By John Exshaw
Earlier this week, I figured it was about time to catch up with the Coen Brothers’ version of True Grit before it rode off the big screen and into the DVD sunset. And what with it failing to win any Oscars – not even for Best Beards in a Motion Picture – I reckoned the time was just about right. You see, I never paid much heed to all that “cinema as shared experience†bull. I generally prefer to bide my time until the opening week claim-jumpers and second-week popcorn-guzzlers have moved on to something else, and there’s just me and the janitor’s cat ridin’ that lonesome trail in the dark . . .
Like everybody else, I reckon, my first reaction on hearing that Les Frères Cohen – as I believe they’re known down N’Awleans way – were remaking True Grit was what in the hell for? Which is pretty much what I said when I heard they were gussying up 3:10 to Yuma a few years back. But that, as they say, is a steer of a different brand. . . . Still, I can’t truthfully claim that True Grit ever figured on any wanted list of movies-that-need-remaking that I’ve ever posted, anymore than 3:10 did. What’s more, I always had the idea that pretty much everybody was happy with the job Big John and Henry Hathaway done back there in ʼ69. So what did these boys think they were doing? Just because one of ʼem is named after Joel McCrea and t’other after Ethan Edwards don’t mean they got any business doggin’ the Duke’s tracks. As Randy Scott would’ve said, “Man needs a reason to ride this country. You got a reason?â€
Well, turns out, according to Joel in an interview with The Daily Telegraph, that the boys “didn’t read Charles Portis when we were young; we discovered him only as adults. But when I read True Grit to my son, I thought that it would be a fun film to make.†Mighty touching, you might think, mighty touching. Hell, maybe even John Ford would’ve gone for that scene with Pappy Coen reading out loud to his towheaded kid on the porch, but as reasons go I just can’t see it carrying much weight with Randy. To quote Lucky Ned Pepper himself, it’s just “Too thin, Rooster! Too thin!â€
Anyhow, then I started in on reading the reviews, which is not something a man should ever do sober, and sure enough, most of them critics were drooling over this new version and jabbering on about how the Coens had gone back to the original 1968 novel by Charles Portis, and wasn’t it just great? Trouble is, of course, the critics always say any new film by the Coen boys is great, much like they used to say every hold-up pulled by the James boys was the most daring and dastardly ever seen - which weren’t hardly the case back then and sure as hell ain’t the case now, not by a long shot.
So, first up, let’s get shut of this notion that the new True Grit is somehow a more accurate interpretation of Portis’ novel. In point of fact, the version carrying the Hathaway brand sticks a hell of a lot closer to the Old Portis Trail than the Coens do. About the only significant detours in the original version were having Rooster, rather than Mattie, kill Tom Chaney, having LaBoeuf die following Mattie’s rescue from the snake pit, and then having Rooster visit Mattie at the end. By contrast, the Coens continually veer off the trail like a pair of cowhands on a three-day drunk. Mattie’s first encounter with Rooster does not take place when Cogburn is doin’ what a man’s gotta do in the crapper. Mattie does not spend her first night in Fort Smith in the undertaker’s back room. LaBoeuf does not talk to Mattie in her bedroom. Rooster does not ride off, leaving a note for Mattie. LaBoeuf does not start whippin’ on Mattie immediately after the ferry crossing. LaBoeuf does not leave Rooster and Mattie prior to the encounter with Moon and Quincy, and it should be LaBoeuf, not Mattie, who smokes out the two varmints from their dugout. Quincy should not have a hidden knife on him when he kills Moon. LaBoeuf does not get shot clean through – by Rooster or anyone else – during the first encounter with Ned Pepper and his gang. Rooster and LaBoeuf should not engage in a corn dodger shooting contest. And LaBoeuf should not ride off, only to return in time to save Rooster after the showdown with Ned. . . . A more accurate interpretation? As the Duke would’ve said, “Not hardly . . .â€
But even if you take a broad view of these things and reckon those changes don’t amount to more than a pile of buffalo chips, there’s others that might lead you to question the Coens’ way of doing things. In the book and Hathaway version, for instance, there’s a nice moment at the hanging when Yarnell, the family retainer, tries to shield Mattie’s eyes, which the Coens’ decided to ditch, along with the odd-couple relationship between Rooster and his Chinese landlord, and indeed the cat General Sterling Price. Again, in the book and the 1969 film, Rooster tells Mattie about his time as the proprietor of The Green Frog and his brief marriage to “a grass widow†while they wait for Pepper to show up at the dugout. This serves to throw some light on Rooster’s past while plausibly filling the passage of time. In the Coens’ version, however, Rooster drones his way through these yarns while ridin’ the trail, making him come across like some rambling bar-room bore.
