True Grit

I should start this review with the disclaimer that I have never read Charles Portis' novel or seen its 1969 film adaptation starring John Wayne. With that said, I thought the Coen Brothers' True Grit was one of the best movies I saw in 2010.

True Grit is told from the perspective of Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), a young girl attempting to track down her father's killer. As the film begins she tells us that "Nothing comes free in this life," and at the end she says, "Time just gets away from us." These maxims bookend a story that is appropriately matter-of-fact in its presentation. Despite what the trailers may have led you to believe, True Grit is neither a heroic western (like the John Wayne version) nor a poetic musing on the human history (like No Country For Old Men). It's actually much more similar to the Coen Brothers' absurdist comedy, Burn After Reading. There are moments of both heroism and horrifying violence but True Grit shows it all with a sardonic wit that takes similar pleasure in victory and tragedy alike. The result is a film that feels strangely and refreshingly realistic in its depiction of the "wild" west.

For a movie that is ostensibly about a manhunt, True Grit spends an awful lot of time showing people arguing about bargains. As one character memorably says, "I do not entertain hypotheticals, the world as it is is vexing enough," and indeed a good portion of the film is dedicated to the sorting out of facts. We see debates about everything from bullet trajectories to obscure legal concepts like replevin, and at all times the answer lies in the minutiae. Similarly detail oriented are the few occurrences of violence in the film, all of which are unflinchingly realistic and shown entirely onscreen. In a world where nothing is certain, True Grit makes it clear that the devil is most certainly in the details.

Yet in spite of this focus, the film is remarkably relativist in its morals. Characters talk about "the Law" a lot but rarely are we shown much in the way of justice. Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) is supposed to be a US Marshal, but he is accused of killing men in cold blood and admits to bank robbery; La Boeuf (Matt Damon) is a seemingly incompetent Texas Ranger who sexually harasses and physically assaults the 14 year old Ross. Despite their flaws, however, these men become heroic in the eyes of Ross and through her the audience: Rooster's irreverent attitude towards violence and death is the source of much laughter, as are La Boeuf's feeble attempts to be a knight in shining armour. Interestingly this benevolent characterization is also extended to the villainous "Lucky" Ned (Barry Pepper), who likewise charms the viewer through his interactions with Ross. Not so much that we don't cheer for Rooster in their inevitable duel, but enough to be noticeably unusual.

True Grit juxtaposes a story about its own details with a truly complex understanding of morality, and the effect of this mixture of elements is a film that feels true-to-life in a way few others have achieved. All of the characters are remarkably human in their strengths and flaws alike, and the story's detail-oriented telling makes it all the more believable. Even the climactic gun battle is shot so that it feels more like a documentary than a John Wayne movie, and the maxims that bookend the film make it clear that this sense of realism is exactly the point. True Grit tells us that life is sometimes cruel and always short but that in and of itself is no tragedy; the movie treats existence as a unrestricted mess that we all share with no value but what we ourselves make. This objective approach is what makes True Grit seem so real, so accurate in its portrayal of human interactions. As a result the film is amusing, horrifying, and uplifting all at the same time, and tells a story that is compelling for its very humanity.

The Coen Brothers' True Grit is a great cinematic achievement that should not be missed.

Welcome to Max Rambles 3.0

Update: The fancy new aesthetic is now matched by a fancy new domain name! Max Rambles can now be found at www.maxrambles.com. It just keeps getting better!

Ahoy! What you see before you is the new and improved version of Max Rambles! I've been saying there would new things around here for a while now, and with this update I'm officially making good on that promise.

No longer are my thoughts constrained by a Blogger template. Gone is the oft-complained-about white text on black background design. No more will my website be comparable to an old Geocities page!

You might find yourself asking, why 3.0? Well dear reader, it's a little known fact that Max Rambles actually began as a lowly LiveJournal page. Yeah yeah, I know it's embarrassing, but those days are long gone now and look how far the site has come! In the beginning it was just a place for me to develop my non-academic thoughts while I was still in undergrad. The more coherent pieces were published publicly on the off chance that someone might stumble across the site and bother to read its contents. Eventually I started posting some of the better stuff on Facebook and got a decent response. The result was the birth of the old Max Rambles page that you knew and had a love-hate relationship with. Now I've taken the next step and transformed the site into something that's actually aesthetically pleasing!

I would like to give a shout out and thank you to Sarah over at Textual Relations. She maintains a fantastic blog and has an incredible eye for web design, and the new Max Rambles would not have been possible without her considerable efforts. I strongly recommend you check out her site. Your eyes are forever indebted to her, that much is certain.

Stay tuned for more posts as I continue to try to work this into my law school schedule. I've already off to a strong start for 2011 and I intend to keep up the momentum for as long as possible. The goal is to keep up with content that at least matches the presentation in terms of quality. Thanks for reading and putting up with my archaic aesthetic for so long, and bookmark this space for the many updates to come! I promise I'll continue to make it all worth it.

Anal Retentive Ramblings: Using Two Spaces Between Sentences

I was sitting in bed hungover on this fine Saturday morning, perusing reddit's top links, when I came across an interesting article over at Slate. Technology columnist Farhad Manjoo's "Space Invaders" is a great tirade against the use of two spaces between sentences. Considering that I'm not a typographer it's kind of a strange thing to get frustrated by, granted, but the practice has always irked me. I can't tell you how many papers I've edited where the bulk of my effort has been dedicated to deleting fucking extra spaces. It is beyond relieving to find that I'm not alone in my frustration, and furthermore to be vindicated in my writing habits.

