REVIEW: MUDBOUND
Though Carey Mulligan receives the top credit on the film's official poster, Dee Rees's new Netflix film is truly an ensemble picture. Everyone gets a chance to shine here, and that doesn't mean one character gets his/her "Oscar moment" where they deliver a teary-eyed monologue and then we can forget about them. Like life, there truly is no main character, and Rees mines this southern WWII character study for everything that it's worth: Mudbound is a rich, tragic success.
The film is nearly deceptive in its straightforwardness. We see Laura (Mulligan) meet/be courted by a man she's not particularly in love with, Henry (Jason Clarke). She'd honestly be more interested in dancing with his war-bound brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), a charismatic drinker. After marrying, the McAllan clan (including Henry's prejudiced father, played by Jonathan Banks) move to a farm in Mississippi after being duped. There they share the land with tenant farmer Hap (Rob Morgan), his wife Florence (Mary J. Blige) and their many children. Neither family is anywhere near content with what they have, but things start looking up when Jamie and Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) return home from war.
The friendship between the two veterans is what really makes Mudbound soar. It isn't your typical interracial friendship. Ronsel is naturally antsy about why this white man is being nice to him. Elsewhere, Hap breaks his leg, and can't help out the McAllens, so his wife becomes the breadwinner. Everyone gets a chance to shine here, no character is left out. Mitchell is inspiring as Ronsel, a man who had a taste of freedom and respect overseas, and who begrudges having to be treated as lesser. Clarke, who I've seen as Faceless Leading Man in such films as Zero Dark Thirty and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, surprised me here. He plays a small man here, a man who wants desperately to try to call something his. Mary J. Blige is fine as the dutiful Florence, but I think her "stripping down" her look from the fabulous, colorful soul singer we know is what's getting her the praise. It's Hedlund and Mitchell who are really the film's heart, and particularly Hedlund who steals the show as the vulnerable, PTSD-stricken Jamie.
This is not a fairy tale take on racism. Jonathan Banks's Pappy is so despicable I had to recall all of the episodes of "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" he was in to remind myself why I loved the actor so much. Hap and Henry don't grab a beer at the local tavern and realize their differences are silly, superficial things. Dee Rees (whose stunning, Moonlight-reminiscent debut Pariah is also available on Netflix) makes the audience "mudbound" too as we're dragged through the dirt that was 1940s life, creating a Southern epic that is at once imminently watchable and devastating to witness. The Academy better take note.
Rating: 3.5/4 stars
The film is nearly deceptive in its straightforwardness. We see Laura (Mulligan) meet/be courted by a man she's not particularly in love with, Henry (Jason Clarke). She'd honestly be more interested in dancing with his war-bound brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), a charismatic drinker. After marrying, the McAllan clan (including Henry's prejudiced father, played by Jonathan Banks) move to a farm in Mississippi after being duped. There they share the land with tenant farmer Hap (Rob Morgan), his wife Florence (Mary J. Blige) and their many children. Neither family is anywhere near content with what they have, but things start looking up when Jamie and Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) return home from war.
This is not a fairy tale take on racism. Jonathan Banks's Pappy is so despicable I had to recall all of the episodes of "Breaking Bad" and "Better Call Saul" he was in to remind myself why I loved the actor so much. Hap and Henry don't grab a beer at the local tavern and realize their differences are silly, superficial things. Dee Rees (whose stunning, Moonlight-reminiscent debut Pariah is also available on Netflix) makes the audience "mudbound" too as we're dragged through the dirt that was 1940s life, creating a Southern epic that is at once imminently watchable and devastating to witness. The Academy better take note.
Rating: 3.5/4 stars
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