Great review of 2 present-day films

Following is Frank Rich's excellent review of two films, contrasting the values and principles of each -- perfectly reflecting our present-day era of corporate thievery versus the values our country was founded upon.  I have never been able to understand how right wing voters are unable to see the differences, but somehow are able to twist their minds to believe they are defending the old-time values when they vote for "representatives" who are bought and sold by corporations. Yet, the Republicans continue to defend their actions, even though their elected choices, such as Cheney and Bush, line their own pockets at the expense of the middle class and poor.  Those who vote Republican these days seem to be blind to the results of their votes.  They actually vote against their own interests--and their own loudly proclaimed and cherished values.  They will identify with Rooster Cogburn, but, with their votes, will make sure the powered and privileged continue to manipulate and control our world.

The One-Eyed Man is King
By Frank Rich

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/23/opinion/23rich.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=homepage&src=me&adxnnlx=1295803278-3wAgqfyo70WgZIONEgFG6g

EXCERPT:  the latest “True Grit” juggernaut also has something to say about Americans yearning at a trying juncture in our history — much as it did the first time around. ...it is already the biggest draw of any Coen brothers film — poised to at least double the business of “No Country for Old Men,” their biggest previous hit. Revealingly, I think, it is attracting an even larger audience than “The Social Network,” a movie of equal quality with reviews to match and more timely cultural cachet. It turns out that “True Grit” is as much an escape for Americans now as it was in the Vietnam era.

Our age is hardly identical to that one, whatever the resonances between the Afghanistan and Vietnam wars, and whatever our own bouts of domestic violence. The new “True Grit” took off before the Tucson cataclysm in any event, and the movie’s broad appeal, like the demographics of its audience, transcends our running right-left debate. What is most stirring about “True Grit” today — besides the primal father-daughter relationship that blossoms between Rooster and Mattie — is its unalloyed faith in values antithetical to those of the 21st century America so deftly skewered, as it happens, in “The Social Network.”

More than the first “True Grit,” the new one emphasizes Mattie’s precocious, almost obsessive preoccupation with the law. She is forever citing law-book principles, invoking lawyers and affidavits, and threatening to go to court. “You must pay for everything in this world one way or another,” says Mattie. “There is nothing free except the grace of God.” That kind of legal and moral cost-accounting seems as distant as a tintype now. The new “True Grit” lands in an America that’s still not recovered from a crash where many of the reckless perpetrators of economic mayhem deflected any accountability and merely moved on to the next bubble, gamble or ethically dubious backroom deal. When Americans think of the law these days, they often think of a system that can easily be gamed by the rich and the powerful, starting with those who pillaged Lehman Brothers, A.I.G. and Citigroup and left taxpayers, shareholders and pensioners in the dust.

Talk about Two Americas. Look at “The Social Network” again after seeing “True Grit,” and you’ll see two different civilizations, as far removed from each other in ethos as Silicon Valley and Monument Valley. While “Social Network” fictionalizes Mark Zuckerberg, it mines the truth of an era — from the ability of the powerful and privileged to manipulate the system to the collapse of loyalty as a prized American virtue at the top of that economic pyramid.

In contrast to Mattie’s dictum, no one has to pay for any transgression in the world it depicts.