There are many engaging characters in this wonderful film, but there is no mistaking who is at the heart of it all. Young Mattie is the narrative engine of this story of revenge, and is also the key embodiment of the title. Not that the other characters lack grit, because without some measure of it they would not be able to survive in the untamed and undomesticated land that they all inhabit, but none are as steel-eyed in their resolve as 13 year old Mattie.
Amidst all the natural wildness and rough and violent masculinity stands this barely teenage girl, with ramrod poise, armed only with her certainty of her self and her wit. Unsurprisingly, she conquers them all. The men around her showcase their grit in their old scars and fresh wounds, and shout of their strength and skill with frequent violent boasts. In comparison, Mattie has no external armor to rattle, no battle trumpet to sound before her fights. Her youth and her gender are critical to underscoring and heightening her personification of a profound True Grit. To paraphrase Erasmus and Plato, she acts as an inverse Sileni Statue. These were ancient statues of crude and bawdy satyrs that had tiny golden statues of gods hidden inside of them. She, inversely, is a young lady that carries within her the passion and tenacity of one of the vengeful Furies.
As the film begins it seems perhaps that she bases much of her strength in the law, as she frequently quotes that her actions are based in and supported by the “force of law”. The men around her smirk at these pronouncements, because they know that in these wild lands Force is the Law. They are wrong to smirk, and we are wrong to assume that she finds strength in anything other than herself. Case in point – when she finally wrangles Rooster Cogburn to her cause he says that she cannot join him in the hunt, and that she ought to trust him because he is a “bonded marshall.” Her response reveals how well she understands that there is no law in this land, “That weighs but little with me… I will see the thing done.”
Sure enough, she rides with him and she sees the thing done… in fact, she does it herself. Revenge is accomplished, justice is served, but if one chooses to live by the sword one rarely escapes being cut. Young Mattie loses her steed and loses an arm, and everything fades to black.
The films short coda to all this action comes as a rude shock to many, with Mattie revealed many years later as a weathered, one-armed spinster. She briskly relates to us how the unlikely friendships that we have just watched being forged quickly disintegrated and disappeared. Time slips away, connections are lost and lives are ended, and the culture changes. She learns that Cogburn, at the end, was no longer a Force as Law in an untamed land but was relegated to performing in a traveling ‘Wild-West’ show that was surely a milquetoast caricature of the West they had shared.
During this seemingly disheartening conclusion, that comes so jarringly on the heels of a story of such excitement and joy de vivre, the Coen brothers play the old hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” This is more than a simple stab of dark humor at the expense of their one-armed heroine. It is macabre humor, there is no doubt of that, but the key is to realize that it is a joke that Mattie would appreciate. This is her coda and she still stands straight and tall and strong, and in this bitter conclusion we should not miss the sweet… we should not miss that she is once again a Sileni Statue, but in a new context.
She is no longer a fresh-faced youth, but she is still a woman in a man’s world that demands her to act a certain way, and thankfully she still refuses to act in any way but her own. She remembers her friends and their adventures without dissolving into weeping tears and self-pity. She proudly mentions her refusal to submit to the cultural constraints of marriage, and she issues a sharp retort to a minor character at the end for his lack of manners. If we look carefully it should be wonderfully and joyfully clear that her resolve to act fairly and demand justice remains undimmed. In these last difficult years of her life she is perceived (by her society and by many of us upon first viewing) as lonely and forlorn, but inside of her is the gleaming gold of True Grit that she always maintains regardless of the hardships she encounters.
The tender hymn that scores this coda speaks to the fellowship and the safety that is found in the eternal presence of God and his everlasting arms. Mattie does not need this hymn, and that is why the Coens play it for her… to highlight and underscore her True Grit. She always believed in herself, made her own justice, spoke her own words, and earned her own friendships. She may have lost an arm during her adventures, but it is clear that she never lost any of life’s precious moments worrying about arms that never existed.
PS- Some will point out that she often quotes Scripture in the beginning of the film, and thus must be a believer. Nonsense. The real test of her mettle is found in that she does not once cry out for God during her trials. She merely quotes the Bible during her earlier conversations, as a rhetorical and lyrical text that she knows to be deeply embedded in her culture. Not to suggest that she speaks disingenuously, as I suspect she has a healthy respect for the justice driven narratives of the Old Testament. She is not an iconoclast that would rail against the fundamental structures of her society. I bet she would find such a notion distasteful. But I can assure you she never wasted a Sunday in church praying to a God she has never spoken with… for Mattie is woman of straight words and real actions.
