The Coen Brothers True Grit Essay

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Western Film

The Coen Brothers’ (2010) film True Grit is an adaptation of the novel by the same name and contrasts sharply with the films of the same genre from the 1940s and 1950s. Save for John Ford’s Westerns, like The Searchers, which had a bit of realism mixed in with the sentimentality, there is not much comparison worth noting. The Coen Brothers created a film that is true to the book, while the earlier adaptation starring John Wayne romanticizes the relationship between Rooster Cogburn and the young girl who hires him to find the killer of her father. In the Coen Brothers’ film there is no romanticizing of this relationship at all: Cogburn is old and gnarly and the young girl is still a child. The Coens focus on the relationship as being one of mutual respect and the film ends with a deep not of gratitude and sense of heroism and appreciation that the John Wayne version does not offer; the latter is more syrupy and typical of the pulp style of Westerns around mid-century. The Coens do compare best with the Westerns of Ford, which provide a sense of the deep, personal conflict driving characters—such as Wayne’s character in The Searchers, which is also a film about a man going on an impossible quest to find someone in the wild (Dirks, n.d.).

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The cinematography in the Coen Brothers’ film is absolutely gorgeous and stunning. Three places that the cinematography stood out to me were when the young girl arrives in the town to obtain the services of Rooster Cogburn and witnesses the hanging of three men. The scene is shot simply but effectively without overdoing the drama of the scene. Another excellent moment of cinematography is when Rooster is racing to get the girl to the medic at the end of the film. The horse is shown galloping through the wild and the scenery is amazing. Finally, the end scene when Mattie is all grown up and old, is the most impressive shot: she is on a hill visiting the grave of Cogburn, her arm gone from where it was cut off. She walks away into the distance in a stunning piece of cinematography.
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