True Grit

[synthesis]

Go see it, or torrent it or something. It's fucking awesome - almost on the level of Machete.

[Pretty Flaco]

I snuck in a theatre and saw this with my girlfriend.

I'm the only person I know that hated it... I felt that the whole story was ridiculous.
Especially the snake hole part. Mattie's fall into it would have killed her or at least given her a concussion. And why was she not able to pull her boot off to get untangled?
I liked Matt Damon's character, but I didn't like the old drunk guy.

[¿Que?]

Where does that movie take place in, Texas? Is there a single major role for a Mexican, or is it all supporting roles and extras? Just asking...

[synthesis]

I snuck in a theatre and saw this with my girlfriend.

I'm the only person I know that hated it... I felt that the whole story was ridiculous.
Especially the snake hole part. Mattie's fall into it would have killed her or at least given her a concussion. And why was she not able to pull her boot off to get untangled?
I liked Matt Damon's character, but I didn't like the old drunk guy.

There were a few parts that were pretty ridiculous, but the whole movie was ridiculous. It's a comedy.


Where does that movie take place in, Texas? Is there a single major role for a Mexican, or is it all supporting roles and extras? Just asking...

Arkansas.

[x359594]

The movie was true to the novel on which it was based. The 1969 version took some liberties with its source material, but the really interesting comparison between the two movies is the change of sensibilities; the Coen brothers version is typically post-modern and the Henry Hathaway version is a late classical Hollywood Western.

[Salyut]

Especially the snake hole part. Mattie's fall into it would have killed her or at least given her a concussion. And why was she not able to pull her boot off to get untangled?

Well she didn't really hit anything on the way down, she just slid/rolled.

I liked it.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't really have any interest in seeing this at the moment. Who knows, though, I may see it at some point...there have been a lot of Coen brothers movies where I've looked at the plot synopsis and thought "that sounds like the most boring crap ever", only to get sucked into the story when I actually watched it. Now I've seen almost all of their filmography (with the exception of a few of their most recent films). They're very talented filmmakers, IMO.

[Os Cangaceiros]

update: my folks wanted to see this, and I decided to tag along since they offered me a ticket. And yeah, it is a great film. Highly entertaining, with great characters & settings. I'd probably give it 8 or 9 out of 10.

[Political_Chucky]

I love westerns. Is it overly exagerated violence or a good bad and ugly type of deal(not that Im asking you to compare to that film haha.)

[Sosa]

I love Coen Brothers, so I will definately check. They have a great track record. Their last movie "A Serious Man" was awesome

[x359594]

For those who want to read something more than "It's awesome":

Making Self-Subordination Cool

The Subversive Conservatism of "True Grit"

By JOSHUA SPERBER
The Coen Brothers occupy a Hollywood niche that implies subversion while reinforcing conservatism. "Blood Simple," "Raising Arizona," and "No Country for Old Men" are morality tales in which a flawed – but invariably handsome and charismatic – protagonist trespasses upon a preternaturally obsessive villain who pursues the former for the remainder of the movie. The formula takes an off-kilter tone through the use of ostensibly Texan dialogue that is earthy, laconic, and melodiously articulate. Like most of their films, "True Grit" – an adaptation of Charles Portis's 1968 novel – combines a putatively subversive – more quirky – form with conservative content.
Much of the film's dialogue is taken directly from Portis's book, and it is delivered as if the actors were reading it off the page, effectively reminding viewers that they are watching a tale, and making it all the more enjoyable for this paradoxical postmodern earnestness. The tale is absorbing, as long, patient shots of beautiful landscapes and attractive actors, combined with elegant scenes of taut violence, pace the plot. But the visual and thematic core of the quest for vengeance/coming of age story is its 14-year-old protagonist Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), who is determined to restore honor to her murdered father by capturing his partner-turned-killer (Josh Brolin). Spiritedly joining the world of men – she has contempt for her indecisive mother – Mattie rejects the injustice of a system that pursues criminals based on the power of their victims. Unaware that she is young and female and thereby traditionally unsuited for her task, Mattie overcomes a variety of male adversaries who are charmed, confounded, outwitted, outtalked, and out-"gritted" by her. Valorization of the father is of course patriarchy 101 – or just see politicians' favorite biographical subjects – and it is noteworthy how Mattie, vulnerable and beautiful, becomes "male" through avenging hers.
First, it is significant – and surely a strike against realism, if any is intended – that Mattie, while humored and patronized, is never explicitly sexually objectified. The only reference to her being physically desirable is made by the boyish and buffoonish Texas Ranger Labouf (an excellent Matt Damon) who merely notes that he could have kissed her while she was sleeping but decided, he protests too much, that she was too unattractive for his tastes. This coddling of headstrong-to-the-point-of-domineering Mattie (even her nemesis is strangely reluctant to kill her) brings to mind the far more reality-based and critical film "The Ballad of Little Jo," which, based on a true story, depicts a woman who would rather disfigure herself and live as a man than endure the unrestrained brutality of the nineteenth-century west. That is, the Coens suggest a self-actualizing (but ultimately empty) freedom for anyone with "true grit," although this grit is in fact supported by the chivalry, compassion, and heroism of paternalistic benefactors.
While critics such as Stanley Fish comment on the film's supposedly meaningless and irrational violence, the film in fact portrays violence as being socially – specifically racially – structured. Among three men awaiting imminent hanging, only the Native American is deprived of saying his piece before the execution. Far less critically, Rooster (Bridges) gratuitously assaults two Choctaw children about Mattie's age, earning a cheap and sadistic laugh from the audience.
Indeed, Mattie's men don't valorize her because she is a pretty, young girl per se, but because as a white, Bible-quoting young woman she is "civilization" glamorously and tenderly personified. Mattie buys and tames a black pony, taking it from a young Black boy and, with no further comment, christening the horse "Little Blackie." Exemplifying a burgeoning capitalism and its rule of law – which even rebels cow to -- Mattie throws her weight around with money and by invoking contracts and ownership rights. After she overwhelms the horse trader by threatening to sue him, she buffaloes individualistic, self-sufficient Rooster by invoking her rights as his employer. Notwithstanding his claims to autonomy, she, not he, controls his labor, and Rooster participates in this disempowerment not because he is awed by her beauty and grit, but because her beauty disguises the fact that her grit is nothing more than the inexorable workings of a misanthropic machine.
I've read no review of the film that mentions Mattie's conventional attractiveness or the tacit sexual tension underscoring her relationships. After (spoiler alert) killing Chaney (Brolin), Mattie immediately falls into a pit where she's bitten by a snake. Not especially subtle, we are supposed to see that Mattie has lost her innocence. Increasingly paternalistic Rooster, however, sucks out the venom and brings her to safety – killing "Little Blackie" along the way.
And while we are supposed to be moved when (more spoiler alert) Rooster saves Mattie's life, his self-sacrifice in fact preserves the embodiment of a system that is destined to domesticate and degrade him – as he indeed spends his later years as a carnival attraction. While Mattie's adult incarnation is even more spiteful, sanctimonious, and priggish than her cuter, younger version, Rooster's docility vis-à-vis this tyrant makes self-subordination cool. Who doesn't want to be like Jeff Bridges?