Manjoo gives an excellent breakdown of where the mistake came from, how it continues to be propagated, and why it's just plain wrong. Unsurprisingly it's of the same origin as the QWERTY curse, namely sloppy answers to the physical problems with early typewriters. This video from Daily Cup of Tech gives a decent breakdown on the historical details:

The point is that using two spaces between sentences is wrong. It's an obsolete solution to a problem we no longer have and yet people persist with it under the misconception that doing so is proper writing technique. It isn't, so stop. End of discussion.

Now if I can just find a good article that justifies the oxford comma...

Quick Comment: Quebec Students Attracted to English

Teachers in Quebec are wondering why so many students in the province decide to switch to English after high-school. They've actually commissioned a study to try and determine the reasoning behind the mysterious phenomenon.

Quick guess: it's because they want to make money.

Granted I'm just hypothesizing without any real facts to stand on, but the correlation between things young people want and cost seems pretty clear. It makes sense that young people would want to have a decent grasp of both French and English since bilingualism is unequivocally an opportunity providing asset. Unless you want to pigeonhole yourself in a career that is exclusive to Quebec, learning English is just a good way to give yourself options. To me the statistics don't signal a general departure from French language/culture, as the Quebec teachers seem to see it. Rather this says that Quebec youths are cognizant of the realities of Canadian business and don't want to be sold short. They want to speak English so they can compete with the rest of the country instead of becoming isolated in an insular province.

What riles me is the predictable reactionary call to extend mandatory French schooling past high school. Of course any validation of the English language is immediately a threat to Quebec culture and should be regulated out of existence. It's not as though that logic is exactly what creates a turn towards English at the earliest opportunity possible. The only thing accomplished by prohibiting English teaching is to hold back Quebecois youth from being able to work at the same level as the rest of the country. It's regressive thinking that is outdated and foolhardy and it does nothing to improve matters for the province of Quebec.

Reaction to Gabrielle Gifford, Sarah Palin, and Christina Taylor Green

A brief recap for those who haven't heard:

March 2010 - Sarah Palin released an image that listed the names of Democratic Representatives who voted for health care reform in Republican districts. The image further showed a map of the United States with gun crosshairs over the districts of each of the named House Democrats, and advised her supporters to "Take A Stand."

January 8, 2011 - Gabrielle Gifford, the Democratic Representative from Arizona, was shot point-blank in the head by one Jared Lee Loughner. Six other people were killed by the gunman, and 13 were injured. Gifford was among the House Democrats "targeted" on Palin's map.

I don't really want to get into the details of the actual event. Frankly I just don't feel that I'm well enough informed to do so, and there are many sources available online that are better suited to the task. If you would like more information about the assassination attempt on Gabrielle Gifford you can check out some of these sites, or do a Google search. What I would like to talk about is a particular reaction to the news that popped up online.

Independent blogger Obama London was tracking the posts on Sarah Palin's Facebook page following the attack on Gifford, and they noticed something incredible. While the page moderators scrambled to remove posts criticizing Palin and blaming her for the shooting, one commenter posted something beyond abhorrent that the moderators chose not to take down. The post read:

"It's ok. Christina Taylor Green was probably going to end up a left wing bleeding heart liberal anyway. Hey, as 'they' say, what would you do if you had the chance to kill Hitler as a kid? Exactly."

For clarification, Christina Taylor Green was among the six people killed by the gunman who attacked Gifford. Green was nine years old.

I'm not sure what there really is say about that comment individually. It's clearly the product of an extremist with little thought as to the impact of their statement. The author is clearly an aberrant who represents nothing by their own misguided sense of reality. However, that in addition to the discourse that has arisen over the shooting itself give rise to a larger point about the 'us-and-them' mentality that pervades American politics.

In the wake of Gifford's shooting, politicians and commentators alike have sought to push the blame to the other side. On the left side there is the argument that the right needs to stop using violent rhetoric to incite their supporters, as well as the argument that the American gun culture (enshrined by the right) is to blame. Both are valid points. On the other hand, the right (specifically Rush Limbaugh) is accusing the left of shifting the blame away from shooter Jared Lee Loughner in order to make a political point. While it deliberately skirts the issue, there is some misguided truth to that argument too.

The problem is that all of these arguments fail to address the antagonistic atmosphere of American politics that engenders attitudes like the one that approved the death of Christina Taylor Green. The person responsible for that disgusting and reprehensible comment has been so indoctrinated by an us-versus-them mentality that they actually see the death of a child as a good thing, a victory even. All it takes is the thought that Green would grow up to support the other side and suddenly she is an enemy, comparable to the leader of the Nazi Party. Those who are playing the blame game (on the right and left alike) are doing nothing to dispel the culture of hostility that is behind these kinds of attitudes, rather they are encouraging it.

Sarah Palin and the right wing generally are not responsible for the attack on Gabrielle Gifford. Even the crosshairs map, which strains the limits of political discourse and verges on inciting violence, does not direct voters to go out and kill House Democrats. Certainly Palin and her representatives should have exercised more caution, common sense, and compassion before posting such a repugnant piece of political garbage. This critique could be extended generally to the entire spectrum of right wing rhetoricians, and some are soberly acknowledging this fact. However none of this puts blood on their hands, as so many are saying online. Jared Lee Loughner is an individual who is clearly deranged, and no one but him is responsible for his actions. Everyone else should just be united in shock, horror, and sadness at this terrible tragedy.

I wish Gabrielle Gifford and her family the best in this difficult time. My deepest sympathies to the families of the six people killed during the shooting, including Christina Taylor Green.

Update: I just found a video of Jon Stewart saying some very intelligent things on this topic