Mudbound

MUDBOUND            B                    

USA  (134 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Dee Rees

They’re just gonna win every time.

—Hap Jackson (Rob Morgan)

A blistering portrait of the Jim Crow South, yet also an excruciatingly slow-paced film that feels mired in the misery of being dirt poor farmers in the Mississippi Delta region following the Great Depression, adapted from the Hillary Jordan novel of 2006, emblematic of John Ford’s equally dour The Grapes of Wrath (1940), which was itself an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s infamous Pulitzer Prize winning novel.  Receiving a standing ovation at the Sundance premiere, this openly wears its heart on its sleeve, unfortunately, and is a more difficult film than it might appear, which includes how difficult it is just to find this film, screening for a single week in an obscure suburban theater in Chicago, otherwise only available to Netflix subscribers.  Using an unusual technique of introducing multiple characters through their own inner narration, the film balances a searing realism with a kind of inner poetry, offering different points of view, often altering our perceptions, as mouths are not necessarily in synch with the words being spoken, or musical interludes include the sounds of spirituals or quiet piano music, adding a hint of illusion to an otherwise reality-based film.  What this does is add a uniquely different sensory element to what we are watching, like the effect of music often transcending what we see, providing an alternate reality that is closer in spirit to the emotional realm being depicted.  The first half of the film sets up what happens long afterwards, as the central conflict takes over an hour to finally appear onscreen, with hints left along the roadside to help viewers find their way.  The film is an intersection of two proud families, one white and one black, initially revealing different customs, family bonds, and familial expression, revealing how they are uniquely and societally different, including their reaction to racial slurs and personal indignities, with the camera adding a black perspective inside their home when unwelcome white visitors arrive at their door, never with good news, personalizing the arrogance of white privilege, never questioning the system that keeps blacks down, as everything must come to a stop to appease the white folks, with both sides showing signs of empathy, which becomes a crime that must be ruthlessly punished in Jim Crow Mississippi, eventually becoming a full-fledged drama about grotesque race hatred and savagely inflicted KKK violence in the Deep South, showing its pronounced impact on both families, each torn apart in ways they could never anticipate.  Much like Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan (2015), the finale feels more imaginary than real, evading historical realities with a dreamlike sequence, creating an alternate epilogue that feels much more hopeful and optimistic, which appears to be a present day viewpoint tacked onto an earlier historical time period when a more dire outcome would have been inevitable.  That being said, this is a fictional view of one of America’s most deep-seeded problems which has its origins in the slave trade, where for hundreds of years no one lifted a muscle to stop the inherent cruelty of treating blacks as an inferior subspecies of the white race.  Mind you, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, millions today currently believe in the superiority of the white race (from a recent poll in 09/2017, more than 2.5 million, or about 8% of the U.S. population currently believes in white nationalism, while 100 million, or 31% believe “America must protect and preserve its White European heritage,” from Most Americans Oppose White Supremacists, But Many Share Their ...).

 

