True Grit: Charles Portis

[poliphilo]

I've only seen the first movie. It's surprisingly faithful to the book- except that the book has things happen in winter not early summer and John Wayne gives Rooster rather more bounce than he has on the page- where he's younger and sadder and looks a lot like Grover Cleveland.  Much of the book's marvelous dialogue makes it into the script. "Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!"- that's in the original.

Mattie Ross- gawky, opinionated, frontier-religious- is a wonder and a terror. We see her at two ages- as the fourteen year old avenger and as the equally fierce old spinster who's telling us the story. Portis, skillful writer, never falters in his impersonation of a person whose writing- heretofore- has been limited to (unpublished) articles for local newspapers- and we believe every word of her.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a lovely book.