Even in the bleakest of circumstances there is a possibility of change.

Rating: 10/10 (27 April 2020)

Yet again the depths of human despair can illuminate a transcendence that reconnects humanity. A story of war, trauma, survival, division, ignorance, submission, and redemption can give us all types of lessons about acceptance and belonging. Mudbound is exactly that; a story of two families that face all those challenges and even despite their similarities they follow a convergent course into collision. It is more than anything a story of two characters that wander beyond their sensibilities and concomitantly change in a way that makes them impossible for them to remain bounded by the rigid, prejudice, and hate of the decadent Jim Crow south.
A black family, the Jacksons, rent a piece of land owned by a white family, the McAllans, in 1940's rural Mississippi. The behavioral contrast and dynamic of the two families is really instructive and detailed if one wants to understand social hierarchies and maxims of that era. The movie also does a good job in displaying the friction of racist and non-racist mentalities within the white family. The unity and religiosity of the black family was also a protagonist in the film, even more symbolical when Hap (Rob Morgan) recites a prayer in the burying of Pappy McAllan (Jonathan Banks). Covertly Henry (Jason Clarke) and Jamie McAllan (Garret Hedlund) apologize to Hap with the gestures that both demonstrate in a redemptive form.
The friendship that Henry and Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) build is the light at the end of the tunnel for a story filled with hardship and scarcity. Jaime, in an effort to reminisce and cleanse himself from the traumas of his wartime, befriends Ronsel and it serves both to recognize their purpose and life decisions post-WWII. The symbol of acceptance and prosperity in an unlikely friendship on rural Mississippi is the hope that even on the bleakest circumstances a person can change and create something extraordinary.