Who Got the Grit

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After I saw No Country For Old Men a second time way back in March of 2008 I finally got around to sharing some brief thoughts on it right here. I said at the time that while No Country wasn't my favorite film of 2007 (it came in at 5th behind There Will Be Blood, Once, The Assassination of Jesse James..., and Grindhouse) I did like it quite a bit. Enough that I even included in my Top 5 Coens movies at that early time.

I haven't seen No Country since then, but I have seen the Coens' A Serious Man twice since then and honestly I like that 2009 film even more at this point. It seems crazy to me that ASM only got 12th in my Favorite Movies list for its year, but I suppose I did see a whole bunch of movies I loved last year (what a year!). If I were going to do my top five favorite Coens Bros movies at this point it'd probably look like this:

Fargo
A Serious Man
Barton Fink
No Country For Old Men
Raising Arizona

Those aren't exactly in order from my most favorite down, except for Fargo always and forever sitting at the top of the heap never ever to budge. Fargo rules.

So I guess that brings me to True Grit. Technically gorgeous, enthusiastically acted, often stilted and boring True Grit.

I haven't exactly put my finger on what precisely seems missing from it to me. It's not so much a soul, which is a claim that's been thrown at the Coens plenty-times before - to my eye it ekes out plenty of soul in a couple of terrifically moving passages, especially sticking the landing in its final twenty minutes or so when it really needed to. The race through the nighttime desert on a failing horse is one of my favorite scenes of the year.

But up til then my mind was oft wandering and my eyes were oft slipping away from Roger Deakins' beautiful frames. There was some sort of rhythm missing; at times it felt half-finished. There was a meandering air to it that never totally connected - things felt sketched in more than I'm used to with the Coens who are usually diabolically attentive to detail, and I didn't feel as if they ever entirely figured out what the reason for this story was. Oh well, even a mediocre Coens film gives you more than plenty to savor.


Best in show - Matt Damon, who's really well past due for some serious awards respect, y'all. In his every line reading you could feel the air of a puffed-up proud Texan deflating out, as time and his prey escaped him time and again. Beautiful work.
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