True Grit
I'm probably mangling the quote here, but once upon a time, Debbie Harry said about "Heart of Glass" that "the most punk rock thing we could do was release a disco song."
I think that's what's going on with True Grit. It is utterly devoid of the irony that is the defining element of the Coen brothers' body of work. It is a genre movie played straight and with exquisite craft, not transplanted into a bowling alley. It's a damn fine Western that's wry and understated and full of meditations on honor and duty and violence that are never handed to the audience. In places it's funny, in others it's brutal, and sometimes it's both. Men die badly in this movie, and for small justification.
Visually, the film is gorgeous. There are no long, loving flyover shots of wilderness immensity, just horse-level views of mountains and plains, big spaces being crossed by a few small people. The action sequences are largely shot from distance, the better to demonstrate how small the scale of the human conflict is against the immensity of the landscape. The score, by Carter Burwell, feels almost deliberately hokey in places, reminiscent of Last of the Mohicans and aggressively Americana in its instrumentation. And the acting is superb, from the unrecognizable Matt Damon to the relentless Hailee Steinfeld to, well, the whole cast is really good.
And that's what the movie is: really good. Not ironic, not a commentary on the genre, not meta. Just a well-made film which can be enjoyed and discussed on its own merits. Which, in a year when every film has to be an Event, is pretty damn punk rock after all.
I think that's what's going on with True Grit. It is utterly devoid of the irony that is the defining element of the Coen brothers' body of work. It is a genre movie played straight and with exquisite craft, not transplanted into a bowling alley. It's a damn fine Western that's wry and understated and full of meditations on honor and duty and violence that are never handed to the audience. In places it's funny, in others it's brutal, and sometimes it's both. Men die badly in this movie, and for small justification.
Visually, the film is gorgeous. There are no long, loving flyover shots of wilderness immensity, just horse-level views of mountains and plains, big spaces being crossed by a few small people. The action sequences are largely shot from distance, the better to demonstrate how small the scale of the human conflict is against the immensity of the landscape. The score, by Carter Burwell, feels almost deliberately hokey in places, reminiscent of Last of the Mohicans and aggressively Americana in its instrumentation. And the acting is superb, from the unrecognizable Matt Damon to the relentless Hailee Steinfeld to, well, the whole cast is really good.
And that's what the movie is: really good. Not ironic, not a commentary on the genre, not meta. Just a well-made film which can be enjoyed and discussed on its own merits. Which, in a year when every film has to be an Event, is pretty damn punk rock after all.
No comments have been added yet.
