A Reflection on True Grit: Don't Forget the Nihilism

"People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood, but it did happen. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down and robbed him of his life and his horse and and two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.

Chaney was a hired man, and Papa had taken him up to Fort Smith to help lead back a string of Mustang ponies he had just brought. In town, Chaney had fallen to drink and cards and lost all his money. He got it into his head he was being cheated, and went back to the boarding house to get his Henry rifle. When Papa tried to intervene, Chaney shot him. Chaney fled.

He could have walked his horse, for not a soul in the city could be bothered to give chase. No doubt Chaney fancied himself scot-free.

But he was wrong. You must pay for everything in this world, one way or the other. There is nothing free, except the grace of God."

Of the 110 minutes of True Grit, the ones I love best are the opening and ending sequence. Everything in between is kind of well, mediocre - there's the typical Coen characters and Coen morbid eccentric humor - there's Roger Deakins' lovely but often fleeting cinematography, but I think all of these kind of pale in comparison to the two elegiac, kind of haunting sequences that begin and end the movie.

But this is less of a review than a spirited defense of the movie, from those who called the ending cold and empty and the characters devoid of emotional depth or warmth.

Why does True Grit need "warmth" to qualify as great? Because it has comedic moments and a sassy young girl character? I kind of like to think of True Grit as a companion piece to No Country For Old Men. They're both modern spins on the Western and both have a good dose of nihilism and murky morality, even if True Grit is being touted as a more family-friendly genre picture. But I don't think the Coen Bros. ever intended to make a fuzzy, warm, feel-good movie.

The epilogue is kind of hilarious in the way that *SPOILERS* you have what appears to be a sweetly satisfactory conclusion pan out to something that leaves the cheering audience cold and uncertain in their seats. But then again, this is a Coen Brothers movie. The hipster sarcasm that makes them so popular with teenage boys aside, they've never phoned in for simplistic conclusions.

Sure, the movie concerns themes like revenge, but it's mostly a character study of an identity, a tough breed of people who possess the titular "true grit, like Mattie and Rooster. They're decent and morally upright people, not without kindness, but they are not tender or or even preternaturally warm. As much as I like Hailee Steinfeld's performance, she almost makes Mattie too likeable, because at heart, she and Rooster are the same - stoic, inexorable, and self-assured loners. The "true grit" is the cause of their isolation from other people, but it's unfair to assume that Mattie and Rooster lack emotional depth anymore than say, Mark Zuckerberg does in The Social Network, who shares a similar hardwiring with Mattie and Rooster. The only difference is TSN's sadsack ending, which I thought was kind of a Hollywood cop-out and betrayed the Zuckerberg character they'd been beautifully building up to that point. Unlike Zuckerberg, Older Mattie has absolutely no regrets despite a similar emotional isolation, but because of that, she's "empty"?

Listen, in the 21st century where the need to simply be alone is increasingly seen as a cause for concern, there still exists some people who - well, are natural loners, period. They can enjoy human company but enjoy the comfort of solitude more. And they are not lonely. And it is not weird, or soulless, or that they do not find their friendlessness empty or lonely. In the Old West, it is a common personality, but in 2010, it's Asperger's?

Tangent alert. Anyways, in retrospect, it would have been odd for the Coen Bros to let a movie where people shot in cold blood end all happy-go-lucky. They tell good stories, but their stories have always come with some sort of moral or spiritual implication. I disagree with others who found this movie off the mark. In a way True Grit's ending is more emotionally genuine than The Social Network's, since it actually makes the audience feel the hard emptiness of Mattie's choices instead of enforcing the false sentimentality of Zuckerberg's. Both movies end up having odd reversals of tone.