2017’s “Mudbound”, directed by Dee Rees.
Starring Jason Clarke, Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund,
Jonathan Banks, Rob Morgan, Mary J. Blige, and Jason Mitchell.
Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (Mary
J. Blige), Best Adapted Screenplay (Dee Rees and Virgil Williams), Best Cinematography
(Rachel Morrison), and Best Original Song (Raphael Saadiq, Mary J. Blige, and Taura
Stinson).
What is it about?
“Mudbound”
is the tale of a couple (Jason Clarke and Carey
Mulligan) who meet in Tennessee, marry, and have 2 children. They decide
to
move to Mississippi with Clarke’s racist father (Jonathan Banks) to own a
plantation. Working their plot as sharecroppers, is a black family (lead
by Rob
Morgan and Mary J. Blige). Both Jason Clarke’s brother (Garrett
Hedlund), and
Morgan and Blige’s son (Jason Mitchell) enlist to fight in WWII, and the
families’ form an uneasy employer/neighbour dynamic as they try to farm
the soggy South during WWII times. Will they be able to keep their crop
from drowning, amidst PTSD for our returning war heroes and a sweltering
racist climate?
Why is it worth seeing?
"Mudbound"
covers a great deal of ground, and can't be faulted for it's ambition.
It's just a lovely story- but a sometimes brutal one, where we get to
know a great deal of different characters who go through some of
history's travesties. Director Rees shows us lands that can occasionally
be spectacular, and spreads their vistas out with multi character
internal narration. So much is left unsaid, but we know what these
people want and where they want to go.
"Mudbound"
walks 2 different lines that frequently cross. It's a family dynamic
piece about a
white couple's challenges to be successful with their farm, with the
wife not being enthusiastic about the life that her plain spoken husband
has created for them. Their family has it's respective challenges in
terms of being fair employers to their sharecroppers who live on their
land and work it, from a society setting the table as flagrantly racist.
From the grandfather who hates blacks, to the father who is tolerant
but eager to make a buck off of the backs of his employees and not
disturb the social order, to the wife who has moments of kindness, to
the brother who has a comrade in arms to relate to, much of the film's
complications are of humans' desires not coalescing with history's
injustices. It's also a family dynamic piece about a black family's
efforts to build something of their own, while living in fear. Whether
to offer them tangible help or to condemn them for speaking to truth, we
see the family's backs stiffen when the white man pulls up unannounced
in their driveway. To say the odds are stacked against them is putting
it mildly.
There
isn't a performance that doesn't ring true in "Mudbound". Everybody is
quietly spectacular and embodied as they should be (I smell Oscar buzz).
These performances are helped by the classical lighting and natural
landscapes, and you can feel the dirtiness, the grit under the
fingernails, and the sweat pouring through the screen. While it's ample
running time is still not enough to address all of the characters and
their dilemmas, and some characters disappear for large amounts of time,
"Mudbound" is one of 2017's best films, an artistic Malickian inspired
desperation tale that both covers mankind's ugly history and gives us
reasons to feel good about the movies. As Tom Waits has said, "All we're
gonna' be is dirt in the ground". Add rain and you know where we're
bound.
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