The opening burial sequence in a deluge of rain is eye-opening for its minimalist suggestion, showing the tenuous line between life and death, and just how easily it can be broached.  It is a parable for the larger story ahead, serving as a cautionary warning.  Initially we are introduced to Laura (Carey Mulligan), an intelligent and well-read woman in her early 30’s from Memphis, Tennessee, a city slicker with a cultivated taste, who plays the piano, for instance, but is still a virgin, suggesting the first man she meets will be the one, introduced by her brother to his boss, Henry McAllen (Jason Clarke), at a jazz club (with a distinctly American black origin), though he’s hardly a charmer, but he’s a forthright and upstanding man who pursues her, asking for her hand in marriage, so she obliges, preferring not to die a spinster.  If their accents sound weirdly unsouthern, Mulligan is British while Clarke is Australian, never quite getting the inflections right.  Henry has a brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) who is everything he’s not, handsome and charming, something of a ladies man, who frowns on his brother’s dreams to live close to the land.  Coinciding with this romantic interlude is another close-knit black family arduously working the land headed by Hap Jackson (Rob Morgan), a local preacher and his wife Florence (Mary J. Blige), along with their family.  Hap angrily describes how easily blacks in Mississippi have been robbed of their own land, where deeds to property that took blood and sweat to accrue have simply been torn up by white families that basically took what they wanted, sending them away to fend for themselves.  As sharecroppers, the land they work is not really theirs, but is a reminder of a debt they constantly owe white owners, having arrived at this plot of land where they have been tenant farmers since slavery days, still trying to pay off their debt, vowing one day to own their own land.  Men exclusively make the decisions in these families, where out of the blue, Henry decides to tell his wife they’re moving to Mississippi, having bought some land there that he figures to farm.  Swindled out of the initial home he thought they’d live in, they’re forced to move into a broken down shack, a rude introduction to a primitive life with holes in the roof and no electricity or indoor plumbing, forced to live under the same roof as Henry’s virulently racist father, Pappy (Jonathan Banks), sharing the same farmland not far from where the Jacksons live.  This common land is defined by a bridge into town that washes out when it rains, stranding the families in a sea of mud.  Laura’s two children end up with whooping cough, sending for Florence to help nurse them back to health, offering her a regular job as their housekeeper afterwards.  What’s painfully obvious is how Henry talks to Hap, always expecting he will obey his every request, as if their passive servitude is taken for granted.  This dehumanization defines the times in Mississippi, as blacks who act otherwise typically end up dead. 

Perhaps the one that has it worse is Vera (Lucy Faust), a white sharecropper neighbor who lives in the same extreme poverty as the blacks, living pitifully close to madness, as her marriage is in shambles, devastated by extreme deprivation.  World War II calls two men into action, where Jamie becomes a decorated fighter pilot who completes harrowing bombing missions in Europe, while Ronsel (Jason Mitchell), the oldest Jackson, drives a tank in an all-black military unit known as the Black Panthers serving under the command of General Patton, one of the most effective combat units in the war despite their segregated status away from white soldiers.  Ronsel reveals that unlike back home, Europeans welcome blacks, where they are viewed as more human, including white women, thankful they are protecting their homes and communities, ending up in a relationship with Resl (Samantha Hoefer), a pretty German girl who welcomes him into her home.  While obviously taking a toll on both men, both return home under differing circumstances, as Jamie is a war hero, but he’s jittery and drinks heavily covering up symptoms of trauma, while Ronsel has newly discovered confidence in himself, as he’s backed away from no one, standing up to all enemies that stood in their way.  Upon returning back home to Mississippi, however, he’s just an n-word to the locals, who treat him as such, facing the same bigotry he’s known all his life.  “Over there I was liberated…Here I’m just another nigger pushing a plow.”  It’s Hap who tells his son not to stir up any resentment in white folks, to apologize even if he’s the harmed party, expressing the prophetic words, “they’re just gonna win every time.”  However, Ronsel and Jamie hit it off, as a black pilot once saved his back in the air, showing gratitude afterwards, allowing Ronsel to ride in the front of his pickup truck, sharing a drink, where they can get personal and share stories, spending secret time together away from all the rest, actually developing an unlikely friendship with mutual respect.  But this doesn’t go unnoticed, which does not bode well in this town, in this era, with the stench of blood and violence lingering in the air, where they are eventually outed by his own Pappy, who calls him a traitor and a “nigger lover.”  This escalates into a full-scale KKK assault on both men, beaten and tied up by dozens of men in white hoods, with Ronsel stripped naked, facing the sadistic onslaught of racial hatred, which is an abomination from which there is no return.  This level of cruelty is mirrored perhaps by the brutally harsh demands of the soil, creating a communal burden of unending poverty from harvesting cotton, a failed economy dependent upon slave labor, causing resentment towards blacks since the Confederacy days.  Filming this untold story offers a window into our own depraved Jim Crow era history, which is especially relevant today with a President of the United States that refuses to condemn white supremacist groups, as a surge of white nationalists make up much of his support.  Easily more ambitious than her earlier film, Pariah (2011), though not necessarily better, it has a broader historical reach and feels more impactive, though it still feels rough around the edges.  Beautifully expressed in wide vistas and close-ups on worn out faces by cinematographer Rachel Morrison, who also filmed Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station (2013), where much of the raw material hits a nerve, but could use a subtler hand when it comes to achieving greater artistry.  

