Mudbound (2017)

Directed by: Dee Rees | 134 minutes | drama, war | Actors: Garrett Hedlund, Jonathan Banks, Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell, Dylan Arnold, Lucy Faust, Mary J. Blige, Kerry Cahill, Rob Morgan, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Geraldine Singer, David Jensen, Rebecca Chulew

Many films have been made about racial inequality in the US and that racial hatred is still a major problem in 2018 is regularly rubbed into us by newspapers and news bulletins. The fact that streaming service Netflix released its own feature film on this theme in 2017 is therefore nothing spectacular. Nevertheless, ‘Mudbound’ (2017), because we are talking about that film, is in many ways a groundbreaking film. Never before has a ‘Netflix Original’, a feature film that can be seen exclusively on Netflix, been nominated for an Oscar. ‘Mudbound’ even earned four nominations, none of which were cashed in. Three women involved in the film also received a first. Dee Rees, the director and co-writer of ‘Mudbound’, will go down in history as the first African-American woman to be nominated in the Best Adapted Screenplay category. Soul queen Mary J. Blige was nominated twice, for her supporting role as Florence Jackson and for her best original song, “Mighty River”; she is the first African American woman to earn nominations in two categories in the same year, and she is the first person ever to earn nominations in both an acting and music category in one year. She is also the first African-American actress to be nominated for her acting in a film shot by an African-American director. Rachel Morrison is the first woman to ever earn a nomination in the Best Cinematography category. Do all those firsts already make you dizzy? ‘Mudbound’ is less impressive in practice than you might suspect based on this list. But Dee Rees nevertheless delivers a more than decent production that is characterized by good performances and has its heart in the right place.

As different as we are, at our core we are all the same beings, struggling to make a living for ourselves and doing our best to make the world a little bit better for our children. That’s pretty much the bottom line of ‘Mudbound’. The story, after Hillary Jordan’s debut novel of the same name, is set in 1940s Mississippi and revolves around two families who are at the mercy of each other by fate. On the one hand, we have the white McAllan family; Henry (Jason Clarke) has been able to buy a large piece of land, where he wants to build a life with his wife Laura (Carey Mulligan) and two daughters. Urban Laura has had to give up a lot and feels very unhappy in the barren, muddy and miserable delta landscape. Henry has lofty ambitions that he stubbornly tries to pursue, but in fact he knows the balls of farm life and just messes around. The only one to bring some life to the brewery is Henry’s spirited and rebellious younger brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund); the attraction between him and Laura is undeniable. Even Pappy (Jonathan Banks), the embittered and racist paterfamilias, sees it happening before his very eyes. So it suits the McAllans that Jamie leaves for the front to fight the Nazis. The black Jackson family leases a piece of land from the McAllans. Hap (Rob Morgan), his wife Florence (Mary J. Blige, almost unrecognizable) and their children spend long days in the cotton fields but form a warm family with strong hopes for a better life in the future. Eldest son Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) joins the 761st Tank Battalion and fights overseas for people and homeland. While life in Mississippi seems to stand still, Jamie and Ronsel find themselves in a completely different world. Jamie finally feels like contributing something meaningful and learns what really matters in life; Ronsel is introduced to a world in which his skin color does not matter and makes contact with a German beauty.

Once back home, the boys can’t settle; they each struggle with their own demons. Jamie has to deal with the atrocities he has experienced up close (nowadays we would call the post-traumatic stress disorder he has) and grabs the bottle. Ronsel returns to a world in which he is judged by the color of his skin and is not even allowed to enter a store through the front door. Precisely because he has seen how it can be done, he no longer feels like passively going along with the prevailing morality. The two men find comfort in each other and develop a friendship that, on the one hand, shows how things should actually be, but on the other only creates misery for both families.

‘Mudbound’ stays largely true to the original, meaning Rees and co-writer tell their story through six different voiceovers (Laura, Henry, Jamie, Florence, Hap and Ronsel); in this way we literally look at events through different eyes. Although it may seem a bit cluttered to some viewers, it creates a kind of equality between the six central characters and we can muster a certain sympathy for all six. They are layered characters, unlike Pappy, who is nothing short of a caricatural narrow-minded redneck. Here and there we see more ostentatious cases of lack of subtlety; the sparks that jump between Laura and Jamie, for example, are unmissable and when Rees suddenly puts on those damned white pointed hats at three quarters of the film, she really goes over the line. The film is stronger in the atmospheric setting – the vast emptiness of the muddy landscapes, dramatic sunsets, fields that have been soaked by the rain and extremely rickety wooden houses that are blown to shreds at the first gust of wind – and in the natural and believable way in which the friendship between Jamie and Ronsel is established. They have been able to put one battle behind them, but once home it turns out that an equally fierce battle is underway. The actors do an excellent job; the effervescent Hedlund splashes from the screen, Mitchell personifies the tragedy, Blige and Morgan retain their dignity despite all the blows they have already received in their lives, Mulligan captures the desires of a lonely woman aptly and Clarke buries his head in the sand – or in this case the mud – to save his honor. Banks is the only one who can’t bring his character to life; whether that is because of his own shortcomings or because of a character written too black and white, let’s say.

Perhaps ‘Mudbound’ would have come into its own as a (mini)series; the film now feels overcrowded at times as we look at the events through six different pairs of eyes. Rees takes the time to put down her main asset – the characters – and therefore it takes a while before the story is well and truly underway. But the first part, in which the focus is on the characters, is the strongest. In the second half, Rees abandons the subtlety too much and goes off the rails here and there, but the basis of ‘Mudbound’ is strong enough to captivate a wide audience for over two hours: good actors who create layered characters, atmospheric images, a story with a lot of drama, a touch of romance and a shred of action and of course the underlying message, which we have heard many times before, but which, given recent events, have still not lost any of their urgency.