This is a review of the 2017 historical drama, ‘Mudbound’. We watched it on the February 2024 Region B2 Blu-ray from ‘Criterion’, in their premium ‘Criterion Collection’. This version features a new 2K digital master, supervised by director Dee Rees, and her director of photography, Rachel Morrison. It plays in 2.39:1 ~ clear, super-sharp and with deep, rich, earthy colours ~ and glorious new Dolby Atmos sound. There are lots of quality extras, and an interesting booklet.
This Indie movie was filmed in 2016, with a screenplay based on an award-winning first novel from 2008, by American novelist, Hillary Jordan. Filmed over just one month by African-American director Rees, and costing a meagre $10-11 million, it was snapped up at it’s premier at 2017’s Sundance Festival, by subscription video company, Netflix. In an era when major blockbuster TV series from sources as diverse as the BBC, and HBO, are sold as Box Sets on disc, almost concurrently with their appearance on air and ‘on demand’ (think ‘Peaky Blinders’ and ‘Game of Thrones’), Netflix have sat on ‘Mudbound’ for over 6 (SIX!) years! Their bad!
I had noted the film as it was first released, and have been tracking it ever since. We finally got to view it last night. Was it worth the wait? Oh yes! This is a stunningly scripted, stunningly photographed, stunningly acted, 6 Star film. I cried.
The story takes place across the years between 1939 and 1945/6, in America’s Deep South: briefly Memphis, Tennessee, and then the flat, rain-pounded, arable lands of the Mississippi Delta. Cinematographer Morrison’s earthy palate reflects the stagnant pools and saturated soil, the rotting shacks and thin grass tussocks, of this isolated, poverty-stricken, backwater. There is also coverage of fighting in Europe, during WW2, as two of those from Delta families, go away to fight. Those scenes, shot in Budapest, show brief scenes of violent action, but also sunny streets and stone houses, in every sense a world away from Mississippi.
This is largely about the rural America highlighted in John Ford’s famous ‘The Grapes of Wrath'(1940) ~ deep rural poverty, and share-cropping, a monstrous system of agricultural tenure that ensured those trapped by it, never lifted themselves out of penury. Here however, unlike with Ford’s Joad family, the sharecroppers are black, and the white land-owning family are barely better off. But this is also in the deepest sink of racism, and the notorious ‘Jim Crow’ laws of the Deep South, where the Ku Klux Klan and extreme segregation hold sway. Poverty, racism, decay, lace through every scene.
Rees, who co-wrote the screenplay, cleverly uses first-person narrative to inform the action. Several of the warmer, more sympathetic, characters, share their emotions and outlook, and it lifts what might otherwise be a very bleak story. Certainly, there are some deeply unpleasant characters, and some deeply racist and misogynistic behaviour ~ this latter perhaps less overtly egregious, but just as insidious.
There are some very fine, understated, performances. Brit Carey Mulligan is stupendously good, as the ill-used wife of Henry, also a fine performance from Jason Clarke. Garrett Hedlund gives a fascinating portrayal as Henry’s brother Jamie, and Jason Mitchell as Ronsel is also wonderful. Rob Morgan and Mary Blige as Ronsel’s parents, give performances of quiet dignity.
‘Mudbound’ was acclaimed on release. Rees became the first African-American woman nominated for a Screenplay OSCAR; Morrison the first woman cinematographer. Blige was OSCAR- and Golden Globe-nominated. It is a remarkable, sincere, hard-hitting, drama. Emphatically, it was worth the wait.
![Mudbound (Criterion Collection) UK Only [Blu-Ray]](https://k4s.uk/posts/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/71bVPv9Vp8L.jpg)
This is a review of the 2017 historical drama, ‘Mudbound’. We watched it on the February 2024 Region B2 Blu-ray from ‘Criterion’, in their premium ‘Criterion Collection’. This version features a new 2K digital master, supervised by director Dee Rees, and her director of photography, Rachel Morrison. It plays in 2.39:1 ~ clear, super-sharp and with deep, rich, earthy colours ~ and glorious new Dolby Atmos sound. There are lots of quality extras, and an interesting booklet.
This Indie movie was filmed in 2016, with a screenplay based on an award-winning first novel from 2008, by American novelist, Hillary Jordan. Filmed over just one month by African-American director Rees, and costing a meagre $10-11 million, it was snapped up at it’s premier at 2017’s Sundance Festival, by subscription video company, Netflix. In an era when major blockbuster TV series from sources as diverse as the BBC, and HBO, are sold as Box Sets on disc, almost concurrently with their appearance on air and ‘on demand’ (think ‘Peaky Blinders’ and ‘Game of Thrones’), Netflix have sat on ‘Mudbound’ for over 6 (SIX!) years! Their bad!
I had noted the film as it was first released, and have been tracking it ever since. We finally got to view it last night. Was it worth the wait? Oh yes! This is a stunningly scripted, stunningly photographed, stunningly acted, 6 Star film. I cried.
The story takes place across the years between 1939 and 1945/6, in America’s Deep South: briefly Memphis, Tennessee, and then the flat, rain-pounded, arable lands of the Mississippi Delta. Cinematographer Morrison’s earthy palate reflects the stagnant pools and saturated soil, the rotting shacks and thin grass tussocks, of this isolated, poverty-stricken, backwater. There is also coverage of fighting in Europe, during WW2, as two of those from Delta families, go away to fight. Those scenes, shot in Budapest, show brief scenes of violent action, but also sunny streets and stone houses, in every sense a world away from Mississippi.
This is largely about the rural America highlighted in John Ford’s famous ‘The Grapes of Wrath'(1940) ~ deep rural poverty, and share-cropping, a monstrous system of agricultural tenure that ensured those trapped by it, never lifted themselves out of penury. Here however, unlike with Ford’s Joad family, the sharecroppers are black, and the white land-owning family are barely better off. But this is also in the deepest sink of racism, and the notorious ‘Jim Crow’ laws of the Deep South, where the Ku Klux Klan and extreme segregation hold sway. Poverty, racism, decay, lace through every scene.
Rees, who co-wrote the screenplay, cleverly uses first-person narrative to inform the action. Several of the warmer, more sympathetic, characters, share their emotions and outlook, and it lifts what might otherwise be a very bleak story. Certainly, there are some deeply unpleasant characters, and some deeply racist and misogynistic behaviour ~ this latter perhaps less overtly egregious, but just as insidious.
There are some very fine, understated, performances. Brit Carey Mulligan is stupendously good, as the ill-used wife of Henry, also a fine performance from Jason Clarke. Garrett Hedlund gives a fascinating portrayal as Henry’s brother Jamie, and Jason Mitchell as Ronsel is also wonderful. Rob Morgan and Mary Blige as Ronsel’s parents, give performances of quiet dignity.
‘Mudbound’ was acclaimed on release. Rees became the first African-American woman nominated for a Screenplay OSCAR; Morrison the first woman cinematographer. Blige was OSCAR- and Golden Globe-nominated. It is a remarkable, sincere, hard-hitting, drama. Emphatically, it was worth the wait.