Far From the Madding Crowd (2015)

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD                B+               
Great Britain  USA  (119 mi)  2015  ‘Scope  d:  Thomas Vinterberg             Official site

Far From the madding crowd’s ignoble strife
Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", by Thomas Gray, 1751 (excerpt)

An epic and sweeping romantic story of long-repressed love, based on the 19th century Thomas Hardy novel set in the Victorian period of the 1870’s, his fourth and first successful novel, listed at #10 in a 2007 Guardian poll (Emily Brontë hits the heights in poll to find greatest love story) of the greatest love stories of all time, which follows the exploits of a feisty, determined, and extremely independent woman, Carey Mulligan as Bathsheba Everdene, initially seen confidently riding a horse galloping through the English countryside of rural Dorset, supposedly 200 miles from London, where the idyllic pastoral beauty of south and southwest England is described in the book as Wessex, based on the real locations of the author’s birthplace but given a somewhat fictionalized and dreamlike embellishment.  Hard to believe this is the same director whose “vow of chastity” forsook the indulgences of special effects, musical scores, props or sets, special lighting, post-production modifications and other technical wizardry as one of the original founders of the short-lived Dogme 95 movement, the maker of THE CELEBRATION (FESTEN) (1998), one of a small cadre of artists insisting upon naturalism, accentuating the artistry of the performers instead of the influence of the studio.  While authenticity was the goal then, this film has all the Hollywood grandeur and style of big budget spectacles made during the height of the studio era, though made for a fraction of the cost.  Nonetheless, the look of the film is spellbinding, all shot on actual 35 mm film (and it shows!), beautifully captured by the luminous and vividly textured cinematography of Charlotte Bruus Christensen, who also shot Vinterberg’s previous film The Hunt (Jagten) (2012).  As Hardy’s most pastoral novel, a good portion of the book consists of detailed descriptions of the landscape and farming techniques, expressed in the movie through the visuals of green rolling hills and an attachment to the land that is everpresent throughout, paying homage to Dovzhenko’s EARTH (1930) with utterly spectacular shots of peasants working in the fields, yet captured here in glorious color, where the painterly images of harvest scenes are perhaps only exceeded by Terrence Malick’s gloriously filmed masterpiece DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978).  While adapting Jane Austen novels may be the preferred pre-Victorian author to grace the cinema screens, usually given a more modernist, feminist perspective, Thomas Hardy has hardly been shortchanged, as Michael Winterbottom’s JUDE (1996), an ultra bleak adaptation of Hardy’s final 1896 novel Jude the Obscure, starring a hauntingly beautiful 20-year old Kate Winslet, remains one of the extraordinary romantic tragedies on record.  Hardy novels don’t typically result in upbeat, feelgood movies, as it’s clear Victorian women had fewer choices, so those that actually made the best of their limited options were seen as stronger and more aggressive, making excellent role models for the women of today, and while this may not have the awesome visual power of Roman Polanski’s TESS (1979), whose majestic agricultural scenes are also compared to Malick ("Girl, interrupted; Roman Polanski's Tess (1979)"), Mulligan’s fiercely winning performance is far more likely to produce smiles rather than tears. 

