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.  

The Rover

 
 

David Michôd (left) on the set with his two stars

THE ROVER            B+               
Australia  USA  (102 mi)  2014  ‘Scope  d:  David Michôd       Official site

You should never stop thinking about a life you’ve taken. That’s the price you pay for taking it. 

—Eric (Guy Pearce)

Following the brilliance of his earlier film Animal Kingdom (2010), one has come to expect great things from this Australian director, who has turned to a particular style of end of the world, post-apocalyptic film that continues the tradition of fellow Aussies George Miller, who introduced us to the nihilist universe of MAD MAX (1979), but also John Hillcoat, whose equally impressive films The Proposition (2005), as well as his vision of Cormac McCarthy’s death march in The Road (2009), both happen to feature the star of this film, Guy Pearce.  It was Pearce, along with fellow Australian actor Russell Crowe that broke onto the scene with utterly exhilarating performances in the Hollywood film noir thriller LA CONFIDENTIAL (1997), where Crowe went on to become a big star, now reduced to something of a caricature of himself, while Pearce has continued to do stellar work all along.  This film is impossible to imagine without him in mind, as it’s largely a wordless, nightmarish, apocalyptic vision taking place in a barren Australian wasteland set “10 years after the collapse,” with no more specifics ever provided.  Don’t get to your seats late as what happens early determines the rhythm and tone of the entire film, as Eric (Pearce) wanders into a lone bar in the middle of nowhere, a quiet, dusty hole in the wall.  But through the window, we see a truck barreling down the highway upside down, where the bloodied occupants crawl out afterwards, and like parasites stealing other bodies as hosts, these three outlaws break into Eric’s car and drive off into the emptiness of the outback.  Being the enterprising person that he is, Eric is able to get their truck unentangled and goes off after them.  After a brief exchange on the road, where all Eric wants is his car back, he’s instead left for dead on the highway as the outlaws continue on their path to oblivion.  Things fall apart even further after that, like a trek into the heart of darkness, where civilization as we once knew it has all but disappeared, and what’s left is a savage graveyard of dead bodies and souls, where killing people is the best way of getting what you want, as words are a mere afterthought.   What describes this film best is the strange and eerie musical soundtrack by Antony Partos (who also scored Animal Kingdom), much of which sounds like industrial noise, but it has the capacity to reflect the altered sense of consciousness that pervades throughout this dusty landscape, certainly as effective as the legendary music by Ennio Morricone in Sergio Leone films, but supercharged with creepy effects. 

Introduced through a flashback sequence, Robert Pattinson as Rey is similarly left for dead on the roadside, and though badly wounded, he crawls into a vehicle until unable to continue.  By a strange act of fate, these two are mysteriously brought together in the vast emptiness, as Rey recognizes the car Eric is driving, claiming it belongs to his brother.  Eric demands to know where his brother is, but doesn’t get far after giving him a crushing blow that only knocks him out.  Driving into a surreal abyss, with dead bodies strung onto the passing telephone poles, it’s a precautionary reminder of what to expect if one ventures further, like a ghoulish nightmare.  A visit to another weird stop on the road leads him to a somewhat deranged grandmother (Gillian Jones) who passes as the madam in a dingy brothel, who can’t seem to understand why he’s so intent on finding his car, “What a thing to get worked up about in this day and age,” where Eric picks up some weaponry, but at a heavy price.  The menacing tone exists throughout the film, made even more pronounced when Rey comes to, where we discover he’s something of a half-wit, viewed initially as little more than a mangy dog left on the side of the road after being hit by a car, but slowly a more resilient personality begins to take shape, almost by surprise, but not until after Eric discovers the whereabouts of a doctor, a woman living in the outback (Susan Prior), where one of the more somber scenes in the film is watching Eric stumble upon a room with a dozen or so dogs in cages, where he sits and stares at them, identifying with their state of captivity and their loss of freedom, but they’re alive, all abandoned by their owners who disappeared into the night never to return.  After another horrific scenario plays out, a continuing pattern that recurs throughout the movie, breaking the mood of what is otherwise a movie set in quiet and near silence, Eric brings his recovering patient along as they barrel down the highway into the bleakness of the night.  While they presumably have a destination, as Rey’s condition improves, he freely acknowledges where his brother is likely to be, Henry (Scoot McNairy), and his two cohorts Caleb (Tawanda Maryimo) and Archie (David Field), as he’s just as curious about finding them, especially after they abandoned him.   

