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I opted for two hours or so of air conditioning to get away from the heat wave that has swept over Brisbane since the flood. So Let us be honest here, I read Lou’s review and the subsequent posts with great care. But I sat down there quite prepared to enjoy the film. I recently caught the original on cable and though it is not my favourite Western it is still pretty good. So how does the Coen Bros remake shape up (IMHO)? Well it looks beautiful and has a great score. The acting of the lead, Hailee Steinfeld, is astonishingly good. The film itself seems an odd mixture of the Revenge and the Professional Western. Mattie wants to revenge her father, while all the other characters only move for money. But they do take a pride in being professional bushwhackers. So much for the aesthetics, what about the truth claims that the film makes about humanity and life? And what about the ethics of the film? Where is the moment of redemption or hope for humanity? Well for me the film crashes out here. This is yet another exercise in the discourse of “Humanity is a piece of shit”. I got the kind of feeling I get when I watch a Scorsese movie where even the gangsters are not likable. Cogburn’s redemptive moment when he saves Mattie’s life was undercut by the final scenes. It seems he had saved her to become an embittered, crippled “old maid”. All the wonderful liveliness of the young Mattie had leached away. The gesture of having Cogburn's body relocated seems motivated not by tenderness as in the original film but by sheer acquisitiveness. In the Hathaway version Cogburn and Mattie forge a real friendship. She also bids a touching farewell to the Leboeuf character who dies saving her life. I thought about the post saying that “revolutions make people better’, which was on the list. I thought of the courage and camaraderie of Tahrir Square and contrasted it with the hopeless nihilism of the Coen vision. It is the absence of the hope for revolution that produces the kind of films the Coen Bros make and guarantees them an audience. comradely Gary ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
