Joel and Ethan Coen have been nominated for six Oscars for their writing alone. One of those nominations was for their 2010 adaptation of True Grit. The film’s main character, Mattie Ross (played by Hailee Steinfeld), is a wonderfully written character. Though only fourteen years old, Mattie speaks far more eloquently than most of the adults surrounding her. Her polished prose stuns U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and infuriates Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon). She’s also a shrewd barter and well-versed in the bible. From all this, we can infer that Mattie is well educated, and her father must have taught her how to hold her own against those in positions of authority and power.
Near the end of the film, Mattie is bitten by a rattlesnake, and the infected arm must be removed. When Mattie is shown as a grown, one-armed woman, we see that the missing arm is symbolic of the price one must pay to earn “true grit”. Mattie began the movie wide-eyed and with a certain amount of innocence, even if she had also been tenacious and hard-headed. By the film’s end, the innocence is gone, but she carries on with pride even with only one arm. Like the one-eyed Rooster Cogburn, Mattie is now defined by her grit rather than her handicap.
It is also through Mattie’s eyes that the story is told. Her grown self narrates the film while her adolescent self guides the audience through the harsh realities of the Wild West. The audience grows with her. We go into the movie perhaps with a romanticized view of the Old West, and come out of it hardened. If the film had been told through Cogburn’s eyes (or rather, his eye), it perhaps would have glorified the brutality of the West and shown few consequences for killing. Had LaBoeuf narrated, the story would have probably focused on the dignity of the West, even if one must drink water from muddy bootprints every now and then. Yet with Mattie at the helm of the story, we get a coming of age story about how life, much like the West, can be hard and, yes, even gritty.
Sam's Screen 