Let’s talk about a movie today, a Western with a 14-year-old girl as the main character. It’s a story about a girl who seeks revenge for her father’s death. She independently seeks justice, hires an old, alcoholic killer to track down the murderer, and successfully avenges her father.
This movie is “True Grit,” directed by the Coen brothers and starring Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin.
True Grit: A Western Adventure
“True Grit” is unique as a Western featuring a female and child protagonist. As someone relatively new to the genre, I appreciated that the directors didn’t portray the female character as a damsel in distress. It defied my expectations of Westerns and made it a great entry point for female viewers like myself.
Westerns share similarities with Wuxia films, using guns instead of swords to depict romance, justice, and fairness. They amplify themes of good versus evil, rich versus poor, and love versus hate, creating irreconcilable conflicts.
The characters often exist outside the law, on the fringes of society, with their own codes and logic. They are distinct individuals with varying values: grassroots heroes who despise evil, ruthless villains, and cowardly henchmen. The outcome usually sees good triumphing over evil, resulting in a thrilling, satisfying, and exhilarating experience.
The Plot Unfolds
Let’s delve into the storyline. Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl, is the eldest daughter in her family. Her father is murdered by a treacherous man who also steals their horses. Determined to avenge her father, she travels alone by train to the city where the crime occurred to bury him. Against her mother’s wishes, she insists on seeking revenge.
Before seeking revenge, she plans to collect debts to fund the hiring of a lawman to track down the killer.
On her first night, penniless, she sleeps in a funeral home alongside three corpses. The next day, using her sharp wit, she demands compensation from the owner of the stable where her father’s horses were stolen.
She sets her sights on a tough U.S. Marshal named Rooster Cogburn. Although he is often drunk, ruthless, and known for killing indiscriminately, he is also brave and skilled with a gun. She pleads with him to help her track down the killer, but he dismisses her as a burden, takes her money, and sets off alone.
Meanwhile, a Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf is also searching for the murderer, who previously killed a Texas senator and is now wanted with a hefty reward.
Mattie knows that if the Texas Ranger captures the killer first, he will be dealt with according to Texas law. She must find the killer before the Ranger and personally kill him to avenge her father.
She buys a black horse, swims across a rapid river, and chases after Rooster. Her determination and courage move Rooster, and he agrees to take her along.
Along the way, she climbs tall trees to cut down ropes hanging nameless corpses, stands on the heads of outlaws to block chimneys, and experiences dangers and hardships that a young girl should never face. The unlikely trio of Mattie, Rooster, and LaBoeuf sometimes ally and sometimes compete, finding themselves in perilous situations.
One morning, while fetching water by a stream, Mattie encounters the killer. She clumsily shoots and wounds him, but is captured by his allies and forced to fight for her life.
Eventually, LaBoeuf and Rooster rescue Mattie, and she seizes the opportunity to personally shoot and kill the murderer, avenging her father’s death.
However, the recoil from the gun causes her to fall into a pit, where she is bitten by a venomous snake, putting her life in danger. Rooster, despite his own injuries, carries her and runs desperately to find help.
Upon seeing their savior, an exhausted Rooster cries out, “I’m getting old,” and collapses.
The scene shifts to decades later. Mattie is now an old, unmarried woman who lost an arm due to the snake venom. She never saw Rooster or LaBoeuf again after that day.
One day, she receives a letter from Rooster inviting her to see his shooting performance. Mattie arrives at the location, only to learn that Rooster passed away three days earlier.
She takes Rooster’s remains and buries them near her home under a large tree.
The Essence of a Western
As an American Western, “True Grit” feels wilder and more unrestrained than Chinese Wuxia films due to the vast differences in historical culture and geographical environment. The expansive, arid deserts, treacherous primeval forests, muddy, rushing rivers, quiet, icy streams, complex and changing climates, isolated, desolate cabins, and fiery, immense sunsets create a magnificent and timeless natural stage. The cowboys appear small and lonely, yet their extraordinary spirit and rich emotions are highlighted.
Like Wuxia films, Westerns never create perfect saints. The characters are flawed, making them vivid and real, existing on the boundary between fantasy and reality, and creating a spiritual power that can feed back into reality.
Mattie is a girl with a clear sense of right and wrong, intelligent and decisive, but in the face of life-threatening situations, her cowardly side, where she fears death and abandons principles, is also exposed. Rooster is cold, ruthless, violent, and addicted to alcohol, but he also has a strong sense of pride, a tender heart, chivalry, kindness, and indifference to fame and wealth. LaBoeuf is greedy for money, arrogant, and conceited, but he is also a righteous man with beliefs and principles.
Many people dislike the ending where Mattie becomes a lonely, cold, and taciturn one-armed woman, but I quite like this tragic setting. The missing arm, the single life, and the quietness all fit Mattie’s free, strong character. These are the marks that decades of life have left on her, the embodiment of the causal logic of the world.
The long passage of time gives the story a sense of vicissitude. Time flies between the mundane loneliness of today and the past adventures, breeding an unspeakable feeling. The one-time encounter of three unrelated people carries a faint regret and a sense of the fate of life.
However, I personally feel that some of the random character settings are somewhat deliberate, adding drama for the sake of it, without helping the plot and appearing ostentatious, which damages the overall atmosphere of the film.
If you like Westerns or Wuxia films, I recommend you watch this film. Overall, the plot is tight, and it can satisfy the beautiful fantasy of a just world.