Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's farm, a place she finds foreign and frightening. Then two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura's brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not - charming and handsome, but he is haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, now battles the prejudice in the Jim Crow South.
A powerfully emotional and all-too-relevant race relations drama that marks out director Rees as a significant talent to watch. Place your Oscar bets now.
This nuanced treatment of race relations in the Deep South during and just after the war keeps adding detail until we are well prepared for the melodramatic moments in the concluding segment.
Dee Rees's story of one black and one white family struggling in the WW II-era South is a fiercely intimate epic that couldn't be more timely. Mary J. Blige should be on every Oscar list for best supporting actress.
Rees isn't content simply to diagnose a punishing, self-perpetuating cycle: This is a film buoyed by humanism that feels chastening, liberating and healing, all at the same time.
We've seen stories like this one before on screen, but what's new, and arresting, about "Mudbound" is how easily and persuasively director Rees moves between these families.
Mudboundis easy to admire but tough to watch at times. It tells a truthful tale from America's not-so-distant past. The highest compliment I can pay Rees is that her movie feels truthful.
Director Dee Reese uses the lengthy runtime to develop these characters, and we feel genuinely thunderstruck when calamity falls, as powerfully as a punch to the head.
The movie harvests so much new feeling from its tragic images of life and death in the Mississippi Delta that Rees' name belongs on any list of the year's best directors.
