Worth sticking with

Rating: 7/10 (6 December 2017)

This movie has a slow start - in fact after the first hour we decided to take a break and come back to it. In the opening hour we meet most of the eventual main protagonists, but it takes some time and I found the character of Henry not quite believable - a man dressed in a smart suit, who marries an intelligent woman and lives in a nice house - who decides to try his hand at farming in Mississippi. Just seemed to be a strange thing to do, because the motivation was not clear. In this half we clearly see the main themes - the repugnant racism of the USA in that period, the limited chances for educated and intelligent women to do anything other than get married and breed and the grinding existence of being a farmer in Mississippi.
In the second half the pace picks up largely due to the interaction of the two returning war veterans - one black, one white. Both have had terrible wartime experiences and are suffering from them. The white man resorts to alcohol and the black man becomes withdrawn. Of course the racism still applies even to war veterans and when the local KKK take exception to our black war veterans he pays the price.
The film's resolution is optimistic, perhaps too much so but then much of life does not end in disaster.
No new themes explored here but overall a story well told - especially in the second hour.
We did struggle with some of the mumbled dialogue.