[Sarah Palin]

so much better than the original John Wayne version, which basically gave manifest destiny a handy. It's true to the book and quite funny. I recommend it.
The subversive conservatism is so far fetched though. It is not a movie with a message by a long shot. It's very entertaining. The Coen brothers are so good at telling a story. From a filmmaker's point of view, it's a really spectacular work.

[x359594]

so much better than the original John Wayne version, which basically gave manifest destiny a handy....It is not a movie with a message by a long shot. It's very entertaining. The Coen brothers are so good at telling a story. From a filmmaker's point of view, it's a really spectacular work.

Everything you've said is arguable. Many cinephiles prefer the Henry Hathaway version because of its careful compositions, cutting and color (it was photographed by the legendary Lucien Ballard,) not to mention the supporting cast of actors that included Robert Duvall and Dennis Hopper. Blake Lucas, one of the most astute critics of the Hollywood Western, finds Hathaway's True Grit a fine if minor example of the genre.

Every movie movie has a message; it's either covert or overt, and to claim that any work of culture is ideologically neutral is ideology at its purest.

Ideology defends itself by claiming that it doesn't exist, that there is no "message". One ignores ideology by presenting it unproblematically. Ideology becomes the condition of one's consciousness, invisible because there is nothing to view it against; it becomes "life."

One of the tasks of political film criticism to explore the underlying ideology of any given film and lay bare its suppositions about society or property, war, love, violence, etc.

[Os Cangaceiros]

While Mattie's adult incarnation is even more spiteful, sanctimonious, and priggish than her cuter, younger version, Rooster's docility vis-à-vis this tyrant makes self-subordination cool. Who doesn't want to be like Jeff Bridges?

Bridge's character in the film was a subject of laughter, not "coolness".

[x359594]

A particular caveat that I have about Coen Bros. movies is what David Eherenstein had to say about No Country for Old Men: "...What I find unpleasant about it -- and many of the Coen brothers other movies as well, is the way it flatters the audience. With the exception of Tommy Lee Jones, all the other characters in the film are either monstrous (Bardem) or stupid (Brolin). We always know more than they do -- which flatters us without reason or justification.”

Frankly, I do think Ehrenstein's insight about "flattering the audience" was a tremendously penetrating one that Coen Bros. fans are going to need to engage and can’t ignore.

Also, there always seems to be something so synthetic in the relation of their films to reality (I don't mean "artificial" which art is supposed to be.) What I mean by "synthetic" is a quality that suggests the shallowness and remove I feel when seeing their films, as if they can never on any level carry themselves deeper beyond the surface of the image, even to the deeper ideas which seem to be suggesting themselves. Among other things, this is something that can have telling effect on scenes of violence and killing, which I have no problem with otherwise. In their own way, the Coens seem to have as negative a relationship to classic cinema, and especially genre cinema, as Spielberg does. The relationship of lived reality to clever filmmaking with some highly assertive (and not necessarily appealing) flair never has any real balance.