Without providing any backdrop for the story, Bathsheba is educated, self-aware, and essentially a modern young woman living on her own with her aunt, having a chance meeting with a neighboring sheep farmer, the introverted, muscular, and hardworking Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts) who is taken by her somewhat out-of-character, bold and proudly defiant manner.  They develop a quick friendship, where he makes a surprisingly blunt proposal of marriage, claiming the farm he leases could easily become their home.  While flattered, she’s afraid to give up her independence, something she values more than a husband.  The winds of change offer each of them a unique twist of fate, where Bathsheba inherits a mammoth estate in Weatherbury from her uncle, one of the largest farms in the region, making her instantly wealthy, while in a dreamlike sequence a crazed and inexperienced sheep dog drives Gabriel’s sheep over a high cliff, a scene made especially dramatic over the rugged coastline of the Golden Cap, killing them all while leaving him penniless.  Traveling the roads, looking for a job, he comes upon a blazing fire in the night, where he immediately pitches in and actually saves the barn almost singlehandedly by daringly putting out the fire on the roof.  In the aftermath, when asking the owner for a job, he’s surprised to learn it’s Bathsheba, their positions now reversed.  She hires him as the foreman in charge, while she is almost never seen again without her own trusted maidservant Liddy (Jessica Barden), from whom she learns all the latest gossip and news.  Together they form a female alliance against a bartering monopoly of men, who customarily do all the buying and selling of crops along with the various necessities, including her neighboring landowner William Boldwood (Michael Sheen), a prosperous farmer who is proud and aloof and likely more than twice her age.  Despite this difference, he is smitten by her playful and zestful charm, stirring emotions he felt were altogether lost.  Offering to combine their estates through marriage, she views it more as a business decision than a matter of the heart, stringing him along while she seeks better offers, which arrives on her doorstep in the form of a gallant soldier, Sergeant Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge), who fits the bill as a dashing Prince Charming.  While Gabriel sees through the young man’s veneer and warns Bathsheba not to get too interested, she’s aroused by his charm and masculinity, and perhaps his scarlet red uniform, which he displays in an erotic display of swordsmanship.  Knowing little to nothing about him, she loses all self control and finds herself lost in her sudden euphoria, marrying him on the spot, an impulsive act she lives to regret, discovering the pain and humiliation of realizing she can’t control the repulsive actions of others, as Troy quickly leaves her in debt with excessive drinking and gambling problems.  When a woman from his past suddenly reappears, but just as quickly dies in childbirth while carrying Troy’s child, he shuns his new wife, brazenly telling her “This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be.”

When her husband puts an end to his misery, leaving his uniform onshore and swimming out as far as the fates would have him, his death is considered no loss to anyone.  Boldwood renews his interest in pursuing Bathsheba, willing to pay off all her husband’s debts, even agreeing to allow Gabriel to run both farms, as his closeness to Bathsheba is evident, loyal, overprotective, always looking out for her interests, usually expressed in furtive glances, where they are likely the subject of scandalous rumor that Boldwood is too remote from hearing.  After a particularly successful harvest, the entire staff has a dinner party, celebrating with drink and song, where Boldwood unexpectedly drops in, hoping for an answer, while Bathsheba is persuaded to perform a song, singing Let No Man steal Your Thyme - Carey Mulligan (From "Far ... YouTube (2:57), a traditional British and Irish folksong that lyrically warns young people of the risks and dangers of taking false lovers.  While promising him nothing, Boldwood is emboldened, feeling the time is right, that she will finally accept his offer.  Making all the necessary arrangements, he holds a lavish Christmas Eve party sure that he will win her heart, but Bathsheba feels even more suffocated, prematurely walking out of the party when she suddenly encounters her husband, not dead after all, but drunk, broke, and in a ragged state, rudely ordering her about, grabbing her arm, claiming her as his property, causing her to scream in fright.  Boldwood shoots him dead on the spot, just as Gabriel had earlier shot his deranged sheep dog.  Spared the death penalty, calling it a crime of passion, he’s nonetheless imprisoned and out of her life forever.  Despite her best intentions, she realizes she has an impact on the lives of others, even unintentionally.  While she’s initially seen as carefree and irresponsible, seduced by her own ideas of freedom, but later becomes more ruthlessly aloof, deluded by her own power, caught up in a battle of wills, completely unaware of the suffering she brings others, who are themselves consumed by thoughts of her that amount to little more than male fantasy, often languishing for years in a state of emotional paralysis, waiting for the right opportunity that never comes.  Using Craig Armstrong’s musical score to capture emotions that the characters themselves are unable to express, Bathsheba utters one of the most eloquent lines late in the film, “It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.”  Much of this picture reveals the gulf that lies between the words that are never spoken, the hopes, the desires, the repressed dreams, and the unintended consequences that often haunt people to their graves, all shown in a choreography of body language and facial expressions.  The Victorian era did not allow straightforward honesty, as people were defined by their class status and social standing, where thoughts were expressed through the power of suggestion.  While the lower classes could speak freely amongst themselves, it was considered impudent to speak frankly and openly to one’s employer, unable to cross the class barrier, where it was required to hold one’s tongue.  Is it really any different today?  The social divide between Bathsheba and Gabriel effects every conversation they ever have, becoming an insurmountable obstacle throughout most of the film, a long-suffering open wound that can only bleed and fester, but concealed and out of sight from everyone else.  It was a private world one lived in, lost in their own reveries and rhapsodic thoughts, where any thoughts of reaching a connecting understanding is more of a mirage that rarely intrudes into their actual lives.  The liberating, feminist sentiment is provided by our own, modern day vantage point, knowing full well that even under today’s more open circumstances, true communication is a lost art, where people continue to drown in their own repressed and often agonizing sorrows and regrets, unable to change those few haunting and fateful moments that seem to forever define our lives.   

