Tommy Lee Jones recoils at being pigeonholed, if recent interviews are any indication. He won't concede that "The Homesman," his latest effort as director, star and co-writer, is either a western or a feminist movie. And although it has elements of both, those words don't do the drama justice. That's because it's an oddity, and all that strangeness is what makes the movie hard to shake.
The story, based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, begins in the Nebraska Territory during the 1830s. Times are tough, and the promise of striking it rich out west isn't quite living up to expectations, especially for three recently settled wives whose traumatic circumstances have led to severe mental illness. Someone needs to take them back east to a church that has generously offered to care for the trio.
A western about going east is something of an anomaly. So is one of the movie’s main protagonists.
The escort tasked with traveling for weeks across desolate land with three raving women in a wagon is Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank). Cuddy lives alone, despite attempts to strong-arm men into marriage. (They always rebuff her, because they find her too bossy and too plain.) She reasons that she has nothing to lose by going on the trip, unlike some of the men with families who halfheartedly pretend they would go in her place.
As fate would have it, Cuddy finds a companion for the journey: George Briggs (Jones), who is both a drunk and a criminal. He only accompanies her because Cuddy saves him from certain death: sitting atop a horse with a noose around his neck. He desperately promises to do a-nee-thang for her.
Cuddy is the more able and serious of the mismatched pair, and Swank excels in the strong-willed role that has become her signature. But Briggs is the more memorable character. When he first appears onscreen, Jones seems to be channeling Yosemite Sam. He’s dazed, covered in soot and clad in nothing but long johns, stumbling from a house after some vigilantes have dropped dynamite down the chimney, prompting a cartoonish explosion.
That scene speaks to one of the most peculiar aspects of the movie. It’s often farcical, tickling a viewer in bizarre, laugh-out-loud ways. Yet it can also be hauntingly bleak. The movie is full of arresting images that pinball between extremes, from Jones dancing a jig while shooting his gun in the air to one of the three women (Miranda Otto) throwing her newborn into an outhouse toilet.
The indelible nature of such visuals isn’t always about content, but more often the result of camera angles and cinematography. There is a keen sense of artistry to every frame, as if each moment could survive as its own work of art.
The narrative, too, is unique, shifting in hard-to-predict ways. Certain threads that could have been overly familiar — what happens when an odd couple ends up stuck together, for example — lead in unexpected directions. Although the story goes a little over the top in the second half, in a "Django Unchained" kind of way, the movie ultimately settles back into its banal yet off-kilter groove.
Some recent interviews with Jones paint him as a bit of a curmudgeon. But he’s right to push back against being put into a box. “The Homesman” succeeds mainly because it and he don’t neatly fit into one.
★ ★ ★
R. At area theaters. Contains nudity, troubling scenes, sexual situations and violence.
122 minutes.
