Matter of opinion, I suppose. For my money, Wayne was the better Rooster, and the first film better captured the growing (if grudging) affection among the central characters. It had more heart.
And certainly the first film received plenty of critical acclaim (even from those who harbored political grudges against Mr. Wayne). For example, from Roger Ebert’s review published July 1, 1969:
Okay then.
Well that don’t sound like too good a deal for her then.
I was planning to rent *True Grit *but may not, now. Period correct or not, the dialogue in Deadwood ruined it for me. It wore me out just listening to it.
Even worse for Little Blackie. But that is part of her adventure; learning that everything is not going to be the way she may want it, and accepting it without complaint. She, like Cogburn, has “true grit” in her character, and it is this, rather than his mere rudeness in remaining seated, that causes her to chastise Frank James in the penultimate scene. The happy ending of the 1969 film dilutes the sacrifice that Mattie has to accept.
Stranger
I have found most of your comments on the film to be enlightening. But you insight into Mattie is jaw-dropping. Can I imagine her as a wife or mother? You bet! Give her fifteen more years and I think she would make one hell of a good wife and mother. Even a couple of years would give her a fully formed brain and she would be more likely to understand the futility of revenge for her father’s death. But she was only fourteen. Although girls often married at that age in those days, that doesn’t mean that they had developed good sense anymore than fourteen-year-olds these days. She was extremely savvy in some of the ways of the world, but I don’t think that the desire for revenge would be that unusual in someone her age. It would be unusual for someone to go to all of the trouble that she did, but I’ve known women that stubborn within my own family.
Would you have thought of “sociopath” if that had been a fourteen year old boy going after his father’s murderer? That would be almost expected in a novel or film.
I don’t know if you heard something in the film that I missed, but in the book, Mattie is a Cumberland Presbyterian. Members of this small denomination are not Calvinists. They don’t believe in predestination or “the elect.” This is one of the reasons that they split from the Presbyterian Church. I don’t think I saw too much that was “priggish” about Mattie. She was assertive, even aggressive. But priggish?
Comparing the two films, I must digress and mention that I believe Strother Martin is the best Colonel Stonehill, John Wayne the best Rooster Cogburn (it’s close. Bridges does a better grumpy, but Wayne is beyond compare with the reins in his teeth, a Winchester in one hand and a navy Colt(?) in the other.
Candyce Hinkle I used to work with, so I won’t comment on her character. 
Robert Duvall is, hell, Robert Duvall,one of the best at anything.
Glenn Campbell is a very bad La Boeuf, indeed, a very bad everything.
Mattie is a toss up. I can’t decide which actress is better.
Sociopath is too strong a word, but Mattie definitely has a manner about her that is rather disinterested and detached from people as a whole. She is very businesslike about her father’s body (“No thank you, the spirit has flown,”), unaffected by the hangings she witnesses (or sleeping in the casketmaker’s with their corpses), and even her pursuit of Tom Chaney seems largely driving by a need to restore a sense of justice rather than impassioned revenge. She unhesitatingly picks Cogburn not on the basis of his tracking talent or evenhandedness, but that he has “true grit”, i.e. he will take her commission and hunt down Chaney, bringing him back alive or, more likely, dead. Mattie herself has the same “true grit”, as LaBoeuf later notes. She has little interest in convention and no patience for deference to someone not her equal in this regard. Her masterful maneuvering of the horse trader shows that it isn’t enough for her to hold someone in contempt; she must demonstrate her opinion and force the subject to acknowledge his weaknesses. One arm or two, I’ve no doubt that she could be married and have children if she wished, but she did not wish it and would not have been satisfied with a domestic role. I imagine that after returning from her adventure, she took up management of the family farm and, lacking the sentimentality that her father demonstrated, ran it as a successful and expanding enterprise, as indicated by her well-off dress and distaff manner in the final flash forward scenes.
As for the better performance of Cogburn, I’ll agree that it may come to a matter of taste, but Wayne was playing the only role he was really capable–himself–and that it just happened that the character of Cogburn was well-suited to his persona as a crusty but somewhat dandified curmudgeon. Wayne was professional enough to share credit gracefully (even sometimes ceding the top billing, as he did in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), but was not a good enough character actor to share the screen; his personality dominates, and the film accordingly becomes a movie about John Wayne playing Rooster Cogburn who is set in motion by the commission of the fourteen year old Mattie. In the Coen Brothers version, Mattie is the central character (as she should be) and Bridges is a proficient enough actor to make the character memorable in his own right and at the same time play backup to Hailee Steinfeld (who acquits herself remarkably in the role). Bridges’ rendition may not be as iconic as Wayne’s portrayal, but that is largely because he is playing the character rather than standing on the shoulders of a virtual giant statue of himself playing the role.
