Comprehending the Coens and TRUE GRIT

One of my favourite things about watching a movie with a group of friends is sitting through the end credits, making fun of crew nicknames and seeing how many assistants Hollywood stars have. So it was in this spirit that, as the credits rolled on the Coens' remake of TRUE GRIT, and I began to reflect on what I felt about the movie, I noticed the improbable-sounding credit for "Buster Coen, Mr. Damon's Abs Double". As Iris DeMent's "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" wailed to a merciful end (easily the worst end credits song since Kanye West's "Impossible", by the way), I realized that the Coens have officially stopped giving a fuck.


Now, the origin of this credit might seem to be a cute, familial nod to collaborative filmmaking, but it seems to me that it's more representative about what the Coens are about. Simply put, they make films for themselves, and no one else. Their admirable indie spirit is just as strong today as it was in the BLOOD SIMPLE days.

I would normally applaud such strength of conviction and vision, but in this case, I have a gripe. It seems like in their efforts to resist absorption into the mainstream Hollywood machine, Joel and Ethan have focused on creating increasingly nontraditional narratives, oddball fringe characters, and deliberately unsatisfying climaxes. In TRUE GRIT, they've gone one step further and made their characters as incomprehensible as possible.

I don't mean in terms of the murky human areas of motivation and desire; I mean that you have to strain to hear almost every single fucking word the characters are speaking. The Coens appear to have coached Jeff Bridges to mumble every word out of the corner of his mouth, around a cigarette when possible, and to consistently play with some level of drunken slurring. Hailee Steinfeld spits almost every line in a manner more resembling a semi-automatic rifle than a human being. They even cut Matt Damon's tongue and try to take out a tooth at one point, in an effort to drown his Texas drawl in a swirl of blood and enamel. I found myself wishing there were subtitles several times.

All of this seems puzzling, given the Coens' reputation for verbatim reads of their scripts, every word carefully placed and measured for effect. It's difficult to imagine the TRUE GRIT script filled with the contractions, mumbling, and elided consonants of the final product. It would be impossible to read, both like and completely unlike a transcription of BBMing between Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez (or at least what I imagine that transcription would look like).

In the light of "Buster Coen, Mr. Damon's Abs Double", though, this incomprehensibility could make a lot more sense. If the Coens are truly making films for themselves, than they probably don't care about transferring their words to us in a clear, unambiguous way. You can't understand what he's saying? SCREW YOU, WE MADE "FARGO"! This also makes sense of the biggest question inherent to TRUE GRIT: namely, why remake TRUE GRIT? Because the Coens wanted to. You see how this works?

Of course, this theory could be completely wrong. I might have just seen TRUE GRIT in a theatre with bad speakers, and blown this whole thing out of proportion. I reserve the right to completely erase this article if I see it with headphones and can make out what's going on.

But I don't think that's going to happen. Bad speakers won't explain "Buster Coen, Mr. Damon's Abs Double".

BABIES is the Justin Bieber of movies

Do you remember where you were when you first heard of Justin Bieber?

My memory is particularly vivid, because it's also when I realized the world was not the one I used to know. When Usher came in to that eleven year-old's party and gave him props, I realized a torch was perhaps literally (given Usher's history of STDs) being passed, and that I belonged to those who no longer carried the torch (or gonorrhea).

So away with our destroyers (of sexual virtue)! They have no place within our tween world. But this new world carries with it disturbing questions and moral quagmires of its own. Like is Justin Bieber actually a robot? And what is he hiding behind those bangs?

All of this brings me to BABIES, which is terrifyingly hypnotic in much the same way Bieber is. You're never really sure if you're watching because you're fascinated by what's happening, or wondering why you're fascinated by what's happening.

The tagline for the film is "Everybody loves babies", which has to stand as one of the laziest advertising attempts I've ever seen. I was worried this was going to be the film equivalent of an eating-Rolo-ice-cream-out-of-the-tub YouTube cute binge, complete with kittens, orphans, and ridiculously adorable renditions of "Tomorrow".

And while BABIES doesn't have any hits from the Annie soundtrack, it does coast an awful lot on the cuteness of babies doing baby stuff. But there's also some really interesting stuff about competition, survival, and the essence of humanity in there - but I might be reading too much into it. The film is like a fascinating semiotic exercise, where you're constantly debating the meaning of every little gesture and look.

Which brings me back to Bieber. I'm never really sure if I'm looking at a savvy scruple-less media manipulator or an innocent dreamboat, but I do know I'm watching.

Fascinated.