The
Homesman
(2014)
(SPOILERS) Tommy
Lee Jones, the living embodiment of grizzled, directs his second western, but
first in a period setting. The Homesman,
an adaptation of Glendon Swarthout’s 1988 novel, is a disjointed, listless
affair. TLJ has more than enough material to play with, on the theme of women’s
lot in the old west, but he ends up fashioning a picture that revolves around
his male protagonist.
Doubtless
the motives in shifting emphasis were noble ones. Rather than an empowering
feminist western, this is the unvarnished way things really were, when the
value of women rested on their capacity for breeding and making an obedient
wife. The three mad women (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and Sonja Richter) whose state
initiate the picture’s central journey have “failed” in their duties as wife
and baby maker; one’s offspring have died of diphtheria, another drowns hers in
an outhouse, while another fails to become pregnant despite being daily raped by her husband. Their spouses are at best neglectful and at worst habitually
abusive.
Contrasting
this is Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) “plain
and bossy” and moneyed, who cannot lure a husband; at 31 she is near enough
out to pasture. When the menfolk in her small Nebraskan farming community fail
to take responsibility for delivering the women to a church in Iowa. Cuddy
assumes the mantle of “homesman”, agreeing to lead the journey, and employs the
services of George Briggs (TLJ) a disreputable, disheveled claim jumper she saves
from lynching.
So far, so
intriguing as a premise. TLJ’s is a world filled with craven men, and Briggs is
only nominally a good guy. He’s purely in it for the money, quite willing to
leave Cuddy and the insane women alone in the desert. Those encountered on the
way are lowlifes (Tim Blake Nelson’s horseman who steals away one of them for
himself) or conmen (James Spader’s hotel owner). John Lithgow’s preacher, who
blesses Cuddy’s trip, is similarly quite spineless.
But the
picture is unable to find a strong enough perspective. Cuddy is turned down by
men who are beneath her (Evan Jones, claiming she is “too damn bossy”, Briggs himself), but she is contrastingly
religiously dogmatic and sufficiently determined that she sets out solo with
these women (albeit relieved to have Briggs’ help). When she commits suicide,
two thirds of the way through, it is not only a shock because we don’t see it
coming, but also to the narrative, one from which Jones is unable to right the
ship.
We can see
why she does it; in a world where here only status comes from marriage she is effectively
exiled. She throws herself at Briggs the night before, who turns down her
marriage proposal but submits to sexual congress. It may well appear that there
is no choice for her; she can remain alone, but even if she can find someone,
those she is delivering to Iowa aren’t the greatest advert for married life.
Swank, partial to put upon characters ever since The Next Karate Kid, is outstanding, but Jones is unable to convey
the process by which she ends up reaching her choice, such that she would
derelict her duty to these women, and
commit the sin of suicide.
The final
ignominy of her gravestone being kicked into a river is (likely) an intentional
commentary on how her suffering means nothing. Even Briggs, who comes to
profess her merits (when attempting to woo a much younger and less plain Halee
Steinfeld), is only impacted by her but for a passing spell. He has the freedom
of lawlessness and ignoring societal mores unavailable to her. Briggs even
warns Steinfeld not to go west with a man who’s made a claim on a farm he
hasn’t built yet: not to get sucked into an arrangement that fosters madness.
But there’s something wrong here, when the picture is bringing the male gaze
around to delivering the wisdom and insights.
The mad
women are merely silent and not so silent cyphers; we’re delivered flashbacks attesting
to their states, but Jones has no interest in exploring their condition. Again,
you can call that a reflection of the times, but it seems as much about
convenience of narrative. Grace Gummer has the wherewithal to blow Blake
Nelson’s head off when the scene requires it, but otherwise occupies an
entirely self-involved place.
TLJ appears
to be drawing on the spirit of ’70 revisionist westerns, where things just
happen, so the lack of narrative closure is a commentary on both the historical
neatness of the genre and absence of rules in that world. But the lack of
service paid to his female characters, and the indulgence of Briggs (the kind
of colourful worldy-wise character that feels intensely familiar, since TLJ
could play this kind of part in his sleep) undermines the picture. TLJ has
populated the sidelines with a raft of familiar faces (Lithgow, Spader, Nelson,
Jesse Plemons, William Fichtner, Meryl Streep) and Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography
is striking and memorable (from an early tableau of Fichtner standing amid dead
cattle onwards), but his telling undermines him. The Homesman ends up disjointed and jarring in its shifts of focus.
Comments
Post a Comment