**spoiler alert**
Is it possible to give a 1 person standing ovation?
I'd like to give one to Charles Portis, the author of True Grit.
I've never been able to read an entire book in one day. I just don't have the focus for it after years of multitasking. Goodness knows I try. But when I started reading True Grit, after watching both versions of the film, I tore through the pages without stopping. Perhaps it was because I loved the movies so much and knew the story well, or because I wanted to know which version of the movie's ending had it straight. Here's what I learned.
The real story of True Grit, in a nutshell: Mattie Ross' father, Frank Ross, is shot in cold blood by a man that he'd been trying to help. The man who shot him, Tom Chaney, disappears into the Oklahoma Territory where the local law can not go. Mattie insists that Chaney be brought to justice. She hires a U.S. Marshall to find Tom Chaney, seeking a man who's got grit. She chooses Rooster Cogburn, a one eyed drunk, and offers to pay him fifty dollars to find Chaney and bring him back to Fort Smith to be hanged for the murder of her father. Rooster reluctantly agrees, after much negotiating.
While Rooster is stalling the trek into the Oklahoma Territory, a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf, comes to Mattie about Tom Chaney. He is also looking for the man to be brought back to Texas and hanged for the murder of a senator and his hound. He tries to talk Mattie into letting him help her find Chaney then take him to Texas instead of Fort Smith but Mattie won't stand for this and tells LaBoeuf so in her purposeful and witty way. Rooster and LaBoeuf meet and discuss the girl and her plan. Eventually Rooster and LaBoeuf decide that they're going to go alone to get Chaney and Mattie will be notified when he's been hanged. She won't stand for this either and follows them, regardless of how they treat her.
Adventure ensues and they do end up catching Tom Chaney. Mattie is then kidnapped by Chaney's companions and Rooster and LaBoeuf are forced to flee and see her die. They go. And I'm sorry if you don't know how it ends because you're about to. Mattie shoots Tom Chaney but the blast knocks her down into a pit of rattlesnakes. She's stuck and her arm is broken. As she's trying not to slip through the moss and brambles, deeper into the pit, the snakes wake from their winter slumber and one bites her.
Chaney comes to and finds Mattie in the pit where he prepares to shoot her. Rooster comes back just in time to finish Chaney off, dropping him into the pit with Mattie. Rooster goes down into the hole and gets her out and leaves Chaney dead with the snakes and another mans remains. When Rooster finds out about the snake bite, he rushes Mattie back to Fort Smith, running her pony to death and then carrying her the rest of the way. She loses her arm. There's not a really happy ending, but everything ends up the way that Mattie wanted it to be. And for Mattie, justice is happiness.
The Coen brothers are brilliant. If their version of True Grit doesn't win at least 3 Oscars, I'm going to be really disappointed in the American public. (Facebook is not more important than the adventure of a willful young woman.) But their version is a little different. Mattie has different experiences with Rooster in the movie than she does in the book. LaBoeuf doesn't go his own way in the book either, but I think that the way that the Coen brothers wrote it makes the connection between Rooster and Mattie so much stronger. It makes the ending so much more powerful. I'd like to see it again before it leaves the theater, and I can honestly say that I haven't felt this way about a movie in a long time. Mattie Ross is such an incredible character that she sticks in my mind. I really appreciate Charles Portis' talent for providing his fourteen year old girl so much gumption and wit. I hope to someday write characters as well as he wrote Mattie.
Now, as for the original True Grit, its more similar to the book for the majority of the film. But given the fact that this version was made in 1969 and Mattie Ross was being played by Kim Darby, a much too sweet version of the sharp tongued young woman in the novel, the ending is different. It wouldn't be right for Miss Darby to appear to have shot a man or to have lost her arm. Not many people would have bothered to watch something like that in those days. (We're tougher nowadays) And I don't think that John Wayne would have allowed it.
On a side note, I didn't realize that John Wayne only knows how to be one character and that he reminds me of my uncle so much.
Charles Portis, thank you for your work. I will read it again and again. Joel and Ethan Coen, I love what you've done with your updates. And the dirtiness of it all really makes it seem realistic. I'm hoping that it wins the Best Picture award. I also think it would be very special if Jeff Bridges won the Best Actor award because John Wayne won it for the origincal Rooster Cogburn. And I loved the way Jeff Bridges portrayed the one eyed fat man. Hailee Steinfeild also deserves the Best Supporting Actress (which should have been the Best Actress, but whatever) because she was Mattie Ross exactly as Mr. Portis intended, I believe.
Good luck to all of them.
And if you haven't read or seen True Grit, I highly recommend doing both. And I'm sorry about the spoiler.
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