Flipmagazine A film for a large audience: Mudbound

A film for a large audience: Mudbound

Dic 03, 2017 Cultura, Teatro & Cinema

Mudbound, a Netflix production, a good film directed by Dee Rees, is a tale of two families, it is also a vivid drama that explores how World War II changed the racial dynamics in the deep South of the United States. We first meet the McAllan family in Memphis. They’re lead by gruff, ambitious patriarch Henry (Jason Clarke), who quickly becomes frustrated when the move to the Mississippi Delta fails to go as planned.

Even less thrilled is his young wife, Laura (Carey Mulligan), who’s missing Memphis and very possibly Henry’s dashing brother, Jamie (Garrett Hedlund), who’s become a pilot.

It’s an engaging potential love triangle, but the story intensifies as the McAllans are obliged to interact with their new neighbors, an African–American family, the Jacksons. As weather, isolation, farming matters and health issues enforce an uncomfortable mutual dependency, the dynamic between the two clans increases in complexity.

Mary J. Blige is wonderful as Florence Jackson, the mother forced to leave her own children behind, to look after those of another.

Based on Hillary Jordan’s novel, Mudbound, co-adapted on the page by Rees and Virgil Williams, is emotive but unsentimental.

134 minutes, it means a really long film, but the strength of its ensemble cast and unusually evolving narrative give it a very good final result, as a terrific film, for a wide audience.

Philip Paye

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