Released in 2014 and directed by Tommy Lee Jones, "The Homesman" stars Hillary Swank as a single pious woman living on the Nebraskan prairie. After saving a drifter from the gallows (Jones) they team-up to escort three mentally ill women to Iowa. Can they survive the journey? The three crazy women are played by Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and Sonja Richter. James Spader and Meryl Streep have glorified cameos.
This is NOT a rousing Western in the least. It's a bleak portrayal of the hard life on the plains during the 1850s, similar in tone to 1972's "Bad Company" and 2015's "The Revenant, but without the latter's breathtaking mountain cinematography.
The story's engaging despite the mandatory mundaneness, but it loses points for being so dismal and occasionally nigh shocking (you'll know what I mean), but it's not always downbeat. The movie's acutely realistic, but mixed with an almost surrealistic episode that takes away from the believability, but this can be overlooked on the grounds that what happens is a type of hellish perdition of the arrogant.
The theme is the contrast of the primeval West and the civilized East. The West is so harsh that it drives some people mad and they must flee back East for succor. Survival in the West takes everything you have whereas the East is so comfortable that pompous pettiness manifests as a social staple (e.g. the women gossiping in the Iowa town). The Mississippi River (or Missouri River) is the separation point of the two worlds. See below for further commentary.
I did find it hard to believe that Mary Bee (Swank) would have a hard time finding a husband. Sure, her face isn't conventionally beautiful, but she has a smoking body (and she ain't even my type).
The movie runs 122 minutes and was shot in New Mexico and Lumpkin, Georgia.
GRADE: Borderline B/B- (6.5/10 Stars)
SUBTEXTUAL INSIGHTS *** SPOILER ALERT ***
The ferry boat is a transition from West to East and explains Briggs transition from primitive carnal man to civilized man with a conscience when he crosses over. Notice that he doesn't do the same thing to the gambling house that rejects him that he did to the hotel when he was on the other side.
The wooden tombstone he intends to put on Mary Bee's grave as he crosses back to the West is kicked overboard as a symbol that, in returning to the West, he was returning to his old self and would not continue with the idea to make Mary Bee's grave "proper," as she did for a stranger's child.
Mary Bee was a strong woman, but she didn't belong in the West because she was too civilized with her strong Christian moral code; and that's why it ultimately killed her.
This is NOT a rousing Western in the least. It's a bleak portrayal of the hard life on the plains during the 1850s, similar in tone to 1972's "Bad Company" and 2015's "The Revenant, but without the latter's breathtaking mountain cinematography.
The story's engaging despite the mandatory mundaneness, but it loses points for being so dismal and occasionally nigh shocking (you'll know what I mean), but it's not always downbeat. The movie's acutely realistic, but mixed with an almost surrealistic episode that takes away from the believability, but this can be overlooked on the grounds that what happens is a type of hellish perdition of the arrogant.
The theme is the contrast of the primeval West and the civilized East. The West is so harsh that it drives some people mad and they must flee back East for succor. Survival in the West takes everything you have whereas the East is so comfortable that pompous pettiness manifests as a social staple (e.g. the women gossiping in the Iowa town). The Mississippi River (or Missouri River) is the separation point of the two worlds. See below for further commentary.
I did find it hard to believe that Mary Bee (Swank) would have a hard time finding a husband. Sure, her face isn't conventionally beautiful, but she has a smoking body (and she ain't even my type).
The movie runs 122 minutes and was shot in New Mexico and Lumpkin, Georgia.
GRADE: Borderline B/B- (6.5/10 Stars)
SUBTEXTUAL INSIGHTS *** SPOILER ALERT ***
The ferry boat is a transition from West to East and explains Briggs transition from primitive carnal man to civilized man with a conscience when he crosses over. Notice that he doesn't do the same thing to the gambling house that rejects him that he did to the hotel when he was on the other side.
The wooden tombstone he intends to put on Mary Bee's grave as he crosses back to the West is kicked overboard as a symbol that, in returning to the West, he was returning to his old self and would not continue with the idea to make Mary Bee's grave "proper," as she did for a stranger's child.
Mary Bee was a strong woman, but she didn't belong in the West because she was too civilized with her strong Christian moral code; and that's why it ultimately killed her.