Mudbound [2017]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (B+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (O. Henderson) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review


Mudbound [2017] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Dee Rees along with Virgil Williams based on the novel [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Hillary Jordan [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) set in the 1940s and following two families, one white, one black eeking out livings farming amid "the mud" of rural, delta Mississippi gives a decidedly "muck covered" portrayal of the era presumably ("best guess") evoked by Trump in his quest to "Make America Great Again."

Though largely incompetent, the McAllan family (white) is clearly on top and repeatedly needs (and is able to get ...) the assistance of the neighboring Jackson family (black) in order to survive.  The obvious (and by the end utterly offensive) inequality of their relationship is what this film is about.

Both families have sons that go to war -- Jamie McAllan (played by Garrett Hedlund) and Ronsel Jackson (played by Jason Mitchell).  Both come back from the war as war heroes, both as changed men.  Yet ... when they do come home, the world that they had left had not changed at all.  Coming home, Ronsel, uniform / medals notwithstanding, is "reminded" by scandalized local white folk he has to leave a grocery store "by the back door" and is actually forced to apologize to two members of the McAllan family for his (by the time he got back from serving as a tank-man in Patton's 3rd Army...) _honest_ "mistake."

Readers, you get the picture ... But the tragedy is that THIS WAS TRUE.  African Americans who came back from WW II as war-heroes, came back to a nation that fought the racism of Adolf Hitler / the Nazis while being _utterly oblivious_ (and often _supportive_) of its own.  Indeed, the Nazis' Nuremberg Racial Laws were actually almost carbon copies of Old South's Jim Crow racial laws when it came to classifying the races of its citizens and banning inter-racial marriage.

The film actually helps explain why the U.S. Military actually was among the first institutions in the United States to be desegregated -- the U.S. fought the Korean War with a desegregated army -- and why after WW II the eventual victory of the African American Civil Rights movement was inevitable -- to continue with Jim Crow was simply too much for too many Americans (both black and white) to survive.

Excellent film, certainly one of the year's best.


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