It isn’t perfect, but Tommy Lee Jones’ The Homesman is one of the richest, most personal, most beautiful, most disturbing and ultimately strangest films of the year — a must-see movie that is going to get steamrolled by the onslaught of upcoming Christmas fare. In other words, beat a path to The Homesman on opening weekend. Chances are it isn’t going to be here more than two weeks, tops — yet it’s one of 2014’s best films. Logistics (there are only so many screens) and the Christmas rush to be in theaters on that all important Dec. 25 pretty much guarantee an early demise for both this and the equally estimable The Babadook.
Those who saw Jones’ 2005 film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (his only other theatrical feature) will recognize both a similarity in tone and even plot here. In his first film, Jones played a character who is transporting the body of his friend home to be buried — honoring a promise he made to the man. Here he’s on a not dissimilar journey — charged with helping to transport three mentally unstable women back to Iowa and, presumably, eventually to their families in the east. The Homesman, however, strikes me as far more successful and emotionally complex than The Three Burials. The film has been compared to the Coens’ True Grit (2010) — in large part because of a deep vein of dark humor, and the fact that it’s based on a revisionist western novel — but this is, I think, misleading. The Homesman is a more somber film. (That said, I have seen the case made that Hilary Swank’s Mary Bee Cuddy could be True Grit‘s Mattie Ross grown up — and I have no serious argument with that reading.)
The film’s structure is seductive in the way it integrates the elements leading to the film’s central story. It starts by introducing us to 31-year-old Mary Bee Cuddy, a self-made pioneer woman with her own home and spread in the Nebraska Territory. An accomplished and unfortunately forthright woman, she has marriage on her mind and has set her sights on oafish neighboring homesteader Bob Giffen (Evan Jones). But he turns her proposal down flat, calling her bossy and plain (sentiments that will be echoed by another down the road), and stating his intention to go back east to find a wife. The dubious wisdom of his choice is quickly brought home by the mental breakdowns of three such women from the east who cannot cope with the hardships of the Territory, the roughness of their lives and possibly of their husbands. When it is decided that these three — Arabella Sours (Grace Gummer), Theoline Belknap (Miranda Otto), Gro Svendsen (Sonja Richter) — need to be transported back east, it eventually transpires that the task falls upon Cuddy to undertake the trip.
Into this mix comes a claim-jumper, whose name almost certainly isn’t George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones), even though that’s the name he finally gives Cuddy after she rescues him from a singularly gruesome lynching. (He’s been left on his horse with a noose around his neck waiting for the horse to walk away.) Cuddy frees him only after extracting a promise that he’ll do what she tells him — of course, that means help take three women east. It is not something that Briggs is keen on, but the promise — and the prospect of $300 on arrival — binds him to the foolhardy enterprise, which turns out to be every bit as bad as it sounds, and worse.
The bulk of the film, of course, follows the trip east — though a large part of it involves the relationship between Cuddy and Briggs, since there’s really no one else around for the most part. (The three women hardly count since they barely speak, if they speak at all, and never in any coherent manner.) The story also takes a couple of strange — and very dark — turns that are best left to the movie to reveal. Let’s just say that while what happens is unexpected, it makes perfect sense in the context of the story and serves to make an already compelling story just that much more absorbing. It is not exactly a pleasant story, but I would call it shattering rather than depressing (as some have done). And it is not a story without a smattering of hard-earned hope inside all the deprivation and futility depicted. Catch it while you can. Rated R for violence, sexual content, some disturbing behavior and nudity.
Rated R for violence, sexual content, some disturbing behavior and nudity.
Whose nudity is most disturbing?
I’ll have to consider that.
The most pleasant surprise of the year. I expected this film to be interesting but not nearly as good as it turned out to be. It will be in my Top 10 List for 2014
It’s at least in my Top 20.
It’s threatening my Top 10, but Top 15 seems more likely.
Everything but my Top 5 is pretty malleable at this moment.
I have a sneaking suspicion we may only have one crossover in our top tens this year.
I have a sneaking suspicion we may only have one crossover in our top tens this year.
Has your taste degraded that much?
Has your taste degraded that much?
That’s one word for it.
I think it will be as much that a higher percentage of awards season stuff isn’t opening her until next year – BIRDMAN for one.
Well, when has that not been the case? Actually, only two of my ten films are awards season stuff at this point. The only possible change to that statement at this point is The Imitation Game — and that seems like a longshot to me.
Has Inherent Vice come across your desk yet?
Yes. And I’ve seen it. Will it make the cut of the Top 10 or even 20? That I’ll tell you later.
I really loved Tommy’s version of The Sunset Limited and even I liked Three Burials, but something about this one doesn’t look to appealing to me.
It’s very simple. Don’t see it. Then you’ll never know.
I think it’s Hilary Swank, I’m not a big fan.
Neither am I, but she’s actually good here.
high praise. “actually good”
From me for Ms. Swank, yes, it is.
Startling support for this over the weekend. In fact, it was the no. 1 grossing film at The Carolina.
I thought, overall, the movie was good with 3 exceptions: viz 1. tossing the infant into the outhouse was revolting and useless/pointless; 2. Cuddy hanging herself was ridiculous w/o reason. Given, she needed to die. Why not by rattlesnake or drowning in the river crossing? 3. The ending was asinine nonsense. They should have had him riding off into the sunset with the grave marker under his arm or actually let him take it to the burial site then fade!
Of the negatives, the ending is most unforgivable.
Bests, TXJ
I don’t know. 1. Fully establishes just how far past sanity this woman has become and while it’s shocking, it’s not especially graphic. 2. I don’t know that she had to die, but the suicide makes perfect sense to me. 3. The ending is a matter of taste, I suppose. It seems to me that you were wanting a more comfortable film than the one you got. There’s nothing wrong with that, but neither is the filmmaker out to make a comfortable movie.
Whoa! Nowhere does the movie suggest that Cuddy is insane. Only the 3 being transported. How do you come to the conclusion that she is also mentally off? I sorta thought her main mental problem was her nutty passion for some religious standard unattainable by rational people. Cheers, TXJ
Ignore my previous response. I misread your message and thought you were saying Cuddy was insane. TXJ