing the characters except Poseidon is in the Klan, but despite the happy ending, the Coen Bros. are in earnest about what they're doing with it, and it's not played for laughs, though the audience may be tempted to laugh anyway, out of discomfort as much as anything. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here, other than that True Grit is very much of a piece with their previous oeuvre, and that there's an extent to which I wish they were more confrontational, rather than just representational.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-06 04:32 (UTC)I liked that they ending was so distant from the events.