Though they’re on the road for most of the picture, the film is not so much a road movie, more a depiction of gruesome, neverending horror, where the grim circumstances never relent, shown without any trace of humor, but as time goes on, the movie delves into the psychological interiors of the two men, both considerably damaged, though Rey’s mental confusion makes him comparable to Lennie from Steinbeck’s depression novel Of Mice and Men, seen here as a kind of caged animal that doesn’t know his own strength, who is instead constantly viewed through the fragility of his mental weakness.  At one point he’s rambling on in the car about his farmer neighbors, this after learning Eric was a farmer before the collapse, until he’s rudely interrupted by Eric wondering why he’s telling him all this personal crap, and Rey meekly retorts, “Not everything has to be about something.”  The movie comes to reflect the shifting tones between these two characters, where there are subtle changes in their feelings toward each other, where the audience is drawn into this as well, as initially the focus is upon the heroic aspects of Eric, seen as a lone warrior against an out of control wilderness, but slowly the viewer takes an interest in the more vulnerable Rey, whose crazed ramblings may reflect the last vestiges of humanity.  What’s intriguing about Rey is his need for companionship, where he’s afraid of being left alone, where he’s the kind of guy that can’t decide anything for himself, as he needs to be told what to do.  In one of the more hypnotic moments of the film, in the still of night, while the two are sitting by a campfire, Eric intently tells Rey not just what awful things have happened to him, but what God has done to him, stripping through the layers, exposing his real fears, leaving him utterly defenseless to the kind of pain that is ripping the earth apart.  It’s the closest we come to the kind of excruciating pain and anguish, which is all that’s left in the world.  This film at least attempts to do what Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse (2011), for instance, fails to do, which is get in touch with the end stages of human emotions once the realization is made that all is lost.  Rey has a flashback moment where the car radio plays Keri Hilson - Pretty Girl Rock - YouTube (4:14), a reminder of the superficial vanity that once was, an era consumed by mindless impulses and myopic convictions, replaced by a vast wasteland where there’s nobody left that cares.  As bleak as they get, this all takes place under the scorching 110 degree heat of the Australian outback with flies everywhere, shot where it’s 9-hours by car in any direction to the nearest civilization.  Michôd is excellent in creating a world that is frighteningly unforgiving and cruel, yet portrayed through realism and raw emotions, where every last character has become alienated from their former humanity, suggesting how easy it is for civilization to simply disappear off the face of the earth.  Something of a concept film, reminiscent of those 50’s novels where nuclear fallout would inevitably destroy the world, like Alas, Babylon, On the Beach, Level 7, or Fail-Safe, here one’s worst fears have already become realized and there’s simply no answer for the neverending sadness that greets each empty moment with an all-consuming silence. 

The Grapes of Wrath

 

THE GRAPES OF WRATH        B                 

USA  (129 mi)  1940  d:  John Ford 

Clarksville and Ozark and Van Buren and Fort Smith on 64, and there’s an end of Arkansas. And all the roads into Oklahoma City, 66 down from Tulsa, 270 up from McAlester. 81 from Wichita Falls south, from Enid north. Edmond, McLoud, Purcell. 66 out of Oklahoma City; El Reno and Clinton, going west on 66. Hydro, Elk City and Texola; and there’s an end to Oklahoma. 66 across the panhandle of Texas. Shamrock and McLean, Conway and Amarillo, the yellow. Wildorado and Vega and Boise, and there’s an end of Texas. Tucumcari and Santa Rosa and into the New Mexico mountains to Albuquerque, where the road comes down from Santa Fe. Then down the gorged Rio Grande to Los Lunas and west again on 66 to Gallup, and there’s the border of New Mexico.

