Great Scene: “True Grit”

A snakebit girl. A wounded lawman. A flagging horse. A desperate ride.

Movie: True Grit (2010), screenplay by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, novel by Charles Portis

IMDb plot summary: A tough U.S. Marshal helps a stubborn teenager track down her father’s murderer.

Scene Setup: In shooting Tom Chaney, the blast from the rifle sends Mattie stumbling backwards into a deep pit. She calls for help, but LaBouef is still out cold. Cogburn appears and begins to scale the side of the pit with a rope to rescue her, but Mattie’s left hand has already been bitten by a rattlesnake. Cogburn retrieves her and temporarily treats her wound, but knows he must get her medical attention quickly or she will die. A revived LaBouef hoists them out of the pit.

Here is the scene in the script:

Here is the movie version of the scene:

As always with Coen brothers scripts, the movie version follows closely what they’ve written. A few minor changes, most notably Mattie crying out “No” multiple times when Cogburn pulls out his gun and shoots Little Blackie.

Also missing from the script: The haunting melody of the Christian hymn “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms”. It plays over the entire race to save Mattie’s life. Indeed, that song is an idée fixe used throughout the movie including the film’s opening credits.

The Coens have a special ear for music in their movies and the choice of this hymn is no different. Mattie enters the story cocksure and independent, a youth who has had to grow up fast in order to handle affairs at the family in part because of her father’s tenderhearted nature and lack of business acumen. She has to learn to trust others and that is the primary lesson she gets in the relationship she develops with Cogburn.

In this scene, we see the apex of her arc. She has gone from a determined young woman relying solely on her wits and force of will to someone quite literally “leaning” into the grip of Rooster Cogburn.

That final image of Cogburn raising his pistol into the air, firing it, then uttering, “I have grown old” is a fitting capstone to the man’s epic life.

For more in the Great Scene series, go here.