Four stars. Rated R, for dramatic intensity, disturbing violence, profanity and nudity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.12.18
This film likely hasn’t been on
most folks’ radar, given its unconventional distribution.
That needs to change.
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| As their friendship develops, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund, right) insists that Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) ride alongside in the front of his truck, rather than — as local custom demands — back in the bed. This "familiarity" will not go unnoticed. |
Director/co-scripter Dee Rees’
compelling adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s Mudbound
boasts impeccable acting and a narrative too infrequently addressed these days:
humble people just trying to get by. Rees’ film shares these sensibilities with
classics such as the 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and the 1941 adaptation of Richard Llewellyn’s
How Green Was My Valley (both
directed by John Ford).
The all-important distinction is
that Jordan’s saga gets additional dramatic heft from its depiction of the
wary, prickly dynamic that passed for “race relations” in the post-WWII Deep
South. Recent films addressing issues of race — 12 Years a Slave, Selma
and Birth of a Nation immediately
spring to mind — have concentrated on momentous individuals and/or points in
history; it’s refreshing to experience a much more intimate, carefully sculpted
depiction of jes’ plain folks.
Some of whom, it must be noted,
are capable of unspeakable behavior.
Rees and co-scripter Virgil
Williams adopt Jordan’s alternating narrative voices while introducing us to
two families: the McAllans and Jacksons, both struggling on a remote,
hard-scrabble cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta. It’s the winter of 1946,
with flashbacks filling in crucial pre-war details.
Monsoon-like rains occasionally
turn the entire farm into a dispiriting swamp of mud.
We meet Henry McAllan (Jason
Clarke) and his younger brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) as they dig a grave for
their recently deceased father, trying to complete this task ahead of another
impending storm. Subsequently easing the plain wooden coffin into the grave
proves too much for the two men; Henry requests help from their tenant farmers,
the Jacksons, as their wagon ambles along the nearby road.
This request elicits palpable
tension; we’ve no idea why.
Answers emerge via lengthy
flashbacks.
