Mudbound is in danger of getting lost in the shuffle, but if festival buzz is to be believed, then this southern epic promises to be one of the best films of the year.
Set in Mississippi after World War II, the tale of two struggling families present a quagmire far deeper than the mud that surrounds them. The film garnered strong praise at the Sundance Film Festival, but the expected bidding war didn’t immediately materialize. Studios proved wary after the similarly-themed The Birth of a Nation fizzled out last year, and Mudbound was eventually sold to Netflix.
On the bright side, that means pretty much everyone will have access to this film, but that also means its potential as an awards season contender is in jeopardy. It was overshadowed at TIFF by Netflix’s other prestige picture, First They Killed My Father, and it will probably remain second fiddle at the company. That, admittedly, is a cynical point of view, but considering that Angelina Jolie commands more media attention than anyone involved with Mudbound, it’s not a poor assumption.
The confluence of events that threaten to bury Mudbound is all the more alarming because the Sundance hype is well-founded. Co-writer and director Dee Rees made the exquisite Pariah back in 2011 and the Emmy-winning HBO movie Bessie in 2015. The delays between projects is indicative of the scant opportunities for women, people of color, and LGBTQ filmmakers, not Rees’ work in those projects. To think that she got a period epic made with a cast that includes Jason Mitchell, Carey Mulligan, and Mary J. Blige only to have it fall into the Netflix ether is disappointing, but you know, we could all make up for that by watching it.
Mudbound is directed by Dee Rees and stars Garrett Hedlund, Carey Mulligan, and Jason Clarke. It will be released on Netflix on November 17th, 2017.
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