The brothers Joel and Ethan Coen ( The Big Lebowski, Fargo ) have more than twenty years working in film. In all that time perhaps his most striking achievement is to have gone through almost every genre that exists within the range available in American popular culture, and remain faithful to his mark as filmmakers, resulting also in the process, a unique personal style that allows us to recognize a film of the Coens' regardless of the "sign" that we can hang. Not that the "style Coen" just let it do some specific form in the movies of the brothers, goes beyond mere stylistic stance against a default genre: the Coen take on the genre and transform it, redefine it so that in each attempt, the same conventions and "conventions" (if we can call them that) of the brothers are joined in an inseparable symbiosis, creating the feeling that we commonly saw a film of this duet, be facing a unique piece and irreplicable. In this context, it seems curious that the brothers Coen have waited so long to break into the western classical (it's clarification, if we consider that No Country For Old Men is, in essence, a Western XXI century), but whatever his motives, the fact is that in the case of True Grit, the wait was rewarded.
Based on the novel by Charles Portis, the existing adaptation of the famous 1969 that he was worth his only Oscar to the great John Wayne, True Grit tells the story of Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), a girl fourteen and great character, who engages the services of Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a one-eyed sheriff, considerably drunk and rundown, but with "nerves of steel" to find and to execute Chaney Ted (Josh Brolin), the murderer of his father.
All the traditional elements of a film of the Coen are present: the eccentric characters, the humor (at times very measured, at times almost histrionic), the contrast between the humor and moments of deep darkness and the sudden outbursts of violence that is presented in a way incomprehensible. All your "gadgets" available to common forms of traditional narrative stylistic and western. The camera work, editing and selecting the most details of each plane, together with the stunning photography of the master Roger Deakin, a great contributor in the history of the Coen allowed to bring freshness to this time, a film genre that sadly seems to have evolved in recent years.
Bridges delivers a performance at the level he usually does, but who shines without dim compared to a cast of first level, is the young Steinfeld. Moments like the initial dialogue in which the ponies are traded, or Cogburn first approach to come to us with a naturalness seldom seen in such young actresses. Simply steals every scene in which he appears, his performance alone is worth the entire movie.
True Grit is a hit more on the career of the Coen. An exercise in the western style the duo adopted with honors, and also an opportunity to consider the validity. When Cogburn said the final "I'm old," it says in fact the entire western genre, statement to which the Coens responded to the scene that immediately follows: the western, its heroes and legends have changed because Times have changed, but far from dead, it's worth revisit again and again
4.5/5.0
Thanks for reading, are a wonderful audience
Gonza
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