Mudbound

The Good:
I wasn’t even sure I was actually in the mood to watch and review this movie last night, and then the first scene caught my attention and hooked me right away. The setting itself is hugely compelling. We get an instant unpacking of the title. Mudbound can mean so many things. (Really, it can!) And the opening scene makes us realize how fertile the title is, packed with symbolic meaning. (Mud means more than one thing. Bound means more than one thing. The entire compound word also has multiple possible meanings.)

Within the first few minutes, the film treats us to a number of different narrators. They’re all bound by one thing. Guess what it is? That’s right. Mud. (Writing that down makes it seem almost comical. But seriously, without that mud, those various threads of the story wouldn’t necessarily be threads of the same story.)

So though I would not call the film a masterpiece (very good, perhaps, but not a masterpiece) the title is beyond compare. It’s a great title, and it’s not just some cute literary flourish. The story is not just calling itself that trying to be clever. It’s the perfect word to describe the situation of (and relationship linking) all the characters.

That said, you can probably guess that Mudbound has a very literary feel. Virgil Williams and director Dee Rees adapted the screenplay from the novel of the same title by Hillary Jordan. I didn’t learn those details until after the movie, but it’s pretty easy to tell this is a literary adaptation as you watch it.

(For what it’s worth, as I watched, I kept thinking of the movie adaptation of The Hours and the novel The Grass is Singing by Doris Lessing. I’m not sure why. Well, I mean, obviously the story has some plot elements similar to those in The Grass is Singing. I assume the literary-adaptation-from-multiple-viewpoints aspect is what made me keep thinking of The Hours.)

On the whole, the characters in the story feel three-dimensional and real (well, most of them do). The acting is uniformly fantastic. Nobody in the cast is chewing scenery or pulling focus. They’re all just quietly good. I suppose Garrett Hedlund gives the showiest performance, but that’s because of the nature of his character.

I do think Blige is quite good as Florence Jackson, but my two favorite performances in the film come from Rob Morgan playing her husband Hap Jackson and Jonathan Banks playing the irascible Pappy McAllan. (Irascible is probably the wrong word to use there. He is a cranky, old misanthrope, sure, but he goes a bit beyond that. You usually don’t hear people saying, “You’re so irascible, you ol’ abusive, misogynist, racist Klansman torturer!” He’s really just a horrible guy with no redeeming qualities I could see. (Besides being cruel, he also doesn’t appreciate the finer things like literature, music, and not bragging about how many innocent people you’ve blown to smithereens.)  But Banks’s performance is fantastic. He plays the character with such palpable evil. You watch and think, “This man is weak, but if he ever had even a modicum of power, he would be the horror of the world,” and that’s pretty much how it plays out, all right.

Hap Jackson was just my favorite character. I kept asking myself, “Now are you praising Morgan’s performance because his acting is good, or is it also mostly because you just love the man he’s portraying?” It’s a hard question. Hap Jackson is a wonderful human being and by far the strongest and most appealing man in the movie, but Morgan is thoroughly convincing as the character. I liked him so much that I actually spoke out loud begging and pleading with him not to get out of bed in one scene. Maybe he’ll get a supporting nomination.  I would love to see that, but it doesn’t seem very likely to me.

It’s very easy to see Hap as purely good and Pappy as purely evil (in fact, it’s too easy to see them that way, which I think may actually be a failing of the film, though you’ll see how indecisive I am when I admit that it may, on the other hand, be a strength of the film). (When dealing with a novel adaptation, it’s tricky. If the adaptation is faithful to the source material, does that make its choices beyond reproach? I’m thinking.)

Jason Clarke also gives an incredibly strong performance. I wish that Henry were more fleshed out as a character. Clarke’s brilliant performance seems to add dimensions to a character who would otherwise be much too thin. Another suitable title for the film would be, Mudbound, or: Mistakes That Henry Made. Henry McAllan is such a fascinating man. His thoughtlessness brings misery to all around him. He’s one of those people who is his own worst enemy. He makes consistently terrible decisions and basically just never knows what he’s doing. He presents himself as being highly competent but is actually just perpetually out of his depth. And all of the dumb choices he makes when trying to correct earlier bad decisions bring suffering to everyone around him that he never even notices (or, in a less charitable and probably more accurate reading, deliberately ignores).

Carey Mulligan is very good at playing a quiet girl who doesn’t understand herself and then becomes frustrated when no one else understands her either. That’s who she’s playing here. (Mulligan is a talented actress who plays other types of characters well, too.  She’s just particularly adept at this type.) Laura’s beginnings are a little bit The Grass is Singing, but to her credit, she ends up more solidly in Kate Chopin territory.  (I thought of “The Storm” in particular.)  As far as I’m concerned, this is an improvement, though I would like the ending better if she took a page from Vera Atwood and sent Henry off to be with Pappy. Honestly, as the movie opened, I had the initial impression that it was going to be the kind of story where a bored, selfish wife betrays her boring-but-devoted husband because, I mean, she just can’t help it, I mean, she’s soooo bored, and obviously sex and treachery are the only hobbies worth pursuing when you’re sooo bored. I was all set to dislike Laura. Then I realized quickly that Henry was literally the worst husband who ever existed in the world (except perhaps for his own father whose wife didn’t even survive to be in this movie). It’s bad enough that Henry doesn’t care about (and in some cases actively harms) other people’s children. Through the enormity of his narcissistic incompetence, he nearly kills his own children. If I were Laura, Henry would have been mysteriously crushed by a falling piano.