And now the high mountains. Holbrook and Winslow and Flagstaff in the high mountains of Arizona. Then the great plateau rolling like a ground swell. Ashfork and Kingman and stone mountains again, where water must be hauled and sold. Then out of the broken sun-rotted mountains of Arizona to the Colorado, with green reeds on its banks, and that’s the end of Arizona. There’s California just over the river, and a pretty town to start it. Needles, on the river. But the river is a stranger in this place. Up from Needles and over a burned range, and there’s the desert. And 66 goes on over the terrible desert, where the distance shimmers and the black center mountains hang unbearably in the distance. At last there’s Barstow, and more desert until at last the mountains rise up again, the good mountains, and 66 winds through them. Then suddenly a pass, and below the beautiful valley, below orchards and vineyards and little houses, and in the distance a city. And, oh, my God, it’s over.

—John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath, 1939

The definitive work of the Great Depression, John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel is one of those rare books that was the best selling book of the year while also winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1940, which along with Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, may well be the most thoroughly discussed and best analyzed books currently being taught in American classrooms.  It immediately captured the nation’s attention, becoming a lynchpin of cultural history and also one of the most beloved novels of American literature.  Steinbeck was a California writer who grew up in the Salinas Valley, where he wrote a series of seven articles about migrant worker communities for The San Francisco Chronicle, as tens of thousands of Americans were migrating to California during the Dust Bowl era of the mid 30’s, where Steinbeck spent time getting to know families living in the various migrant worker camps.  Infuriated by the amount of inhumane suffering he witnessed, he turned his disgust into a novel, which from the outset was controversial, showing unmitigated sympathy for the plight of the poor by exposing the cruel aspects of capitalism, which lead to a backlash against the author close to home, where the Associated Farmers of California denounced the book as a “pack of lies,” and labeled it “communist propaganda.”  Actually, the novel is to a large degree an outraged response to a government ideology of fear steeped in the paranoia of red scares, where immigrants and outsiders are deemed unpatriotic, where government propaganda demonizes and marginalizes unions out of greed and indifference.  This “realist” aspect of the novel is only hinted at in the movie, which was seen as an Oscar hopeful, so Hollywood could not present a supposedly true story about the government in this light.  It’s also interesting to note that at this stage in his career, director John Ford (who won the Academy Award for Best Director) was a leftist, describing himself in 1937 as “a definite Socialist Democrat, always left,” supporting liberal causes of the 30’s, such as the Hollywood Anti-Nazi league, and sent money to the anti-Franco, anti-fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War, while also becoming one of the founding members of the Screen Director’s Guild, a union that was extremely unpopular with studio executives.  Ford aimed to reproduce the Depression era style of photographers like Oklahoma-born Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, and Margaret Bourke-White, and New Deal U.S. Resettlement Administration, government-produced documentaries like The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), becoming one of the first films selected to be in the National Film Registry in 1989. 

Twentieth Century Fox producer Daryl Zanuck, who purchased the rights to the book, actually hired a detective agency to investigate the migrant labor camps in California to see if the conditions were as bad as Steinbeck claimed in the book, and to no one’s surprise the agency reported back to Zanuck that the conditions were actually worse than what was portrayed in the novel, where Eleanor Roosevelt took it seriously enough that she called for congressional hearings on migrant labor camp conditions.  Zanuck then gave Ford free reign to make the film as brutally realistic as he could.  One assumes Ford took this project very seriously by his approach to the visual style, hiring Hollywood’s best cinematographer, Gregg Toland (who wasn’t even nominated for an Academy Award), who the following year filmed Orson Welles’ legendary masterwork CITIZEN KANE (1941), and incredibly the production was completed just 6 months after the book was originally published.  Set during the Great Depression, the story follows the Joads, a poor Oklahoma family of sharecroppers in the early 30’s who must move as the bank is kicking all the tenant farmers off their land, claiming dire circumstances brought on by Dust Bowl drought and economic hardship.  Along with literally thousands of other Okies who are in the exact same predicament, they migrate West to California, where they hear jobs are plentiful.  While Steinbeck alternates chapters describing the land, the people and their hardships, painting a picture touching on all the things the country was going through with the story of the Joad family, focusing upon their epic journey West, where part of the beauty of the book is a fascination with all the places they traveled through and certainly the wonderfully descriptive language:

The concrete highway was edged with a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog’s coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse’s fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten in sheep’s wool.

