Vengeance and grace in “True Grit”

I went to see the Cohen brothers’ film True Grit earlier. It’s based on a book by Charles Portis, but is apparently a remake of the 1969 film starring John Wayne. It tells the story of 14-year-old Mattie’s efforts to gain vengeance against Tom Chaney, who killed her father, by enlisting the services of Rooster Cogburn, played here by Jeff Bridges.

Like Joel and Ethan Cohen’s previous film, the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men, there are no easy answers to be found in Mattie’s search for vengeance. But while I found the arbitrariness and lack of closure in No Country for Old Men to simply be unsatisfying, rather than interesting or profound (There Will Be Blood was robbed of that Oscar), True Grit is much more engaging. This is partly down to the wonderful dialogue: always sharp and funny, often echoing with Biblical resonances. But at a deeper level, the film is not just about vengeance, but also about grace.

At the start of the film, Mattie says:

“You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.”

But she shows little grace, pursuing Tom Chaney with single-minded determination. She doesn’t want him to simply die or to face justice, but to do so in the knowledge that it is for killing her father. She has a sharp legal knowledge and clings to the language of law and of contracts in situations where it seems wildly out of place.

I don’t want to give anything away, but while forgiveness is conspicuous by its absence, I think grace ultimately does play a part in Mattie’s story. It’s worth asking of the film, what is its view of grace? How might grace be obtained? Does grace only come from God? As a Christian, I might take a rather different view of the world than the one offered in the film, but True Grit offers an engaging story and an intriguing engagement with these ideas.

I’ve also just seen an article by Stanley Fish in The New York Times on this subject, Narrative and the Grace of God: The New ‘True Grit’, which discusses these themes in more detail (and gives more of the story away, so be warned!)