Review: ‘Mudbound’ Paints a Moving Picture of Post-War America
Dee Rees’ 2017 film captures post-war trauma and race in 1940s Mississippi with grace and poignancy
Mudbound was one of those films which was always readily available to me but which I never had the push to take advantage of properly. The film has been sitting on Netflix since 2017, and I’ve always been interested in it but have, for some reason or another, never gotten around to it. When I realise that I’d been putting this film off for six years(!), I gave myself a kick to finally watch it. It certainly helped that its directed by Dee Rees, whose 2011 film Pariah (a beautiful, emotive coming of age film about a Brooklyn poet teenager coming to terms with her sexuality — I highly recommend it!) is a personal favourite.
The film is, for the most part, very solid. There are elements of it which are easy to criticise, and Mudbound as a whole is lacking in the kind of striking sting that makes differentiates a great film from a very good one, but it does have a certain kick to it that makes it memorable and effective.
The film is about two families of farmers, one white and one black. We open with tragedy as Henry (Jason Clarke) and his brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) are digging a grave as fast as they can before a brutal…