The Great Gatsby (2013)

F. Scott Fitzgerald, his wife, Zelda, and daughter, Frances (a.k.a. Scottie), celebrate Christmas 1925 in Paris

 

THE GREAT GATSBY           B 
Australia  USA  (143 mi)  2013  ‘Scope  d:  Baz Luhrmann       Official site

No one makes movies of lavish extravagance like Baz Luhrmann, simply no one, which is one of the pleasures of seeing his films.  Perhaps the reincarnate of Ken Russell’s dizzyingly flamboyant films of the 60’s and 70’s, where it often felt like the mad passionate style had overtaken any cinematic value and content, as the director showed less and less restraint, nonetheless he was always an original.  In much the same way, Luhrmann can be counted on for dazzling visual imagery, which some find exaggeratedly overboard, simply too much, where Moulin Rouge (2001) remains the best creative expression of his unique style.  While many find Gatsby unfilmable, as so much of the novel is a description of observances and inner reflections, recounted in narrative form, which may have been best served by the noirish Black and White era of 1949, where bleak lives and a hard-boiled, yet descriptive narration offers a literary feel, where the dark overall mood of criminal intrigue trumps individual character.  That version accentuates the criminality of Gatsby’s underworld lifestyle, while also attractively featuring Shelly Winters as the wronged woman, an ill-fated femme fatale who throws herself in front of a fast-moving automobile with tragic results, all part of the spiraling downturn in Gatsby’s life.  There is a 1926 Silent version, but one wonders how such a contemporary literary classic would hold up in exaggerated looks and gestures alone, lacking much of the description and complexity of the book.  The 1974 version with Robert Redford as Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy is simply too bland for most people’s tastes, never generating any heat, and never rising to the level of an American classic, while the made-for-TV 2000 version is already forgotten.  One might think an outsider’s view in the form of a brash and exuberant Australian director Baz Luhrmann might do the trick, where he’s not so beholden to the literary material and could openly express his free-wheeling style, as the period reflected is the Roaring Twenties, an era of American jazz and a cultural renaissance, including writers, dancers, and musicians in Harlem, where women in America, Canada, India, and Europe received the right to vote, new abstract modern artforms flourished, like Art Deco and Surrealism, but also the contemporary literary elite were heralded with laudatory reviews while living and treated like royalty in Paris, including the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote the source novel for this film.  But alas, it was not to be, and while entertaining throughout, this is yet another version that fails to connect the intricate power of the work to the movie audience.