The first part of the film version accurately follows the book, with the dialogue almost intact from the page, though instead of joining up with other families, the Joads remain on their own and arrive in California more quickly, while the second half veers into different territory, creating a more uplifting, visionary ending, as the downbeat and miserablist original ending is something that recollection suggests has never been shown on a movie screen.  A few striking observations from the outset, for such a realist drama with documentary style elements, one is surprised to see so much of the film take place in the restricted confines of a studio movie set, and minimally showcase the vast endless landscapes of the great outdoors (which surface later in Ford’s Westerns), shots that might reflect the majestic character of America, and the extraordinary beauty of the book’s language.  Instead, much of the early shots take place at night, where faces are lit like flittering ghosts when Tom Joad (Henry Fonda), just out of prison on parole after killing a man in a barroom brawl, discovers his family has left their homestead, and instead finds Muley (John Qualan) and former preacher Casy (John Carradine) on the premises, where they’re seen talking by candlelight.  Despite the impressive cinematography, what stands out is the artificiality rendered in these early shots, where there’s little hint of realism, while the repeated orchestral refrains of “The Red River Valley” only grow monotonous.  Even more surprising is the exaggerated and wildly uneven sense of caricature from all the actors involved with the exception of Fonda as Tom Joad, who is one of the great characters of literature, and one of the great portrayals in American film as well, as this is arguably Fonda’s greatest performance, especially since Tom is a flawed individual with such a checkered past.  His Midwest, folksy inflection literally breathes authenticity into these lines of such a plain speaking man, making the iconic character come to life, becoming synonymous with fair play and social justice, as he always defends the principles of small town morality, where rewards are based upon honesty and hard work, where no man is better than any other.  “Maybe it’s like Casy says.  A fella ain’t got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul.  The one big soul that belongs to everybody.”     

As they cross the country among the legions of others, this sense of ordinary human decency is on display in a local restaurant when the owner and waitress give Pa Joad a break on the prices for a loaf of bread and a few pieces of candy, where their kindness represents the generous spirit of those who willingly help others in a time of need.  By the time they get to California, however, the ultimate conflict of the film is the violation of those simple American principles, where the Joad family symbolizes the casualties of the Depression, where the openhearted kindness of the Joads runs up against heartless authorities of the bank, but also includes the police and their paid deputies who represent the farm interests, where neighborhood trust is replaced by suspicion and blunt force.  Our first look at one of the destitute migrant camps still leaves a picture in our heads long afterwards, and it’s one of the best shots in the film, showing hordes of people living in squalor, passing by crowds of people that literally give them cold, haunting stares, vividly expressing the fear of not knowing where your next meal is coming from, and reveals the extent of the cruel labor exploitation, as there is an oversupply of workers who are forced to work for next to nothing, and anyone who tries to organize or warn workers of the potential hazards of quick wage cuts has to answer to rogue deputies with guns and nightsticks.  At one point, they’re led in secret, under police escort, into a fenced-in and locked living compound at a peach orchard, where they’re not told the circumstances but immediately ordered to work, forced to buy food supplies at the inflated prices of the company store, where without realizing it, they’re actually strikebreakers filling in at half the wages of the striking workers.  Things only go from bad to worse, where Tom’s friend Casy is murdered right before his eyes, where he wants to strike back, but its clear California doesn’t want this influx of migrant workers, where law enforcement seems determined to drive these unwanted “outsiders” into slave wages and servitude.  Pitted against these brutally deteriorating conditions, Tom Joad becomes a symbol, an identifiable everyman character who must rise up and stand against this enveloping madness, personifying a desperate hope for people who struggle, becoming a clarion call for economic justice, embodying the spirit for social justice that will live on for generations to come, as if that is our patriotic duty.  In the film, however, it’s Ma Joad (Jane Darwell, winner of Best Supporting Actress) who has the last word, voicing an uplifting, anthem-like vision of a new day ahead, led by a “We the people” reference to our nation’s founding principles.