PARK CITY, Utah (AP) – Director Dee Rees wanted to get to the big questions in her enthralling period epic “Mudbound.” Specifically: What is it to be a citizen and what is it to fight for a country that doesn’t fight for you? The film, which premiered Saturday night at the Sundance Film Festival, had audiences raving and some already speculating about Oscar chances.
Based on Hillary Jordan’s 2008 novel “Mudbound,” chronicles the lives of two families in the WWII-era South – one white and one black, and the complicated intersectionality of their paths. There’s the McAllans, Laura (Carey Mulligan), her husband Henry (Jason Clarke), his brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) and their father Pappy (Jonathan Banks), and the Jacksons, Florence (Mary J. Blige), her husband Hap (Rob Morgan) and their son Ronsel (Jason Mitchell).
They’re tied together by a rental agreement – the Jackson’s rent their land and home from the McAllans – and the deeply complicated racial relationships in the segregated South in which Henry can demand help from Hap at any moment and Pappy can insist that Ronsel exit the local store from the back entrance.
It’s a sprawling and deeply American story about women, men, race and personhood that defies a simple summary.
“It’s not didactic, it’s not preachy,” Rees said. “The thing I love about it is it’s multiple points of view.”