Sinking deep
‘Iwanted
this to be the kind of movie they don’t make anymore,” director Dee Rees said at a recent screening of “Mudbound.” And she’s done it. Her Mississippi-set, post-World War II drama is a sweeping epic that could have come out of a bygone Hollywood era, with a couple of notable updates: Its director is a black woman, and it’s unsparing in its portrayal of black life in the Jim Crow South.
In adapting Hillary Jordan’s novel, Rees and co-writer Virgil Williams alternate among six points of view, which is a heavy lift. You come away feeling as if you need to know more about everyone.
The Jacksons are a close-knit family of sharecroppers living on a barely surviving farm alongside its fumbling new owners, the McAllans. Carey Mulligan and Mary J. Blige, both terrific, are the soul of the film as its two matriarchs. Blige’s Florence and Mulligan’s Laura forge an uneasy and unequal friendship as citified Laura tries to adapt to country living and Florence struggles for autonomy: Laura offers her a housekeeping job she doesn’t want but can’t decline. As Florence tells her preacher husband, Hap (Rob Morgan), after helping Laura care for her sick child: “If something had happened to that other woman’s children, that would have been the end of us.”
The plot hinges on a connection between Florence’s son and Laura’s brother-in-law, both returning from the war. Sgt. Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell) is coming home from a liberating tour in Europe to the dehumanizing racism of his hometown, while pilot Jamie McAllan (Garrett Hedlund) drowns his trauma in whiskey. The friendship between the men stirs up local racial animus, roiling under the sweat and toil of farm life. But Rees always finds balancing notes here — of humanity, passion and true love. It’s a tale as messy as its muddy fields, and it’s a must-watch. Running time: 134 minutes. Rated R (profanity, violence). Now playing. — Sara Stewart