True Grit Themes

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True Grit (2010) American modern- western film directed, written and produced by the Coen brothers and is the second adaptation of Charles Portis' 1968 novel of the same name, which was also filmed in 1969, starring one of the most iconic Western figures of our time, John Wayne. A controversial figure at the time, Wayne was loathed by the mass for his “arrogant right-wing politics” and the year prior, his stridently patriotic “The Green Berets” had been picketed by anti-war protesters. Despite this, Wayne was always popular in westerns, and especially in True Grit, where he was perceived to be mocking the gruff frontier bully he’d always portrayed.

A Western film takes place in the American West, and are usually set between the 1850s and 1900. There are many different characteristics of the Western genre, as the genre itself quite distinct. T characteristics might be separated into two main themes: the ‘untamed frontier and law …show more content…
True Grit is not your typical fun loving Western, full of baddies, lands without laws and where chaos consumes the fragments of sanity still present. True Grit is a harsh, sombre film, deviating away from Wayne’s version, the tone of the film is not gently autumnal like its predecessor, instead taking the wintry route, while the music less cheery and more religious and eerie. A film with so much situational irony and dramatic irony. Thematically too, the film seems as much bildungsroman as a traditional Western. As Westerns usually focus on the antitheses of good and evil, and show that the lines between the just and the unjust become more blurred as time goes on and the genre ages. Fans of this genre, and people in general, do not give it credence that a young girl could leave home and go off (in the wintertime especially) to avenge her father’s death, but it did happen in True Grit. Our young heroine continues to speak in her voiceover the distinction between films is even clearer: this ain’t your father’s John Wayne
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