Part of the problem with this version is the casting, as Leonardo DiCaprio is out of his element as Gatsby.  Like Redford, another man with a pretty face, he fails to get underneath the mysterious man behind the mask, showing us nothing onscreen that he hasn’t already expressed before, using a really phony accent, as if trying to emulate the Boston inflection of the Kennedy’s, and the film even revives the tragedy of the Chappaquiddick incident, which forever derailed the Presidential ambitions of Ted Kennedy.  Carey Mulligan exudes the pixieish flirtatiousness of Daisy, whose artificiality defines her, along with her reliance upon overcontrolling men, too afraid to ever express her inner self, becoming a tragic lost soul in the process.  Unfortunately, Tobey Maguire as the narrator and writer Nick Carroway is well meaning, but too naïve and passive, not at all reflective of Fitzgerald’s own opulent lifestyle of extravagant wealth and lavish parties, where he and his wife Zelda were renowned New York celebrity socialites, making several excursions to Europe, mostly to Paris, where their faces were all over the magazines and newspapers.  Maguire is simpy too meek of a character to exhibit much insight into the world he is drawn into, kind of blending into the wall for most of the picture, not really affecting much of the action, even though he is the observant eyes and ears of the movie, along with a giant billboard with spectacles seen at the entryway to the road to New York from Long Island, emblematic of the eyes of God watching over all who pass by, becoming an unseen moral conscience.  Surprisingly, the performer who comes across the strongest is fellow Aussie Joel Edgarten in perhaps the most despicable role in the film, Daisy’s unfaithful, double-crossing husband Tom, a man of wealth and social prestige, who flaunts it whenever he can, openly speaking his mind, a man used to getting his way, kind of gruff and rough around the edges, a bit like Howard Duff, becoming domineering and callous to Daisy’s needs, ordering her about like one of the hired help, who are almost exclusively black.  Tom is an East Egg blue blood, a borderline racist who believes people belong in their place, and that includes wives and the would-be nouveau rich living across the bay in the West Egg of Long Island where Gatsby’s mansion sits, people who accumulate wealth by illicit means that he believes are without culture and sophistication. 

The actual story behind the story, unraveling the mystery of Gatsby, doesn’t become apparent until near the end, where prior to that he’s simply seen as an immensely wealthy man with some dubious underworld business connections, probably making his millions on bootleg liquor, much like Joseph Kennedy Sr, though that has always been speculation, as he also made his millions on stock market insider trading, which was not outlawed at the time, becoming one of the richest men in America.  Gatsby is seen as a man who opens his home nightly to hoardes of party revelers, providing them food, drink, and musical entertainment, while he rarely shows himself, preferring his reclusive status until Nick moves in to a tiny cottage next door, quickly becoming fast friends, especially when he discovers Daisy is his cousin.  You’d think these party sequences would be the film’s cinematic extravagance, interestingly pulsating with a hip hop soundtrack, but Luhrmann only shows what’s necessary, never extending the shots to give the viewer the full effect like he does in MOULIN ROUGE.  Instead he accentuates the rekindled secret love affair between Gatsby and the scandalously married Daisy, where the best part of the film is the sudden shift to romantic feelings of optimism and hope, where Gatsby, who otherwise feels much like a weird stalker, building it all for her hoping one day she would walk inside his doors, and finally their lives suddenly come together and resemble his dream.  It can all happen, but Daisy gets cold feet while at the same time Gatsby reveals a more desperately controlling nature, where it’s all so close that he can taste it, seen alone at night at the end of the pier reaching out towards the green light emanating from the end of her pier across the bay, a warning for boats in the dark.  Nick is there to see it all, when in one stiflingly hot summer afternoon, they decide to get everything out in the open, so Gatsby begins to push Daisy into uncomfortable territory, forcing her to commit when she’s not yet ready, manipulating her in much the same way as that cad of a husband, where one’s no better than the other.  While Fitzgerald’s own life story is about the corrosive effects of wealth and the emptiness of the decadent lifestyle, reflected in the waning egoism and dwindling male self-confidence, destroyed by the continuing effects of alcohol, Luhrmann’s Gatsby is a stark reminder that “All that glitters is not gold,” which comes from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, where in each, senseless tragedy awaits those that fail to heed that message.