MY MOVIE SHELF: True Grit

 

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 14 Days to go: 12

Movie #426:  True Grit

This movie is spectacular. I’ve never seen the John Wayne original, but I can’t imagine it holds a candle to the crisp filmmaking of the Coen Brothers and the sensational performances of Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn, Matt Damon as Mr. LaBoeuf and especially Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross. (I would’ve given her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in a heartbeat.)

The story is narrated by the grown Mattie (Elizabeth Marvel), recounting the time when she was fourteen and her father was killed by the villain Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). He had been away from home on an errand, so Mattie travels to have his body sent back and to capture the criminal herself, since no one else there will care enough to.

The title comes from Mattie’s declaration to Rooster that she has chosen to hire him — a U.S. Marshall — to track down Chaney because she’s heard he has “true grit,” but it’s Mattie who has grit, as she demonstrates over and over. She’s clever, strong-willed and formidable. She has a keen mind for business and law and she takes pains not to trifle with silliness, but she’s not without soul or spirit. She can outsmart a grown man on financial negotiations one minute and cheerily reminisce about the time her father took her on a coon hunt the next. She won’t give up her quest to find Chaney, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t delight in telling ghost stories around the campfire. She’s resolute, but she is open to new opinions and admits when she’s misjudged people, and she gains the respect of nearly all that she encounters, kind of by the sheer force of her will, including notorious criminal Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper), who they find Chaney riding with. She feels fear, anger, sadness and deep affection over the course of her journey with the Marshall and the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf and proves herself to be a deep and richly drawn character, who, despite being so young, carries the whole film.

There’s something to be said, too, for the way Rooster and LaBoeuf are also changed by Mattie, both in their relationship with each other and their feelings toward her. They are truly comrades on this quest, working together and coming to respect and appreciate one another in a way only people who have shared a great trial can. All have flaws — and the dialogue snaps with crackling insults and banter as they pick at each other — and all have strengths, and out of these characters flows the story.

I’ve never really considered myself a fan of westerns, but True Grit is the clear exception. The ride is harrowing, the stakes are high, and the action is compelling. Even the largely unlikable broad strokes of the characters (Rooster is gruff, LaBoeuf is arrogant and Mattie herself is stubborn) are made sympathetic by their words and deeds, each one coming to the assistance of the others, and proving there is more to them than their outward appearance. The film is stark and unforgiving, as traditional westerns are, but it is full of heart and courage and perseverance, and I absolutely love it. (I’ve already seen it more times than I can count.)

MY MOVIE SHELF: Raising Arizona

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 23 Days to go: 19

Movie #417:  Raising Arizona

Is there any movie theme more earworm-y than Raising Arizona‘s high-pitched, keening tune? I hum along, I feel it in my bones. It gets under your skin. It infects you. It hangs around for hours, days even. It’s haunting and hypnotizing and great. And somehow it seems to fit with the special brand of absurdity that flows through the film.

Raising Arizona was only the second feature by the soon-after illustrious Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, but it firmly established their particular sensibility. Mournful shot through with silliness, optimistic despite being filled to the brim with calamity, the movie is like a joke you’re not quite sure you get (resulting in it being somewhat unsuccessful upon its release, but achieving cult status in the nearly thirty years since). Sometimes it’s surreal, sometimes it’s just weird, but through everything that happens, it’s mesmerizing and fascinating. As goofy and extreme as are the habits and reactions of H.I. “Hi” McDunnough (Nicolas Cage) and Ed (Holly Hunter), you can’t help but be invested in them nonetheless.

There are a whole cast of oddball characters, in fact, throughout the film, but everything centers on the relationship of Hi and Ed and their attempts to have a baby. Hi is a petty criminal, in and out of prison for robbing convenience stores, and Ed is a decorated police officer, yet the first moment Hi sees her, he’s smitten, and before long Ed is won over by his romantic declarations. They get married, and it’s hot and heavy for a while, until Ed decides she wants a baby and is unable to have one. Enter the offspring of one Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson).

Nathan Arizona is an Arizona businessman (selling unpainted furniture) whose wife took fertility treatments and wound up giving birth to quintuplets. As Nathan joked, they now had more than they could handle, so Ed gets it in her head to ask Hi to steal her one. And what follows is an amusing take on the overwhelming undertaking of becoming a parent. (“You gotta get their DIP-TET!”)

Not that the movie is about parenthood any more than it’s about law and order. It’s a farce. It’s full of symbolism of the ideas of good versus evil, and it’s full of visual gags, and it’s full of angles and shots that compare characters and situations to other characters and situations, but it doesn’t have a message really. And that’s just fine. It doesn’t need a message for it to be compelling and impactful.  Hi is able, in the end, to come to the realization that he’s not been living a responsible life like he meant to, even if he did have the best of intentions. And when he’s not living right, nothing around him is going right either. But when he finally does right in the end, everything else falls into place as well. Including the dreamt of far-off future, in which he and Ed have a long and happy life together, filled with children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of their own. Which is all they ever really wanted.

I love Raising Arizona. I love the outrageousness of it and the absurdity of it and the silliness of it. I love the accents and the goofy manners of speech everyone has and pretty much everything else about it. And my name isn’t even Nathan Arizona.