OSC nails what works about True Grit

...and bludgeons both TRONs in the process.

http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2010-12-30.shtml

The Best Actor Oscars are given out almost at random, it seems. Actors who
play people who are physically impaired or mentally ill always have an
advantage.

Thus Cliff Robertson (*Charly*) beat Peter O'Toole's brilliant portrayal of
Henry II in *The Lion in Winter* and Dustin Hoffman's one-note performance
in *Rain Man* won over Tom Hanks's astonishing performance in *Big*.

Hanks's revenge came when his performance as *Forrest Gump* defeated Paul
Newman's best-of-career role in *Nobody's Fool* and Morgan Freeman's and
Nigel Hawthorne's work in *Shawshank Redemption* and *The Madness of King
George*, respectively.

Sometimes the award is given, not for the performance, but because the film
was so admired that the effusion of love spatters votes all over the actors
lucky enough to be in them.

Then there are the years when the list of nominees makes you scratch your
head and wonder if the movies that year were so bad that these really were
the best performances by actors in a leading role.

They can only be explained by saying that certain actors are regarded as
nominatable, and so when they show up in a prestigious (i.e., much-hyped and
"serious") movie, they are automatically going to be in the running.

The most perilous category, though, is "sentimental favorite." Certain
actors become icons, and the Academy members long to give them an Oscar.

Sometimes such Oscars are given to actors who really *were* the best in one
or more past years, but got passed over for one reason or another.

How else can you explain Al Pacino's win in 1992 for his self-indulgent
performance in *Scent of a Woman*? Or Paul Newman's in 1986 for *The Color
of Money*?

But then there are the Oscars that are given for sentiment alone -- because
the Academy loves the persona that a very limited actor *always* plays.

Nobody can seriously think that there was any year in which Bing Crosby
really gave the best performance of any actor -- but he was nominated three
times and won once.

And anybody who has seen *both versions of True Grit* will simply laugh at
the notion that John Wayne somehow *earned* his Best Actor Oscar.

His competition was weird that year. Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman divided
the vote of those who admired *Midnight Cowboy*, a sentimental but "edgy"
movie that had an X rating. (Today it would be given a PG-13.)

Richard Burton was nominated for *Anne of a Thousand Days* and Peter O'Toole
for *Goodbye, Mr. Chips* -- both merely serviceable performances by actors
who had truly deserved Oscars before, but never received them. Both had the
severe Oscar disadvantage (in those days) of being Brits.

It was simply John Wayne's turn.

In the *Coen brothers' remake of True Grit, Jeff Bridges* shows just how
inadequate John Wayne's performance really was. It must be understood, now
if not all along, that John Wayne's Oscar was for "Best Acting by John
Wayne, Making His Oscar Less Embarrassing to the Academy."

It must be pointed out, in all fairness, that Jeff Bridges was working with
a far better script and with better direction, too.

It's not just that the Coens were more faithful to the book. It's that the
Coens' script was *better* than the book, and instead of emphasizing the
stilted dialogue that was so much praised in Charles Portis's novel (a gross
mistake; Portis apparently thought that when writers of the era did not use
contractions, it was because the people of the time did not use them), they
directed the actors to make the dialogue feel natural.

There are things in *True Grit* that will make some viewers wince --
recently-cut-off fingers lying on a table, for instance. But overall, *True
Grit* deserves serious consideration as, not just a "best" picture, but a
great one.

The Coen brothers are hit-or-miss, but their hits are amazing. *Raising
Arizona* and *The Hudsucker Proxy* are perennial favorites at our house,
with some votes as well for *Fargo* and *O Brother, Where Art Thou?*

But in *True Grit*, they may have found the perfect balance between savage
realism and rueful human comedy. This is epitomized in the moment when
Rooster Cogburn cheerfully offers to pull the partly-severed tongue of
LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) from his mouth, promising that in time he will find a
way to make his tongueless speech understood.

You don't know whether to laugh or screech. This is, I think, the reaction
the Coens always try for.

These are directors who make you admire, not their own direction, and not
even the actors' performances, because you are never forced to *notice* the
direction or the acting.

Instead, you admire the *characters*, even when they are far from admirable.
You love them because they are so appalling and well-meaning at the same
time.

*Will Jeff Bridges be nominated for this performance?* On the one hand, he's
an actor who not only gets nominations, but also wins -- he won last year,
after all, for a faintly similar performance (aging drunken hero) in *
Crazy-Heart*.

On the other hand ... he won last year, making an Oscar for him not such an
urgent matter. The Academy owed him one for having ignored his performance
in *Starman* back in 1984 -- but that debt is now discharged.

And we can't forget that Jeff Bridges also gave a definitely *non*-Oscar
performance in *TRON: Legacy*. From trusted critics who've seen it, Bridges
didn't even phone that performance in -- he left it as a post-it note on the
fridge.

Well, who wouldn't be embarrassed to take part in either of the
*TRON*movies? These are the stupidest movies about computers ever made
-- yes,
stupider than *War Games* -- and Bridges was in both *TRON*s.

(How stupid are they? They pretend to be all high-tech, but they're really
about magic. To have an avatar inside a computer culture might have been
interesting; but to have computers somehow make the person sitting at the
computer disappear in the process is so mind-numbingly dumb that the actors
who agreed to be in the film *deserved* to wear the embarrassing I'm-a-dummy
hats.)

But set the awards aside for a moment. Is *True Grit* worth seeing?

Except for the squeamish, yes it is. And *not* for the performances of Jeff
Bridges or Matt Damon -- though both are excellent. (Actors tend to give
their best performances for the Coens -- making them the opposite of George
Lucas and Woody Allen, who, as far as I can tell, suck the talent right out
of all but the most brilliant actors they work with.)

No, the performance that you will love and admire the most is that of Hailee
Steinfeld as Mattie Ross. *She* is the one who ought to be nominated,
because in every scene where she speaks, she blows everybody else off the
screen by the sheer truth of her performance.

Maybe there will never be another role that allows her such an opportunity
-- great roles for women are rare in this world, alas -- but she absolutely
nailed this one, and if she isn't nominated for Best Actress, what are the
Oscars even *for*?


Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

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