Tightly Crafted and Emotionally Powerful

Rating: 8/10 (30 November 2018)

Part of what makes this movie special is that it is a moving picture about black history in America. There have been several of them in recent movie Oscar history. But perhaps what makes Mudbound extra unique is that it is a movie made by and with black women. Dee Rees, who both directed and co-wrote the screenplay (with Virgil Williams), is the first black woman to receive an Oscar nomination for Adapted Screenplay. Rachel Morrison is the first woman to be nominated in the Cinematography category and went on after this movie to film Black Panther, which might very well earn her another nomination. And finally, Mary J. Blige, is the first black female American to win nominations in two Oscar categories in the same year. In Mudbound, Blige played the lead black female character and also sang and wrote "Mighty River". She credibly demonstrates both her acting and singing abilities in this movie.
None of these talented women won the Oscar in their respective categories, but, still, Mudbound is an impressive movie and deserves to be seen not just for these skills, but for the acting talents of Carey Mulligan (An Education and Suffragette) and an ample cast of lesser known, but very talented supporting actors. This movie is tightly constructed and doesn't waste the viewers time, but is filled with the raw emotion that derives from difficult struggles born of poverty, race, war, and gender boundaries. The movie shows very clearly how racism blossoms when groups of people are struggling just to make ends meet and, to somehow justify their own net worth, end up denying that of others.
I was especially impressed with the numerous dualities that the movie sets up and then maintains throughout the movie. It seems that everything operates in pairs and the story is one of how each of the pairs solve similar problems in similar, but different ways. There are two families, one black and one white. They both have sons who go to war. (WWII). Both sons come back struggling with different kinds of legacies from their war experience, one with PTSD from the war itself, the other from the misplaced conception he learned of his role in society as a black man. They both attempt to make a living from the muddy land of Mississippi, one as a struggling white farmer, the other as his black sharecropper. They both suffer terrible physical tragedies, one a miscarriage, the other a broken leg.
Both families pay substantially for 'mistakes' that weren't their creation, and neither family emerges unscathed. Life isn't easy, and Mudbound makes sure we understand that. This movie is a raw, emotional experience, but it works very well. I give it 8 stars (out of 10).