True Grit

I try wherever possible to read the book of a movie before seeing it and watch an original before viewing the remake. On this occasion, however, I failed on both counts. In fact, I made the decision to watch this regardless of the original. I trusted that the Coen brothers had made a film that was their own, and did not need reference to an original (someone who’s seen it can tell me if I’m right). This dilemma, however, is occurring more and more. Can we have seen and read every book or original that a film is based on? Sometimes there are several versions, at least (see the recent Spider-man reboot). It is perhaps a question for another time to ask why it is we’re making so many remakes. In the theatre this is an assumed practice, with only a small proportion of London’s stages taken up with original works. Film exists somewhere in-between theatre and the novel, which is what makes it so compelling. Each new production is far more permanent than the single performance it purports to be. This version of True Grit, for example, may outlive its predecessors. The Coen brothers decided to return to the book and be more faithful to it than John Wayne’s version was. It is arguably the first straight genre movie that they’ve ever done, and it’s interesting for that alone. Jeff Bridges plays a wayward U.S Marshall hired by a young girl to find her father’s killer. The action is short, brutal and occasionally gruesome, as we can expect from the Coen brothers. There is also a dark humour, Carter Burwell’s score, and that bleak, unforgiving outlook, lacking sympathy for any of their characters, that is typical of their films. This movie sits somewhere in-between the somewhat comic nature of films like O Brother, Where art Thou? and the more serious tone of No Country for Old Men, but it can still be clearly seen as directed by the same hands. I wouldn’t class it as one of their best, but it is certainly head and shoulders above a lot of other films you might be choosing between on a Friday night. Despite being nominated for ten Oscars, it won none.