Mudbound Is Compelling Character-Driven Fare That Knows The Power of Well-Written Dialogue

 

The individual characters in Mudbound have their own stories to tell and their own personalities to convey but there are threads that do tie certain characters together. Some of these individuals find themselves connected by the fact that they're a family while a pair of characters find themselves intertwined to one another due to both of them being soldiers returning home from World War II with intense trauma impacting their psyches. But what unites them all, whether they realize it or not, is the soil, the mud on the land they all share. In this harsh environment of rural 1940's Mississippi, you're at the mercy of the very land you live on, a land that entails all kinds of fascinating human beings that populate the new Dee Rees motion picture Mudbound.


Among the many families trying to make their living out on this plot of land, Mudbound, based upon a 2008 novel by Hillary Jordan, concentrates on two specific families. One is the McAllan homestead, led by previously wealthy socialite Laura (Carey Mulligan) and the man who swept her up off her feet Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke), plus Henry's brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) and Henry's father Pappy (Johnathan Banks). Then there is the Jackson family, led by Hap Jackson (Rob Morgan) and Florence Jackson (Mary J. Blige), an African-American family who are determined to do all they can to make a rich life for their family and instill a sense of hope in their kids, the oldest of which is soldier Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell).

Ronsel is headed off to fight in World War II and so is Jamie. Yes, these are the two soldiers go off to World War II and find themselves unable to transition back into the already heavily flawed world of rural Mississippi. That engrossing plotline is just one of the ways writers Dee Rees and Virgil Williams creates subplots for individual characters that work plenty well on their own merits while excelling when combined with the lives of other characters. It's especially impressive how the writing manages to make the various characters intersect into each other's distinct tales in an organic way, it doesn't feel like folks like Pappy or Henry are just showing up for the sake of showing up, they instead appear when they can be vital to the overall plot.

What's interesting for me about the way Mudbound handles its ensemble cast is that the characters who get the most overall depth and time in the spotlight are, for the most part, individuals who were disenfranchised in this era (and would be in any era, including modern-day society) based on their skin color and gender. Women and/or people of color like Laura and the McAllans are the only ones (save for Jamie) to get recurring interior monologues reflecting their thoughts on certain crucial story events and character turns. Society may have just wanted them to be silent and subservient but Mudbound lends these characters a richly realized voice through which they can express their woes, their joys, their sorrows and everything in between.

The reccuring internal dialogue pieces are an exceptionally well-handled part of the production, the dialogue crafted by Rees and Williams is thoroughly memorable ("I held his heartbeat in my hand", said by Florence as she hugs her song farewell before he goes off to war, is a great example of the movies brilliantly haunting dialogue) and, like the best voice-over narration, feel like an enhancement to on-screen actions rather than a detraction, most notably when Laura is describing the violent nature of the landscape she and her family are living while gruesome imgery transpires on the screen. Plus, Mudbound is smart enough to know when to just let this facet of the storytelling take a breather and allow the visuals to do all the talking.  As a necessary aside, it should be noted that any of this dialogue taken wholesale from Hillary Jordan's original text  (which I have not read) shows that that the author of that novel also has a keen eye for conjuring up indelible writing.

All of the transfixing dialogue is performed by a collection of top-notch actors who range from well-experienced dramatic actors delivering another jewel in their filmography crowns to actors taking me completely by surprise in the dramatic acting talent they possess. In the former category are Carey Mulligan and Jason Clarke, two individuals that are no strangers to tackling challenging roles in challenging dramas and they rise up to the challenges posed by Mudbound exceptionally well, especially Mulligan who portrays her characters transition from virginal wealthy member of high society to someone who knows her way around the muck and the mud powerfully. Jason Mitchell, hot off the wheels of Straight Outta Compton, delivers some stand-up work in portraying Ronsel trying to adjust back to the life of being treated as lesser than simply because of his skin color after putting so much on the line in World War II.

As for the more unexpected powerhouse performances, well, Rob Morgan is certainly giving one of them, the man just fully embraces every internal monologue he gets to deliver and imbues each word he says is full of experience, woe, and determination. A similar level of layers and commitment emerge from Mary J. Blige and her performance, though I'll freely admit that I wished she got more to do in the second half of the movie, she's the one member of the ensemble cast for whom I felt like she got underserved in terms of screentime. However, it may be Garrett Hedlund who delivers not only the most surprising performance here but who also may deliver the best overall acting in the entire motion picture. When we first meet Hedlund's character Jamie, there's a natural devil-may-care attitude to him, one that the actor sells convincingly, and when he comes back from war, Hedlund is able to weave in realistic depictions of mental-based trauma subtly into his performance as Jamie in a masterful and outstanding way that makes the characters struggle with coming back to reality feel fresh and truly unique.

Props to Garret Hedlund for such a riveting performance and the same can be said for the ensemble cast itself, there really isn't a dud performance in the batch. Dee Rees does a commanding job with the actors at her disposal and there's a similar level of cunning on display in the way she's able to make the film's scale not get compromised by the lower budget. I've heard this recurring complaint from other viewers of Mudbound that certain wartime sequences look cheap but they looked fine to me (maybe it's because I watched it on a 65-inch 4K TV instead of a theatrical screen?). Mudbound as a whole looked thoroughly polished to me while its writing and performances are even more noteworthy. With Mudbound, we get a realistic look at aspects of society (racism, sexism, mental health problems soldiers suffer from after times of war) that most people just want to see swept under the rug. But Dee Rees lifts up the rug and implores those aspects to come into the spotlight so that we all may see them and recognize how they impact real human beings.