Rating: 3.5/5
Criterion Challenge 2024 | 19/52 | Netflix Original released by Criterion
Mississippi Delta, 1940s Henry and Jamie McAllen, two white brothers, dig a grave for their father. While digging, Henry finds a skull with a bullet hole — the grave of a runaway slave. Henry doesn’t want to bury their father there, but with the approaching storm, they don’t have a choice.
Laura McAllen walks a mud-covered road with her two daughters. She follows behind Henry, her husband, and Jamie, carrying Pappy’s coffin to the hole. They have trouble lowering the coffin.
The Jacksons, a family of black sharecroppers, pass by in a wagon. Henry calls out to Hap Jackson for help. Laura warns him not to — an unspoken conflict between the families — but Henry doesn’t claim any responsibility for what happened between them.
There was a point where Hap would have helped him freely — when the two families, bound in mud and poverty, needed each other to survive.
The film follows Jamie and Hap’s son, Ronsel, as they join WWII, the horrors and joys they experience in Europe, and how it affects their lives when they return home. The two men feel lost until they find one another.
— Why are you so nice to me? — You look like you could use it.
But before that, we go to when Henry and Laura first met. As a result, we get a mediocre period drama for an hour. Then, the film jolts into focus and becomes an engrossing and beautiful character study.
Mary J. Blige gives an Oscar-acting performance. Rob Morgan and Jason Mitchell are great.
Garrett Hedlund and Jason Clarke have terrible Mississippi accents. Hedlund at least has a character.
The movie is yet another portrait of black pain. Thankfully, Dee Rees gives us some solace in the end, but I wish the American Academy didn’t have such a bloodlust for black people’s misery.