My opinion of the movie is increasing as I write this review, by the way. The characters honestly are quite interesting, and I’m only now getting to the two most important ones, returning war heroes Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell) and Jamie McAllan (Garrett Hedlund).  (If any actor in the film gets a nomination, I’m confident it will be one of these two.)  This movie is obsessed with pairs, with thesis and antithesis. Fittingly then, the controversial friendship between Ronsel and Jamie is alternately the brightest part of their lives right now and the precursor to the worst thing that ever happens to either of them (I hope). At the end of the story, only one of them is permitted happiness. We’re not sure about the other, but I’m predicting a downward spiral of misery. 

This isn’t an action movie, of course, but it does contain several scenes of extremely graphic and disturbing violence. For great stretches, it does not even seem to merit its R-rating. And then suddenly, intensely graphic violence makes you flinch.

Best Scene:
That opening scene is probably my favorite, but I am also a huge fan of the moment when Hap and Florence debate the job offer she’s been given by Laura. The two of them present such a positive model of how a loving marriage ought to work. In the McAllan household, we have Henry who makes unilateral decisions, then “forgets” to mention them until they’re already happening. He then refuses to acknowledge his wife’s displeasure, and she goes along in frustrated silence most of the time, but if something is particularly important to her, she refuses to obey him and will not budge under any circumstances. They have a horrible marriage.

Hap, on the other hand, is such a caring husband. He tells Florence he doesn’t want her working for those people, but what I hear is, “If you don’t want to do this, I will make sure you don’t have to no matter what it costs us. You can use me as an excuse, and I will throw a big fit and stand in your way.” (I’m sure he also genuinely bristles at the idea, but I’m positive he speaks up about it only to show his willingness to protect her and encourage her to speak her own mind.)

She insists that she does want to do it because of how much it will benefit the family. He quotes scripture to her. She quotes scripture back and wins the argument. But it’s not really an argument. Neither is trying to “beat” the other. They’re having a conversation and reaching a decision together after making sure that each is honestly okay with that decision.

I thought that was just beautiful. I’m also partial to the scene when Ronsel comes home to surprise his family after the war.

The argument in the store is also a powerful scene, even more so in light of what happens later.

Best Scene Visually:
There’s a single moment when only a screen door separates Henry from his wife who is outside on the porch, bewildered after Jamie’s departure. Henry is looking one way, Laura another. It’s a nice tableau.

Most Oscar Worthy Moment, Mary J. Blige:
Several characters get a chance to narrate the story, but Blige’s Florence Jackson gets all of the best narration. Her lines describing the way she has always known her son’s heartbeat and entire body are very moving, and her assessment of the whooping cough situation is certainly thought provoking. The moment when she eats Ronsel’s chocolate is nice, too.  She might even win an Oscar.  We’ll see.

The Negatives:
For some of the characters, the story feels really incomplete. Some get a definite ending. Others are left standing around vaguely in the mud waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’d really love some closure for every storyline. In terms of character development, Laura and Jamie have something kind of weird in common. At length, they are driven to immoral acts, yet somehow these acts are the best and truest things they’ve ever done. It’s not exactly that these acts are actually moral (though they may be). It’s more that the acts even if immoral are still such an improvement for these characters. Have Laura and Jamie done something wrong? Um yeah, probably. But at least they’ve done something. Finally!

I’m also confused about the narration. It seems to cut in and out in a pattern that did not seem predictable to me as I watched. I would think, “Wait, I guess the narration’s gone now?” but then a few minutes later, someone would talk again. I realize that a movie with narration need not feature constant talking over every scene, but the way the narration would come and go just felt awkward as I watched the movie.

What I disliked the most, though, (other than the many scenes shot into the light so that people’s faces were shrouded in darkness) was Mudbound’s tendency to make the distinction between good and evil characters so clear cut. The entire Jackson family is good, just purely good. The characters have a lot of depth and nuance, but they’re good all right, through and through. Meanwhile Laura, Jamie, and that other crazy, ill-used wife are morally confused and get lots of development. And then there are the bad guys. Apparently, Henry and his father are just evil. We really have no sense of what makes them so awful. I mean, we can guess.  We know the father is motivated by his own failure and powerlessness, and Henry is struggling to overcome his own lack of competence.  But I’d rather have more insight given to us.

Also the scene in the barn near the end is just so jarring. It’s not out of place. The story has led up to that moment beautifully. It’s just so awful, though. I know we have to see it because that’s the whole point. It’s one of those punching people in the dark things (literally). In a way, it’s not real until you look at it, and our society has looked the other way for too long. But given the calm, steady rhythm of the rest of the movie, I wasn’t expecting something so…jarring. That’s the only word that seems to fit.

I also found it frustrating that as depicted, Laura’s suffering doesn’t seem to be adequate to merit pity. The Jackson family (especially Ronsel) all have it so much worse. Jamie has it worse, too. Even the murderous Vera Atwood has it worse. We see from Florence’s point of view how Laura obliviously asks Florence to nurse her children back to health even though it risks spreading illness to Florence’s own children. But she is motivated here by not wanting her children to die, so I mean, from Laura’s point of view, who cares if she’s inconsiderate? Her children’s lives are at stake. I would much rather be thought rude (or actually inconvenience others) if I thought placidly accepting my young children’s death was my other choice. 

Overall:
Mudbound is a good movie that I like more and more as I write about it. I found it pretty engrossing (if in some ways unsatisfying) start to finish, and it frames unpleasant truths about our past in such a way that forces us to think about similar unpleasant truths about our present. The acting is always good, and the score is great, too. If you can stand the horrific intensity of the ending, then you might as well go ahead and watch the movie because it’s on Netflix right now.