I thought this movie was great -- it made me interested in reading the book, which has since become one of my favorite novels (well, it's somewhere in the top 25-30 or so, anyway ). Almost everything about the film -- the story, characters, setting, music, cinematography, etc. -- attracted me to the story and made me feel that I was watching something that could have taken place in America during the 1870s. Oddly enough, I had seen the 1969 adaptation several years before, and although I remember liking it, it didn't inspire me to pick up the novel, and I forgot many plot elements over the years. In hindsight, my relative lack of interest at the time was probably due to my age; the story simply didn't resonate with me the way that it does now. Also, I'm not entirely sure of this, but I think the book was out of print at that time, so I would have been likely to encounter it only through public libraries. At any rate, I think the release of the new film has greatly helped to draw attention to the original novel as well as to the classic 1969 film. It's a win-win scenario.
If I had to criticize anything in the movie, it would have to be that certain scenes are a bit darker and more cynical than their counterparts in the novel. It's been mentioned before, but in the hanging scene in the novel, the convicted Native American man actually is allowed to make a final statement before he is executed. I expect that this was changed in the film in order to highlight the pervasive racism of that era, and it is a nice bit of black humor, but it also changes the tone of that particular scene into something much nastier (even more so than it already is in the book), in my opinion. There are probably a few other specific scenes that gave me the feeling of the film being more cynical, but on a more general level, I feel that turning True Grit into a film slightly changes the way Mattie's character comes across. Don't get me wrong -- I love Hailee Steinfeld's performance. It's just that, in the novel, we see so much of what goes on inside Mattie's head, and although she is not a perfectly likeable character (which is why she's so interesting!), our being privy to her innermost thoughts -- or at least the ones she reveals to us -- makes us care more about her troubles. This is essentially why I feel that True Grit the novel needed to be written from Mattie's perspective -- she's so hardnosed, intense, and a little cold that she could easily come across as unbearable if we couldn't see her internal workings. In the movie, most of her thoughts have to be conveyed wordlessly, which works to an extent, largely because an excellent actress was in the role, but it cannot possibly match the richness that is in the book.
There were a few other changes in the film that I could quibble with, but I understand the reasoning behind most of them and the simple fact that a book cannot be translated page-for-page into a screenplay. LaBoeuf leaving Rooster and Mattie at various points along the way was definitely not in the book, but it added to the tension of the story and gave LaBoeuf a stronger conflict. To me, this change is reminiscent of some of the alterations that were made for The Lord of the Rings scripts, especially the part in the film where Frodo sends Sam away just before going into Shelob's tunnel, which greatly increased the tension and drama of the following scenes, and the major changes made to Aragorn's character, turning him into a much more dynamic, conflicted person than he is in the books. So, essentially, I didn't mind the few plot changes in True Grit, as they added cinematic drama and didn't go against the spirit of the novel. There were also a few scenes that the movie simplified, such as Mattie's final confrontation with Tom Chaney; in the book, Mattie shoots him, but it is pretty clear that Rooster is the one to finally kill him, while in the movie, even if Mattie's shot wasn't enough to kill Chaney, surely his falling off the ridge would do the trick. I also find Mattie's tumble into the rock crevice to be more eerie in the book than it is in the movie, but, again, this section is too lengthy and complicated to translate well on film, so simplification was necessary. It's still a great moment in the movie.
So, in summary, I would agree that this is an amazing film and adaptation of the novel. However, it's not truly a remake.
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