Then there’s the scene mentioned above, where LaBoeuf is wounded. Overlooking the question of whether or not Rooster was responsible, we have a man shot clean through with a .44 or .45 bullet, and who’s half-chewed his own tongue off into the bargain, and yet there he is, in no more time than it takes to stick on a bandage and build a campfire, sitting up right as rain and yakking away with better diction than Rooster! In a pig’s eye, you might say, and you’d be right. By the-by, Rooster’s speech was something the critics on this here side of the pond got themselves worked up about, saying they couldn’t rightly understand the man. But me and the janitor’s cat didn’t have no problem, so we reckon them fellers waste too much time watching the wrong kind of movies and have just plum forgot how real men talk out here in the West. Maybe they should stick some of them fancy subtitles on the next time, just to help them poor tenderfoots along . . .
Anyhow, all of that’s even before we get to the new twists introduced by the Coens, apparently for no better reason than to let you know you’re watching a Coen Brothers’ film. Is there any point to the scene with the hanged man, other than to provide an eye-popping image? After Mattie has risked her neck cutting down this piece of buzzard bait, Rooster doesn’t know who the hell he is. And come to think of it, if Rooster’s such a hot-shot pistolero, why didn’t he just shoot through the rope, like The Man With No Name would’ve done? Next, there’s the scene with the wandering weirdo in a bearskin, equally pointless, to say nothing of downright incomprehensible. Anyhow, I’d be prepared to bet both my horse and my Mexican saddle that these scenes originate, not in the Coens’ fevered imaginations, but in their memories of Cormac McCarthy’s novel Blood Meridian, which is brim-full of such Gothic and surreal moments. And come to think of that, having already made a damn good fist of adapting McCarthy’s No County for Old Men, why didn’t the Coens make Blood Meridian instead, and give us a new Western instead of a rehash? Then again, not the sort of book you’d read to your kids on the porch, I suppose . . .
Well, them’s some of the things that stuck in my craw about this new True Grit, and I sure do feel better after spitting them out. And I guess it won’t come as any surprise to readers of this here organ to be told that the critics, as usual, were about as much use as a hot fart in a high wind. But I gotta say what I did like about the film was the performances. Jeff Bridges was in fine fettle as Rooster, Hailee Steinfeld was most impressive as Mattie (even though it’s a bit of stretch imagining a pippin like her growing up to be a one-armed old maid), and Matt Damon managed to make an asshole about as sympathetic as he was ever going to be. I even grew to like Dakin Matthews as Colonel Stonehill, even if them Coen boys managed to rob him of half the lines Strother Martin had so much fun with in the original. As for how the film looked, well, the Hathaway version may have been a mite too glossy for a Western made in 1969, but it was a big studio picture so I guess you’ve got to go along with the sets being too clean and shiny-new and the landscape looking like the von Trapp family was about to start hotfooting it round them hills at any moment; on the other hand, there’s something damned depressing about these modern Westerns, where every character, including the hero, is dressed like a hog farmer on his way to a hoedown. . . . Anyway, as I guess it’ll probably be another five years before a new Western comes along that’s worth getting all fired up over, I reckon we’d best take our pleasures where we can.