I imagine that before lines are rehearsed or props are set, before cameras are turned on and trained onto marks and before actors walk onto the set-that Joel and Ethan Coen spend days, weeks-even months or years, pouring over language in their scripts.
I’m not a Coen follower, per se. I’ve seen a few of their movies and the first I saw was Fargo followed by The Big Lebowski, then Oh Brother Where Art Thou and then No Country For Old Men, which I watched at home-on cable. It didn’t have the same punch, I’m sure. But from the first time I saw Fargo, I knew that words-and the way they sound and are pronounced, meant something to the Coens. Their latest film, the compelling True Grit, is no exception.
All of the accolades pouring in for young Ms. Hailee Steinfeld, a resident of Venutra County, where I live, are much deserved. Her presence on camera as Mattie Ross is innocent and strong, naive and powerful. She captures the dialogue that the Coens laid down and turns it into something of a delight. Her negotiation with the man who sold her murdered father some horses is one of the more entertaining moments of film I’ve seen. It’s just long enough to be uncomfortable, enough to see the seriousness of the character without giving in to the young bereaved girl. She drives a hard bargain-for everyone she meets.
Of course Jeff Bridges’ rendition of Rooster Cogburn, U.S. Marshal, is effortless. The man is a rock of an actor-look no further than this film for proof. Cogburn “pulls the cork” a few too many times, but he gets his man and it is he young Mattie turns to for vengeance.
Tom Chaney killed her father and her mother is too busy with her baby brother and her grief to do anything. It’s up to Mattie to get justice and one never has to be told that Mattie gets what she wants. The film spills out into a near post-modern epic, which is what the Coens like to do. Their films have few redemptive moments or rather, the subtlety of redemption is easy to lose against the whir of one more bullet, the sting of one more body on a growing stack of them.
Matt Damon, a Texas Ranger who has no taste for Cogburn’s rough edges, is nevertheless a faithful and honorable man who has been seeking Josh Brolin’s Tom Chaney for months and falls in with Cogburn and Mattie reluctantly but skillfully. Damon is a perfect foil for Bridges as their acting, like the script surrounding it, is so effortless. It’s the equivalent of a rock and roll super-group with Jimmy Page on guitar and Danny Carey on drums. The seasoned-even grizzled veteran lays down a riff that is nuanced and driving while the younger but accomplished professional colors the music with new and complex layers. All the while, Steinfeld’s Mattie is the strong new vocal presence that binds the two together and they do indeed make beautiful music.
It surprised me that Steven Spielberg was the Executive Producer of the film. When I think of Spielberg, a hero of mine throughout my adolescence and onward, I think of the perfect symmetry of sunset in Raiders of the Lost Ark as Indy and his loyal band of Egyptians dig for the lost Ark near the well of souls. The sun sinks low in the center of the screen and as the wind picks up, Indy is silhouetted with his trademark hat sitting firmly atop his head. Spielberg makes beautiful-even perfect scenery.
But he’s not directing here and so it isn’t his scenery, it’s the Coen’s. The landscape is bleak, treeless in the lowlands and cold and snowy as thin wisps of twiggy trees rise out of the beige ground in the mountains. The landscape is the movie-there is nothing redemptive here, there are no gorgeous sunsets foretelling of a new dawn. There is cold and there is hard and they are endless, like Mattie’s desire for justice for her father.
Tom Chaney waits here near a river cutting through the mountains and he is not what Mattie expected-nor what we expect. He’s mean, contemptible, stupid and even a little slow. He’s not evil or at least if he is, he doesn’t know it and doesn’t own or love it. He’s just making a living-and Mattie’s father got in the way, an easy target on his way to something better or bigger. Mattie’s own true grit is in play when she shoots and wounds him and he takes her prisoner, forcing Cogburn to negotiate terms for her release.
But it is the language that makes the movie intense. While I’m imagining the Coens thinking about dialogue, I’m also looking at the essays I assign my students. One of the rules of formal essays I assign is to avoid using contractions when possible. There is, of course, some argument about this, and I am not a purist on the matter, but by and large it’s a good idea to say “it is a good idea.” The Coens pick up on this from the novel by Charles Portis and I noticed that one of the primary things that sets the language apart is its sparse use of contractions. There are a few-but mostly, the Coens favor throwing them out. Thus, when Damon’s Texas Ranger, LaBoeuf has had enough of Mattie, he says:
You give out very little sugar with your pronouncements. While I sat there watchin’ I gave some thought to stealin’ a kiss… though you are very young, and sick… and unattractive to boot. But now I have a mind to give you five or six good licks with my belt.
Not, “you’re very unattractive” and not, “I’ve a mind to…” It is that formality of language that makes the characters more interesting, more certain of themselves and thus more powerful. If the scenery is sparse and spare, the language is rich and dense.
The film too is rich and dense and worthy of thinking about after its over. It’s not a complicated story, but it does allow for complicated thinking. If redemption can be found at the end of a gun, then Mattie goes a long way to find it. She is not sentimental or sappy about it and there are no moral remonstrances from an older, wiser and drunker Cogburn. In this film, “some people need killin’” is indeed a fair and workable philosophy. One sheds no tears for sympathetic bad guys.
The western didn’t really need reviving in Hollywood. It gets awakened every so often like when Lawrance Kasdan made Silverado and Clint Eastwood made Pale Rider and The Unforgiven. If True Grit is a successful movie, it won’t be because it is a re-imagining of the western, it will be because a good story can be put on any canvas as long as the characters are strong, the writing is tight and the tale needs to be told.
