Mudbound Analysis

Mudbound (2017)

Directed and Co-Written by: Dee Rees
Cinematography by: Rachel Morrison - the first woman to get nominated for Oscar
Streaming on Netflix.

This is a film set in 1940s in Mississippi, it deals with racial oppression which would happen back then, the film is sadly relevant even today. Films which tell stories set in the past and talk about issues like sexism, racism, xenophobia are tragic for the mere fact that the characters in the film were a part of the horrors systematically back then, what's our excuse now? I'm reminded of Bulbbul which also does a similar thing - it talks about patriarchy by having the film set in 19th century in India, when things like child marriage were normal back then and it makes us introspect on our state today about how far we have come from there and is this enough? In this film, a white man Jamie and a black man Ronsel bond together when they are in WW-II, because they both deal with the trauma of war, and the racial differences within themselves seem small after they've seen the largeness of life.

The film uses voice over very well in the beginning, and it's done from several perspectives. The voice over has a novelistic approach to the writing, yet it feels so cinematic because of the way Rachel Morrison captures the world of the film. In a scene breakdown, director Dee Rees explains how she blocked the scene where Ronsel is asked to leave from the backdoor in a way that he looks vulnerable and the other people are part of a system - she blocks a one shot against a three shot to visually capture that. The color palette of the film is visible right in the first shot where we see the exteriors, the sky and the colors of the grass are desaturated - there is a brown-ish image in my mind when I think about the film.