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True Grit
| Released |
14 January 2011 |
| Director(s) |
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen |
Starring
|
Hailee Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin |
| Writer(s) |
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen |
Producer(s)
|
Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, Scott Rudin |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
110 minutes |
| Genre |
Western |
| Rating |
15A |
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True class.
In True Grit, the Coen brothers have made a film that feels almost timeless and is mercifully free of the self-conscious zaniness that can sometimes infect their work. This is a piece of classic American filmmaking, comforting and rewarding. While it has heart though, it also has teeth.
Adapted from the novel by Charles Portis, the Coen brothers’ version is an altogether darker piece than the film that provided John Wayne with his only Oscar. It tells the story of Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), a fourteen year old girl who takes the law into her own hands when her father’s killer, Tom Chaney (a wonderfully snivelling Josh Brolin) evades justice. She hires U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track the killer and they head after him accompanied by dandyish Texas Ranger LeBoeuf (a competent if uninspiring Matt Damon).
The central performance of Steinfeld as Mattie Ross is astonishingly mature. She expertly pulls off the difficult act of balancing her character’s pragmatic confidence against her childlike fragility as she hits the trail wearing pigtails and her father’s overcoat. Jeff Bridges’ portrayal of Cogburn is just as inspired. There are moments when Cogburn’s characterisation threatens to slip into Western caricature (his introduction to us as a disembodied voice in an outhouse for example) but these are quickly counteracted thanks to a beautifully nuanced turn by Bridges and his refusal to fall back on the “gruff but lovable” type that has become so engrained into his own star image. There is never any doubt that Cogburn is a killer and an unscrupulous one at that. The lack of sentimentality in both characters only serves to make their eventual friendship all the more moving and believable, with an ending that is perfectly poignant.
Visually, the Coens have excelled themselves. The environments, from the dustbowl Western township to the frozen forests of the Choctaw Nation, are beautifully absorbing and perfectly composed so that their artistry is almost invisible. There are still bravura moments on show though, with the addition of some strikingly surreal images as Mattie and Cogburn traverse the wilderness. The scene in which Cogburn carries Mattie through the desert night is particularly startling in its use of texture- the slick skin of the horse, the plumes of sand cut by the brittle, brilliant stars that seem to have descended from the sky to surround them.
A class act all round, True Grit has all the makings of a modern classic.
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Linda O’Brien |
