Tommy Lee Jones is a clever individual, ostensibly an actor he
can direct, write and produce and in the case of his latest project – all four
at the same time. Although he did have the support of the great French
filmmaker Luc Besson in the production of what has been called a feminist western
by some commentators. The Homesman (2014) takes place in
the 1850’s and is set in the Midwestern United States in Nebraska and Iowa. It’s
based on the 1988 novel of the same name by Glendon Swarthout who was also
responsible for the source novel for John Wayne’s very last film The Shootist (1976) which had a
screenplay co written by the novelist son Miles Hood Swarthout, which is
coincidently about the last days of a dying gunfighter, played by the then dying
Wayne.
As well as Tommy Lee Jones the movie features a great
performance from Hilary Swank as Mary Bee Cuddy a proud strong middle aged
spinster women who is an integral part of the Nebraska farming community, a
women with land and “money in the bank” but who is unable to find her self a
husband, accused of being “too bossy” and “too plain”. But when three poor women
are deemed to have lost their minds it is decided to take them back East to
their families to see if they can be ‘cured’. It’s Mary Bee who gets the job to
transport the women on what is only expected to be a five-week journey! She
rescues a man from being hung and enlists his help to drive the prison type coach
and horses across a barren and treacherous country side, battling not only the
weather and Indians but her ‘press ganged driver’ George Briggs (Jones) and
three dangerously deranged women.
Admittedly not the normal subject for what is an unusual
type of western but one that is certainly different. As well as depicting the harsh life of the
early settlers the movie illustrates the effect this life it has on women and
how it can not only result in physical bodily damage but also influence their
mental well-being. The pressures of a forced marriage and the need to give
birth to healthy children on a regular basis do nothing to help this problem.
The movie features an ensemble cast that
includes Meryl Streep, Hailee
Steinfeld, John Lithgow, and James Spader.
Cinematography is by the celebrated Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto who
won an Academy Award for his camera work in 2005’s Brokeback Mountain. Marco Beltrami is responsible for the films exceptional
score. At times the film can be a disturbing watch but its real strength’s are
the growing relationship portrayed on the screen between Mary Bee and George
Briggs and Jones’s exploration of the ‘female
condition in the mid 19th century American West’[1].
Would you rescue this man from the rope? |
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