True Grit

True Grit, by Charles Portis, is that rare exception--a movie that is better than the book from which it was adapted. The Coen brothers did an amazing job paring the book down to its emotional essence, leaving out redundancies in the plot, and turning a book that doesn't know if it wants to be tragedy or farce into a razor-sharp film that actually succeeds in making the tragedy more tragic and the farce more farcical. Much of this is accomplished by the casting of Hailee Steinfeld as Mattie Ross, who, in the film, gets many more of the best lines than she does in the book. Also playing a bigger, more farcical role in the film, is Matt Damon as Texas Ranger LeBoeuf ("LeBeef," as they say in Texas).

None of which is to say that the book is by any means bad, a letdown, or even disappointing. It just doesn't share a lot of the imagery and pitch-perfect dialogue that make the film so wonderful. As critic Roy Blount Jr., says, "Charls Portis could be Cormac McCarthy if he wanted to, but he'd rather be funny." While the Coen brothers have in no way detracted from the humor of the book, they are devotees of Cormac McCarthy (see: No Country for Old Men), and they have heightened the McCarthy-esque tragic elements and imagery. There are some beautiful scenes in the movie--a corpse hanging in a snowfall, an Indian in a bear suit (literally) materializing out of the mist--that did not come from the book and could only have come from the Coen's McCarthy-infused minds.

In short, the Coens have not only returned True Grit to a form (unlike the earlier film) faithful to the book, they have also turned it into a work that McCarthy could be proud of. They have a fine aptitude for bringing the simultaneously grotesque and absurdly comical to the screen, a quality that characterizes McCarthy's work, but not so much Portis's. Overall, by heightening both the tragic and the farcical aspects of Portis's novel, the Coen brothers have outdone themselves and created a film following the viewing of which you actually do not need to run out and immediately buy the book thinking you are missing something. You're not. The film is self-sustaining, and ultimately much more satisfying, when allowed to stand on its own.