Amidst all the natural wildness and rough and violent masculinity stands this barely teenage girl, with ramrod poise, armed only with her certainty of her self and her wit. Unsurprisingly, she conquers them all. The men around her showcase their grit in their old scars and fresh wounds, and shout of their strength and skill with frequent violent boasts. In comparison, Mattie has no external armor to rattle, no battle trumpet to sound before her fights. Her youth and her gender are critical to underscoring and heightening her personification of a profound True Grit. To paraphrase Erasmus and Plato, she acts as an inverse Sileni Statue. These were ancient statues of crude and bawdy satyrs that had tiny golden statues of gods hidden inside of them. She, inversely, is a young lady that carries within her the passion and tenacity of one of the vengeful Furies.
As the film begins it seems perhaps that she bases much of her strength in the law, as she frequently quotes that her actions are based in and supported by the “force of law”. The men around her smirk at these pronouncements, because they know that in these wild lands Force is the Law. They are wrong to smirk, and we are wrong to assume that she finds strength in anything other than herself. Case in point – when she finally wrangles Rooster Cogburn to her cause he says that she cannot join him in the hunt, and that she ought to trust him because he is a “bonded marshall.” Her response reveals how well she understands that there is no law in this land, “That weighs but little with me… I will see the thing done.”
Sure enough, she rides with him and she sees the thing done… in fact, she does it herself. Revenge is accomplished, justice is served, but if one chooses to live by the sword one rarely escapes being cut. Young Mattie loses her steed and loses an arm, and everything fades to black.
The films short coda to all this action comes as a rude shock to many, with Mattie revealed many years later as a weathered, one-armed spinster. She briskly relates to us how the unlikely friendships that we have just watched being forged quickly disintegrated and disappeared. Time slips away, connections are lost and lives are ended, and the culture changes. She learns that Cogburn, at the end, was no longer a Force as Law in an untamed land but was relegated to performing in a traveling ‘Wild-West’ show that was surely a milquetoast caricature of the West they had shared.
During this seemingly disheartening conclusion, that comes so jarringly on the heels of a story of such excitement and joy de vivre, the Coen brothers play the old hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” This is more than a simple stab of dark humor at the expense of their one-armed heroine. It is macabre humor, there is no doubt of that, but the key is to realize that it is a joke that Mattie would appreciate. This is her coda and she still stands straight and tall and strong, and in this bitter conclusion we should not miss the sweet… we should not miss that she is once again a Sileni Statue, but in a new context.
She is no longer a fresh-faced youth, but she is still a woman in a man’s world that demands her to act a certain way, and thankfully she still refuses to act in any way but her own. She remembers her friends and their adventures without dissolving into weeping tears and self-pity. She proudly mentions her refusal to submit to the cultural constraints of marriage, and she issues a sharp retort to a minor character at the end for his lack of manners. If we look carefully it should be wonderfully and joyfully clear that her resolve to act fairly and demand justice remains undimmed. In these last difficult years of her life she is perceived (by her society and by many of us upon first viewing) as lonely and forlorn, but inside of her is the gleaming gold of True Grit that she always maintains regardless of the hardships she encounters.
The tender hymn that scores this coda speaks to the fellowship and the safety that is found in the eternal presence of God and his everlasting arms. Mattie does not need this hymn, and that is why the Coens play it for her… to highlight and underscore her True Grit. She always believed in herself, made her own justice, spoke her own words, and earned her own friendships. She may have lost an arm during her adventures, but it is clear that she never lost any of life’s precious moments worrying about arms that never existed.
PS- Some will point out that she often quotes Scripture in the beginning of the film, and thus must be a believer. Nonsense. The real test of her mettle is found in that she does not once cry out for God during her trials. She merely quotes the Bible during her earlier conversations, as a rhetorical and lyrical text that she knows to be deeply embedded in her culture. Not to suggest that she speaks disingenuously, as I suspect she has a healthy respect for the justice driven narratives of the Old Testament. She is not an iconoclast that would rail against the fundamental structures of her society. I bet she would find such a notion distasteful. But I can assure you she never wasted a Sunday in church praying to a God she has never spoken with… for Mattie is woman of straight words and real actions.
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