Movies In History: True Grit

True Grit (the Coen Brothers version)

I like the John Wayne version of this movie, but I love the Coen brothers version.

This film is dialog-centric, like most Coen Brothers films are, but in this case the dialog serves to really illustrate something view films do. . .how things sounded like, not just how they looked.  In these regards, this film is superb.

The film is also is excellent in its material details, which most Westerns are not. The clothing is correct, as are the firearms.  The sense of space involved in an expedition of this type is excellently done, and comes across much better in this film than in the early John Wayne version.  That the expedition is basically alone in a wilderness is really conveyed.

The film's ending, true to the novel, is also historically correct, as not a lot of time passes in an historical context, but in a human context, as the film notes, "Twenty five years is a long time."  The changes in the west in the brief ending, and those things that had not changed, are subtly brought out.

It's an excellent movie, and a unique one given the emphasis on the dialog, a detail that it shares with the novel upon which it is based.  An excellent film and one of the best Westerns ever made.

The ABA pivotal scenes (from a lawyer's prospective) on this film.