True Grits

WARNING: SPOILERS! SPOILERS! SPOILERS!

ONLY READ IF YOU HAVE SEEN BOTH VERSIONS OF TRUE GRIT

OR IF YOU DO NOT INTEND TO DO SO!


Okay, that out of the way, let me state that I finally saw the True Grit remake over the weekend.

In all fairness, the remake was very, very good. With one major exception. The ending. More specifically, the final ten minutes of the movie. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. To me, it's illustrative of what's really wrong in Hollywood today. Or what's been wrong in Hollywood since, oh, 1969 or so.

Up until those last ten minutes I was with the remake. I liked Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn. Sure, his marble-mouthed stoned-hippie-slur takes about thirty minutes to get used to. But it won me over. I liked Matt Damon's characterization of the Texas Ranger much better than Glen Campbell's in the original. Damon took a well-deserved beating and did not mind portraying the character as a jackass. The girl, well, she did the best she could compared to the defining, iconic performance by the original Mattie.

So right up to the point where Cogburn carries the snake-bit girl to shelter to save her life, I was with the remake. If John Wayne's original was graded an A-plus, I'd give the new version a solid A.

Until those damnable final ten minutes.

In the original, Mattie is healed and whole after Rooster has to ride and carry her all through the freezing night to get her to a doctor. Some time passes, and it's time for the marshall to move on. In a tender, wistful and childlike way, Mattie asks whether Rooster would like to be buried in her family's burial plot. Touched but realizing the true nature behind the request, he turns her down, telling her it's for her and her future husband. Then, with a mischievous wink, he tells her he ain't dead yet, spurs his horse to leap over a fence, and disappears in a blur amidst credits.

A fine and fitting ending to a classic. Pulls at the heartstrings in a gentle, unassuming way.

Now, the remake.

Mattie does not see Cogburn when she comes out of her snake-bite-induced coma. Nor does she see him again as we flash forward 25 long years as a world-weary older Mattie begins voiceover narration. She's lost the arm to the snake poison; it had to be amputed. We're treated to the sight of one-armed Mattie in a black dress from several angles over the next several minutes. We get it. She's ugly. Every year Hollywood westerns get uglier and uglier. Ugly men, homely women. Sweaty, dirty, bad hair, bad clothes. We get it. Now this beautiful young girl is an ugly old spinster. Ugliness has prevailed. Ugliness has triumphed.

She's received a letter from Rooster; seems the marshall is now part of a traveling rodeo show; the year is 1903. Mattie gets on a train to meet with the man who saved her life and helped bring her father's killer to justice. Okay, so now I'm hoping for a meeting with the elderly Cogburn, hoping to see an Oscar-worthy crack in the mental armor in either the crusty old gunslinger or the now bitter Mattie. Perhaps they both give the other a reason to live, really live, again, in what years remain to either. But guess what? Rooster's dead. Died three days ago. Mattie missed him, after 25 years, by a lousy 72 hours. Life stinks. We get it.

So what does Mattie do? Lay a daffodil at the old man's grave? It was mentioned that Rooster was buried in a Confederate cemetary. Early in the film he expressed pride in defending some of the South's military traditions and the men he rode with. What does Mattie do? She unearths his coffin and hauls it back north to her family plot - exactly the opposite of the marshall's wishes per the first movie.

What a bitter, ugly, senseless, and ... postmodern ... ending to a classic flick. That's what I think is wrong with Hollywood. Too many movies reach a fork in the road and choose the uglier and senseless path. In postmodern America, it's no longer gutsy to choose this direction, just tiresome. Where has all the uplifting art from years past gone? Oh - can't even ask that: the culture mocks such a question with faux hipness.

I give the ending an F. Proportionally speaking, then, I guess, I'd have to grade the remake (which was mercifully short for a modern-day movie, clocking in at something like an hour and forty-five minutes) a solid B, though I feel that ending is so poisonous I can't recommend the film in its entirety.

Blech. Ruined in the closing moments for no good reason at all.