Mudbound review – thoroughly modern period drama

“I dreamed in brown,” sighs Carey Mulligan’s voiceover of her character Laura McAllan’s mudbound existence. This graceful adaptation by Dee Rees (director of the luminous Pariah) of Hillary Jordan’s 2008 novel is unable to wash itself clean of mud, fertile ground for deep-rooted prejudice and a filthy, sticky substance that taints and traps its characters in a world resistant to social progress. Though it’s a Netflix release, it is getting a one-week run in some Curzon theatres. The gorgeous digital cinematography by Rachel Morrison (Black Panther, Fruitvale Station) deserves to be seen on the big screen.

Set in the Jim Crow south, this complex, thoroughly modern period drama looks at the overlapping lives of two families – one black (the Jacksons) and one white (the McAllans). Hap Jackson (Rob Morgan) and his weathered wife, Florence (the singer Mary J Blige, poignantly articulating the particular burden shouldered by black women), await the return of their solider son, Ronsel (Jason Mitchell of Straight Outta Compton). The sharp-minded, soft-spoken Laura (Mulligan) and her husband, Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke), struggle to settle into life on the farm while Henry’s charismatic, boozy brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) is flying fighter planes. Also present is Pappy (Jonathan Banks), Henry’s fuming, racist father.

Using voiceover to move between six disparate perspectives and running at a chewy 2 hours and 15 minutes, it’s an ambitious attempt to create something novelistic. The shifting voices help to create interiority without relying on inelegant exposition, and allow Rees to refract broad themes like love, war, and racism through very specific points of view. In this sense, Mudbound is at once sweeping epic and granular character study.