True Grit

my yin and i went to see True Grit last night, and having never seen the original, i am completely unqualified to speculate as to how Jeff Daniels measures up to John Wayne:

what is the significance of a blind left, versus a blind right, eye?

the blindness is beside the point.

the point is that my life overlapped with John Wayne's for approximately 18 months, which means i was born too late to have actual memories of his existence, but not late enough for him to exist solely as an icon. as a result his spectral presence infested much of my childhood, mostly in the form of confusion as to why my father thought so much of this clumsy man.

i'm at a loss to describe the experience, but it somehow turned around my father's nostalgia for his own childhood, a subtle yearning for the Fifties, a time when the Duke wasn't dead. subconsciously, this registered in my mind as my father's desire to be more like me (a child) and less like himself, whom i esteemed as he did Wayne. it's a peculiar inversion of the typical parent/child dynamic, which has always left me feeling strangely about the actor, one with which i'm sure a psychologist (or nostalgist) could work wonders.

Oedipus is also beside the point.

the point is that the Coen Brothers' have made yet another artfully accessible film, continuing their task of reworking the contemporary Western (Blood Simple, No Country For Old Men, and even Raising Arizona in its own way). unlike the others, this one is set in the 19th century and features a simultaneously unreal and believable performance by Hailee Steinfeld. the cinematography is stunning, of course, and even Matt Damon is tolerable in his supporting role. also, and at the risk of stating the obvious, casting the Dude as the Duke demonstrates unparalleled genius:

image appropriated, without permission, from Magic Lantern Film Blog

finally, the Coen Brothers' signature quirkiness, mixing the absurd with the terrifying, never ceases to amuse me:

crazed dentist, wearing a bear suit, with dead body in tow

my favorite aspect, however, was the film's refusal to reach closure. i do not know how (or if) the original resolves itself, but this True Grit ends in a profoundly unsatisfying, deeply rewarding manner. the story told is the defining episode of a young girl's life, leaving her maimed, yet empowered.

furthermore, the agents of this encounter are swallowed up by the mouth of time, never to be heard from again. she walks into the horizon missing a part of who she was, a part of her that had to be sacrificed to become the person she is:

how many of our own lives transpire in precisely this way?

as Chris Marker says, events "claim remembrance on account of their scars" and when Patanjali speaks of smritti vritti, i believe he is teaching us the same thing. we usually think of memories as things we gain over time, but just as often they are little more than reminders of the things we lost.