Mudbound (2017)
Directed by Dee Rees
Netflix, 134 minutes, R (violence, brief nudity, language)
★★★★★
Mudbound is a superb, well-reviewed film that was nominated for numerous awards. Too bad almost no one has seen it. It had a budget of over $10 million but earned just $117,000 in limited release. Ouch!
An obvious suspect for this is racism, but a few other factors were at play. In 2017, the only known star power was Carey Mulligan and Mary J. Blige, though the latter wasn’t known for her acting chops. A second factor is that wider release plans got scuttled when Covid hit. Third, it’s set right after World War II, which is ancient history for younger viewers and its 134-minute length (sadly) runs counter to audience attention spans.
Mudbound is a powerful look at the deep background of modern racial tension and resonates with recent trauma of African Americans being harassed and/or killed by police. The difference is that in the immediate postwar period, a lot of White authority figures wore Ku Klux Klan robes. The film revolves around two families. The McAllans are White. Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke) uproots his family–wife Laura (Mulligan), his two daughters, and his father, “Pappy” (Jonathan Banks)–to rural Mississippi. When his first plan goes awry, Henry relocates a second time–to Delta cotton-growing land he claims as his, though a local Black family, the Jacksons, have been working it as theirs. Not that their deed meant a thing versus a White man’s claim.
Hap Jackson (Rob Morgan) and his wife Florence (Blige) know better than to push back in Klan-riven Mississippi where Black folks are routinely saddled with the N-word, especially by the bilious Pappy. For the sake of their children at home and Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) who is fighting in Europe, they bite their tongues and say “Yes, sir” and “Yes, m’am” to all demands placed on them. Laura is a dutiful wife, though she’s often at odds with her unexciting, commanding, aloof, and racist husband. Yet even she makes demands upon Florence that are polite but unintentionally clueless.
As the McAllan/Jackson dynamic plays out at home, Jamie McAllan (Garrett Hedlund) is flying B-25 bombers and Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell) is driving tanks across Europe in advance of General Patton. By the time VE Day rolls around, Jamie shows symptoms of what we now call PTSD, which he proceeds to drown in booze. Ronsel, on the other hand, has taken up with a White German-speaking woman and has been treated well in Europe. He can’t adjust to the reality that his wartime gallantry means nothing in Mississippi, where he’s “boy,” not “Sergeant Jackson.” That immediately lands him into trouble with Pappy and local good ‘ole boys.
Against all odds, Jamie and Ronsel bond. Like many vets, their battle experiences transcend race. Jamie’s life was saved by a Black pilot; Ronsel had White friendships. Ronsel realizes that theirs is dangerous camaraderie–he has to duck down when riding in Jamie’s truck–but he can talk to Jamie about things he can’t with his folks. Can a hard-drinking, devil-may-care White Southern kid from a racist family be a true friend to an articulate Black man who dreams of going back to Europe? It has long been said that racism damages racists and their targets alike. Both the McAllans and the Jacksons have their crosses to bear. Hubris will visit Henry; sorrows the Jacksons.
Mudbound is an apt title. There is a lot of actual sucking mud in the film, but the title also implies the mudsill theory. Among contractors the mudsill is the load-bearing first layer above a foundation; in society it’s the idea that some groups–people of color, recent immigrants, the poor, women–bear the social weight of all those above them. If you know your history, you recognize a long and ongoing civil rights struggle loomed on the horizon. So too did second-wave feminism. Mulligan foreshadows the latter.
Mudbound is an adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s 2008 debut novel, not a real-life tale. Both Jordan and director Dee Rees did, however, have Depression-era photographs from Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, and Arthur Rothstein in mind in capturing the look of the Delta. Jordan also drew on a Life Magazine essay by African American photographer Gordon Parks, whose pen was as sharp as his eye. Maybe they, an English woman (Mulligan), and an Aussie (Clarke) can help Americans remove their remaining blinders.
Rob Weir
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