One of my favorite bits of dialogue from William Gay’s novel, The Long Home went something along the lines of “Folks around here always had strange ideas about women, seemed to think they needed protecting.” The character could have been referring to Mattie Ross, the fourteen year old protagonist of Charles Portis’ 1968 novel True Grit who takes the business of seeing her father’s murder avenged upon herself. She’s not delusional, she knows she’ll need help, but along the way her steely nerves and unflagging moral fortitude exposes squeamish streaks in most of the tough, weathered gunmen she encounters along the way and presumably in the reader as well. She is to my thinking, and I know I’m not alone, the spiritual ancestor of Ree Dolly, the determined and resolute hero of Daniel Woodrell’s Winter's Bone. Interesting that both have been made into films this year.
The role of Rooster Cogburn in True Grit was one of John Wayne’s most iconic, winning him his only Academy Award and spawning sequels into the 1970s and this week, Jeff Bridges puts his mark on the role of the one-eyed, alcoholic marshal recruited by Mattie to do the job, (this being his first role since winning his only Academy Award), and as much as I’m looking forward to watching Bridges clinch the reins in his teeth and issue lead from both fists, I’m wondering just how different the films will be.
The original, for all of its strengths, differed from the novel in becoming just as much Rooster’s story as Mattie’s, but The Coen Brothers have promised a more faithful adaptation in their version sighting a restoration of much of Portis’ subversive humor and a heavier reliance on Mattie’s narrative voice. Easily my most anticipated film of the season, I hope that it sends people to rediscover Portis. I’m a big fan of the gritty, crime infested, southern gothic, noir that certainly cross pollinates with Westerns, (from which detective fiction springs – rugged individualists forced to become the law unto themselves in an otherwise lawless wilderness/society), and will confess to my woeful underexposure to his work. Let me be the first to pledge picking up more of his books in the new year.
Who's with me?
Jedidiah Ayres writes fiction and keeps the blog Hardboiled Wonderland.
