These days any time the Coen brothers make any film, it's an event. Their oeuvre keeps expanding in new and surprising directions and even when it is the most bleak of films, there's something to cogitate about for days afterward. In this instance the burning question was 'why?'. To get some insight, I decided I'd go back an watch the 'original' (a tenuous claim on a previous adaptation) that netted the Best Actor Oscar for John Wayne.
It proved rather interesting. There are 3 main areas that stand out as worth discussing. First is how acting has changed since the late 1960s thanks to the explosion of method acting in the 1970s; second is how technique and technology have changed for a different narrative, a different way to tell the story; and thirdly how the central myth of America remains unchanged partly because of the western.
So here is the obligatory spoiler warning, don't read on if you haven't seen the films.
Acting Evolution
It's a strange feeling watching the Coen brothers version with Jeff Bridges playing Rooster Cogburn, knowing full well that John Wayne came before him and therefore seeing ghostly echoes of that performance. What's weird is when you go back and watch the John Wayne performance, you feel the echoes of Jeff Bridges' work in the new version. You get the feeling that both men got something very good out of playing Rooster Cogburn.
In the case of John Wayne, he obviously got an Oscar, and in Bridges' case, his own Oscar win allowed him to take on the role; yet through the two performances we can see a character with great unity through the two versions. While their deliveries are very different and acting styles are different, the persona is surprisingly consistent.
This breaks down completely with the wildly different performances of Mattie and 'Le Beef'. The character conflict written in the story and the 2 scripts are essentially the same in both films, yet because of the acting styles they play very differently in the two films. Kim Darby's Mattie is an insistent, cantankerous teen while Hailee Steinfeld's Mattie is a precocious, verbose bush lawyer. Both are motivated characters, but the modern version plays with a lot more edgy confrontational feel because of the acting style Similarly, Glenn Campbell's 'La Beef' is like a smiling cowboy right out of his own songs ('Wichita Lineman' springs to mind), while Matt Damon's 'La Beef' is a fine study in character comedy. Both men have pretensions but Campbell's presentation is unaware of the irony, while Damon's 'La Beef' lives in fear of his own inadequacy. The latter is a nice touch.
It's interesting how the prevalence of wider shots and fewer close ups in the older version makes the actors seem more corny. They all appear to be playing to an audience the size of a small playhouse. The closer shots in the Coen version is in line with developments in directing since the late 1960s so has a higher pace and energy, but the acting is delivered for a much tighter space. It is how we've come to like our performances collectively as an audience, but it is also a highly stylised form of acting.
Reversed Symmetry
Rooster's eye patch is on different eyes for Bridges and Wayne, but that is not the only symmetry. Mattie Ross is bitten by a rattle snake on the left hand in the modern version and on the right hand in the old version. When Mattie shoots Chaney the first time, she breaks his rib on the left side in the new version and the right side in the old version. I don't know if these changes are intentional or not, and there's really not much to be gained from knowing if they were but they too are consistent.
Interesting Faces
A fresh-faced Dennis Hopper plays Moon in the old version, and Robert Duvall plays Ned Pepper, who in the old version has a scarred lip. Barry Pepper plays Ned in the new version, but has bad teeth instead of a scarred lip. Josh Brolin as Tom Chaney is a kind of over-casting as it is such a minor role, but he does play a great idiot.
Kim Darby as Mattie Ross in the first version is also a name worth poking at.
Darby began acting at age fifteen and has appeared in many films and television shows. Her first appearance was as a dancer in the 1963 film Bye Bye Birdie. Among her best known roles are True Grit (1969) playing a fourteen-year-old when she was twenty-one years old; Gunsmoke (episode "The Lure"); Better Off Dead (1985); and Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995).
After she starred in True Grit, film critics predicted that she was at the beginning of a long career as a great actress. In fact, she has made almost no films of note since. This has caused some critics[citation needed] to put her in the same category as Bo Derek (in 10) and Maria Schneider (in Last Tango in Paris), because all three actresses made spectacular splashes in their first films, but never acted in successful films again.
The funny thing in there is that she played John Cusak's mother in 'Better Off Dead' - it's a pretty goofy role, totally unlike Mattie Ross. There is a distinct possibility that the radical changes to the style of acting in the 1970s simply left her behind.
Limitations Of Era
There are few night sequences in the old version. This is probably a function of budget and film technology. One of the few night scenes is clearly shot in the studio while key scenes all happen under daylight. The skies are blue, the leaves on trees are radiant, the water sparkles and there's hardly a shadow. The modern version is a much darker patina, with greater texture in the dark areas. Clearly the colour has been digitally graded and shows a great deal of detail where you wouldn't expect. Dark rooms, night exteriors, all have a fantastic hyper-realism while maintaining a slightly sepia, old look.
Beyond the look of the two films, it is clear that certain aspects of the book couldn't be brought to the screen the first time, namely the loss of Mattie's arm to the snake bite and the fate of Rooster Cogburn. What's interesting is that the nature of the violence is identical but it is more confronting in the modern version.
It's not surprising that Wayne played Rooster Cogburn again in a 1978 sequel. The same events happens in the hut by the river sequence; the violence in the old version is almost prosaic; there is a visceral presence to the direction that makes the violence truly sickening in the new version.
What's interesting perhaps is how gun violence is/was abstracted in the older iterations of the violence genre that it seems arbitrary. John Wayne shoots somebody and they keel over. The old Western shooting style puts the victim in the distance in a wide landscape, so we don't get close to the result of the gun shot - we relate to the shooter, Wayne's Rooster Cogburn. In that fact alone you can see how far cinema has come to conveying violence, for better or worse. Conversely, it reveals how much further we've come from the wild west.
Cutting To The Chase
The overwhelming difference in the the two films in the area of camera directing is actually the style of coverage as well as music. The older version is a first order text in the classical genre of the Hollywood western so it comes with all the stylistic trappings of the genre. There are plenty of wide shots of landscapes with people riding their horses to the sound of an orchestral score that sounds like it was lifted from Aaron Copeland's oeuvre. It's not that the music itself has an emotional cue, it is the combination of the landscape and the music that is supposed to evoke the wild west.
It's remarkable how un-reflective the old version is when it comes to the presentation of the wild west. Irony is so far from the direction that it is only in the moments written in the novel that carry irony that make it to the screen. The language of the screen itself is so straight it makes you look harder for deeper meaning which isn't there.
In the latter film, the music tracks the emotional ups and downs carefully, while the camera moves ever closer to catch the subtle changes o expression and nuance. Not only does the latter version come after the 1990s revival of the Hollywood western which followed the success of 'Dancing With Wolves' and 'Unforgiven'; it comes after the Coen Brothers' own body of work which carry with them certain kinds of expectation.
The end result in the latter film is a layered work with plenty of irony, both in the style of language spoken as well as the directing and editing. Even the way the story starts is cut short to get to Mattie's arrival in Fort Smith, and the epilogue goes straight to a elder Mattie arriving too late to meet Rooster Cogburn one last time. By honing down the text to make it Mattie's emotional journey of both revenge and sacrifice we come to understand the deeper moral framework in the novel. American cinema has come a long way in 40 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment