Sunday, December 26, 2010

"True Grit" Review

See my thoughts about the new Coen brothers flick, "True Grit," at
www.elcidproject.blogspot.com/2010/12/kind-of-movie-review.html
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2 comments:

Shelley said...

Although I write about a later West, I've been looking for a review of this film. Thanks. I'm wary because I seem to be the only human being who found Fargo the worst movie ever made.

12/27/2010 11:07:00 AM
King Wenclas said...

What troubles me is that all glamor and myth have been stripped out of American culture. It doesn't work, for one thing. When they deglamorized the movie Wester, they also killed it.
The same thing has happened to American fiction. The hyped serious novels, whether by Jonathans Lethem and Franzen or Lorrie Moore, are very narrow, insular, intensely mundane works which hold little appeal to all but the most constipated of readers. This is why the short story has died as a popular art form. It's not about being realistic. Jack London, Hemingway, and even Kerouac were realistic, but their writing also had a glamor and kind of American romance to it.
People are being raised, or trained, to be cynical about our culture. This has taken place across the board. So, instead, in the "hood," of wonderful doo-wop yearnings, we get mind-and-soul deadening rap. It's culture, but it's not what art should be about.
The Coens have always struck me as fairly soulless, from "Blood Simple" on. Billy Wilder at his bleakest without the charm. Nice anyway to see a touch of warmth and humanity in their latest. The basic magic of the West, the idea of the West, peaks through the narrative.
(I can't talk, as my current story is rather bleak in spots!)

12/28/2010 08:37:00 AM

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