Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 05/16/20

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, May 16, 2020

Mudbound (Dee Rees, 2017)

Garrett Hedlund and Jason Mitchell in Mudbound

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Mitchell, Mary J. Blige, Rob Morgan, Jonathan Banks, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Dylan Arnold, Kerry Cahill, Lucy Faust, Jason Kirkpatrick. Screenplay: Virgil Williams, Dee Rees, based on a novel by Hillary Jordan. Cinematography: Rachel Morrison. Production design: David J. Bomba. Film editing: Mako Kamitsuna. Music: Tamar-kali.

Mudbound is a solid, hard-edged, sometimes raw look at Mississippi in the post-World War II period, one I know well, having been born into that time and place. It only occasionally slips into the "Magical Negro" and "White Savior" tropes that afflict so many films about race relations. For example, it has Jamie McAllan (Garrett Hedlund) in his crippled bomber saluted by one of the Tuskegee Airmen, who have just rescued him from an attack by German fighter planes. This serves as a predicate for Jamie's friendship with Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell) and his attempt to save him from a lynch mob headed by Jamie's own father, known as "Pappy" (Jonathan Banks). The screenplay also subverts some of the film's earlier harshness by tacking on a somewhat happy ending for Ronsel, who reunites with his German girlfriend and their son. It feels gratuitously sentimental in comparison with what has gone before. Nevertheless, Mudbound is a well-acted film, sometimes beautifully acted, as in the case of the Oscar-nominated Mary J. Blige as Florence Jackson, the tower of strength for both the Jackson and the McAllan families. Rachel Morrison also deserved her Oscar nomination -- the first ever for a woman -- for cinematography. She provides images of both the stark beauty of the Mississippi Delta landscape and the oppressiveness of the mud that clings to and clots the lives of its inhabitants.