True Grit

True Grit

by Joel and Ethan Coen

I've almost convinced myself that the Coen brothers are the Barnum & Bailey of the film world. Most of their movies are genuinely about America and the types of characters found in the American landscape, of all eras, and most of the movies are about hucksters, suckers and fools. I think it was Barnum who said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

Almost every movie they make the characters are foolish, simple, unable to think. Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading who doesn't understand that his demand for a reward is blackmail. The husband in Fargo who hires someone to kidnap his wife so they can demand ransom from his father in law and then give him the money. This list of numbskulls in the Coen brothers movies is a very long one.

After Burn After Reading I realized that they are mocking Americans for the most part and this is what is particularly fun about their movies. They're very sophisticated ways of showing the tea baggers for what they really are.

But after watching True Grit, which doesn't seem to mock anyone, but has the same feel, I think there's something else that they do, which is that they don't let their characters change. From a writing point of view, which is what this blog is ostensibly about, this is an error according to the Hollywood 3 act formula. And generally I believe people read, see movies, etc., because they want to see a character change. It's the nature of living and being able to converse. We talk about what things happened today or yesterday, but it's all about the change that took place. We don't talk or want to hear about the fact that you urinated when you woke, unless your urine was blue or red.

What the Coens do is take characters and put them through the wringer of PLOT and then have them come out exactly the same character-wise as they were before the plot took place. They learn nothing. They change in absolutely no way whatsoever. In True Grit, the only change that takes place is that she loses her lower arm to a snake bite. But as a person she is exactly the same person as she was before the movie began. If you asked her what did she learn from the experience she would not say, "how to depend on someone," or "love," or "killing a man isn't easy," or "forgiveness," she would say that, "a rifle has a powerful back kick."

Likewise Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges in probably what is his best performance ever, I think, and better than the drunk Bad Blake for which he won the Oscar), could not point to a single thing of the heart that he might have learned and in that character's case, there probably isn't even a single fact that he learned, since he knew pretty much everything when the story began.

I'm guessing that in the John Wayne version, there was some sort of emotional connection made between the girl and the man which would be the 'change' that we want to see. The reluctant Rooster comes to care for the young girl with the snake bite. In this version, it's not there. He races across the territory to get her some help and after the horse drops dead he carries her the rest of the way (by this time she's passed out). But his only thought was "I'm getting old." Maybe that's what he learned.

I think this is what defines the Coens' style and what sets them apart from Hollywood. There is no sentimental mush in their movies; no false emotion. My favorite line from all of their movies is the last one in Fargo, "I just don't understand."