The Coen brothers have always been masters of subverting genre, painting their storytelling canvas with unique brushstrokes that live long in the memory. And while Joel and Ethan’s remake of the 1969 western True Grit might seem on surface value the most straightforward genre exercise in their remarkable film canon, it remains a quintessentially Coen brothers’ film. Which also happens to mean it’s really rather great, as film, as a western, or as a simply story of revenge.
“You must pay for everything in this world. Nothing is free except the grace of God,” says the film’s narrator and precocious central character, 14-year old Mattie Ross (newcomer Hailee Steinfeld). Her father murdered by the duplicitous hired hand Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), Mattie seeks out a local Deputy US Marshall and hires his services to bring the killer to justice by hanging or by the gun.
Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) might not be the best man for the job, but with a brutal reputation, the gruff, one-eyed law-enforcer who appears more content to take bounty crooks dead than alive, is just the man for the job. Rooster and Mattie are joined by the comical and entirely pompous Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) who has been hunting Chaney for many months. The three form the most unlikely of posses and setting out into ‘Indian country’ where the land is as unforgiving as the winter is bleak.
In reality True Grit owes very little to the family-friendly 1969 version (that won John Wayne an Oscar) and more to the original source material both films were adaptations of. Most of all, however, True Grit is a continuation of the Coen’s preoccupations with greed, mortality, religion, mythology, humour, crime and punishment humour all in a world inhabited by strange characters who looks and talk funny. True Grit is as good as any of the Coen’s past scripts for its use of language, intelligent with repent, layered and at times incomprehensible. This is a film that will surely reward repeat viewings.
For such cinematic richness to be translated into character and story there needs to be actors up to the task. The Coen’s have never gone want for talent and there’s not one disappointment to be found here. Bridges slides seamlessly between slurring, growling and drooling his lines while looking to all intents and purposes like a homeless man dragged on set and thrown onto a horse. All this he achieves without losing for a moment the sense of awe around Rooster and his sense of threat, wisdom and gravitas.
Damon, once again proves himself an actor of incredible versatility as the smarmy LaBoeuf (pronounced LaBeef), offering a dry wit in altered speech patterns that continually play with convention. Brolin and Barry Pepper, in a fantastic and surprising turn as gang leader Lucky Ned Pepper, add to what amounts an embarrassment of supporting riches. No character is quite what they seem, and play their part in turning a basic plot about retribution into something more timeless.
But the film’s two great stars asides the Coen is young Steinfeld who was merely 13-years old at the time of shooting and director of photography Roger Deakins. While attention seems focussed on Bridges, Steinfeld truly is the star of the show, narrating throughout, providing a focus point for much of what the Coen’s wish to explore thematically. Finally, what can anyone say about Deakins’, who does as much with his photography as the Coen’s do with language, that hasn’t already been said? His American West is both beauty and the beast.
It’s not perfect, and dissenters will rightly argue the film seems to hasten to its conclusion very suddenly, leaving much unanswered about its characters and its intentions. Others take great pleasure in such mechanics of storytelling, feasting on what is left unspoken or unseen. True Grit is essential viewing, a significant installment in the Coen brothers’ exploration of what it means to be an American and just a damn good yarn.
True Grit opens in cinemas on January 26.