Dee Rees
Mudbound

THE REVIEW

It is said that you learn cinema by watching bad films, not masterpieces. Mudbound, distributed by Netflix in Italy and triumphantly welcomed by American critics at the Sundance Film Festival, is the perfect testing ground to learn the first and most important commandment of cinematic storytelling, that "show, don't tell" taught even at the last screenwriting workshop in the most secluded corner of Los Angeles.

1940s, deep Mississippi. Two families, one black and one white, find themselves sharing life on a piece of land. The former are owners, the latter tenants hoping to have one of their own. In between, the eldest sons of both families return from the war, and the shared tragedy ignites a profound friendship.

Racism and Sundance, a burst sufficient to raise more than one eyebrow. Last year, this fantastic pairing gave us "The Birth of a Nation," anticipated as an Oscar winner and later forgotten amidst accusations of rape against director Nate Parker and the actual realization of a rather mediocre product. With Mudbound, one could expect more; the story is adapted from the novel Mudbound by Hillary Jordan and nods to the great family dramas of Southern Gothic in the vein of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. Here's the problem, a total inability to grasp the necessary adaptation work required in the transition from print to cinema. Over two hours of drama punctuated by no less than six narrating voices, an appreciated idea in the intentions of a story from multiple viewpoints, but it turns into a continuous drone of voiceovers telling us details, characters, emotions, and flaws, when in real cinema, it's conveyed through actions, gestures and camera movements, moments of a few seconds that suffice in place of a minute of rambling.

A veil of mercy on the few war scenes, steeped in a would-be but can't television feel due to the restricted budget and Dee Rees' limited vision. Again, a more aware writing would have opted for a complete renunciation of visual representation of conflict, choosing instead to leverage, this time, the evocative power of the narrated, of the said but unseen, subtleties screenwriter Virgin Williams is far from considering, so focused on adding conflicts upon conflicts nonchalantly, that at the time of resolution, when drama should unfold and tragedy explode, everything happens with such sloppiness and lack of care that it kills any hint of pathos. Betrayals unfold without a trace of passion and without ever showing any concrete desire, family regulations justified with half a line of dialogue, and so on through the entire film, things happen because they must happen, you go to work literally in the mud because "I've always wanted a farm," the entire local congregation of the Ku Klux Klan suddenly comes to your aid without ever seeing you build a relationship with the community, up to the emotional climax crafted at the end, bordering on the worst soap opera sentimentality and a pile-up of mishaps that elicit more than a few inappropriate chuckles.

It remains to mention the use of a very dignified cinematography, where the coarse grain of film would have been mandatory, talented Rachel Morrison manages magnificently with the economic constraints of digital and, between one voiceover and another, some brief moments of Terrence Malick-like poetry. The acting performances range from cardboard to dignified, and by dignified I mean Mary J. Blige, fueled by the "Jennifer Hudson" effect, consisting in the total lack of American critical objectivity when an African-American singer turns to cinema for some drama tinged with racism. There's an exception, and it's that old fox of a character actor named Jonathan Banks. Given an ungrateful one-dimensional character, he steals the film every time he opens his mouth. A few minutes where the authentic horror of racial segregation in the South, absent throughout the film, briefly emerges. Mumbled words imbued with violence and contempt along with ignorance and hate that corrode the gait of his walk as if they were poison in the bones. For those brief moments, it truly feels like the Mississippi of the Jim Crow laws. It's a pity it is all limited to the performance of a seasoned professional.