The 1969 version may remain the film that is longer remembered in the public mind for its association with John Wayne, but the Coen Brothers version is both technically and thematically the better film.
Stranger
Well I disagree on a couple of points. First of all Mattie’s character was not “dominated” by John Wayne as Rooster. Indeed, on several occasions, she completely buffaloes the man with her verbal gymnastics.
Secondly, the book is not about Mattie. She is the narrator. And she is narrating a book which has at its heart the character of Rooster Cogburn. Mattie is of course an interesting character in her own right, but I think the people who say the book is about Mattie (and that the movie should be about Mattie) have it exactly wrong. The book is about Rooster Cogburn, as seen through the eyes of Mattie.
It’s almost like those old Reader’s Digest features about “My Most Unforgettable Character.” Mattie is telling us about her most unforgettable character, a man who had a profound and lasting impact on her.
You misunderstand; I didn’t say that Rooster Cogburn dominated Mattie (an impossible task), but rather that John Wayne dominated the screen when he shared it with Kim Darby. It wasn’t the infamous actor’s vanity (which Wayne was largely free of); Wayne just didn’t have the range to “play it down”.
Well, no. Mattie is certainly in awe of Cogburn (even at his most slovenly) in the same way that a child might be of a crotchety grandfather, but this is her story. She starts the hunt in motion, she keeps Cogburn marginally functional and gives him purpose, and ultimately, she pays the price. Certainly, Cogburn (after dozens of miles of grousing and boozing and boasting) shows the “true grit” he is reputed for when he shouts the film’s most memorable line, but the action centers around Mattie, and she is the only character that demonstrates growth and achievement. Cogburn is the character in her play; in essence, Antony to her Cleopatra (though she would never be so histrionic as that character)
Stranger
I’m with you on this as well.
This is a point where my initial interpretation differed. When I hear a character narrate about how “I never found a man, because I didn’t have time (or something)”, I hear “No men were interested in me, so I delude myself into thinking I haven’t found one because I didn’t have time.” Perhaps though, this is not accurate in her case, and that would make the ending less bleak to me.
This seems like a good time to bring up a movie I’ve been wondering about: A Serious Man. Here it seems that the main character suffers ill for no reason. But does he really? Things only got really bad in the end, after he took the bribe. Perhaps the point is that he shouldn’t be bothered so much by the smaller things, that are to some degree his own fault. He blames these things on god / the world, and in the end he transgresses, after which there is actual punishment. This interpretation would be accordance with the opening text “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.” There are some things I don’t understand though. What about the son, how come he is punished in the end. Is it a biblical style punishment of the father by way of his family, or did the son deserve it for something unrelated? And what was the deal with the intro and the dybbuk?
In the novel, some were interested but she thought that the only possible attraction to a one armed woman would be her money.
I can’t disagree with any of your assessments … except for the last one about Mattie. Hailee Steinfeld was brilliant as Mattie and got an Oscar nomination for it (and should have won IMHO). Kim Darby was mostly adequate and at times bad in True Grit, and she went on to do TV shows like The Love Boat. Really no comparison there.
She’d already done Star Trek. No where to go but down. 
Did I miss something? How could a thread go this far without discussing the totally unrealistic and beautiful dialog in “No Country For Old Men”. I never read the book, but Ebert commented that some of the dialog sounded like it was taken verbatim from the book.
Yeah, I get disagreements on, say, John Wayne’s performance. But the better Mattie seems almost as clear as the better La Boeuf. Kim Darby looked much too old.
I liked both movies very much, but would give a slight edge to all three lead actors in the second movie (and in the case of LeBeouf, a big edge to Matt Damon’s take on the character). I liked the dialogue - it sounded right to my untrained ear. And I was glad they kept my favorite line in the second movie: “I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!”
A VERY big edge.
That would indeed have been a deal breaker for me.
The thing (for me at least) about movies (and books too for that matter) that use dialogue like True Grit is that the words seem to be more exact. They seem to say precisely what the character wants to say. They are not colored by my own aptness with the English language. I have to actually listen to each word and how they fit together. I can’t finish a sentence for the character. For some folks this might be a turn off, might be too much work to make it enjoyable. For me, it helps me immerse in the the movie or book and to invest more in the characters. YMMV.