A strange and often beautiful thing, Tommy Lee Jones’ The Homesman takes the Western and churns it, twists it, and wrings it out like a pioneer’s dress on a washboard. Everything in it seems to defy convention and expectation; not least its premise, which sees the typical pioneer tale flipped on its head. Instead of a story about hardy men bravely crossing wild American terrain in search of treasure, new terrain, and adventure, Jones’ film focuses on women left broken, empty and feral by the unforgiving lifestyle, desperate to return home.
Hilary Swank plays Mary Bee Cuddy, a plain and relentlessly practical woman who combines fiercely capable resilience with a desperate desire to marry.
However, the state of matrimony doesn’t seem to be the fix-all she imagines as the women in her hardscrabble community are falling apart.
Volunteering to transport this unwanted human cargo back to a hospice in Iowa, Cuddy enlists the help of gnarled and jaded wild card George Briggs (Jones), who owes her a favour.
Jones and cinematographer Rodrigo Preito (Babel) eschew the usual picturesque views of trees and oases, instead presenting a land as flat, soulless and forlorn as Cuddy’s passengers. Jones also subverts the Western’s usual plot-points, as tragedy and violence come not from expected sources, but the long-brewing hardness of spirit that disallows kindness, empathy or hope.
These unexpected tonal U-turns make the film intriguing, but not necessarily easy to love. Swank imbues Cuddy with a quiet, sad longing, and Jones has long-since mastered playing gamesy grumps. However, the cue-less nature of the plot applies to the characters’ emotional releases too, leaving them interesting rather than empathetic. Meanwhile, Meryl Streep and James Spader appear in distracting cameos that have an air of studio-bait.
Grappling with deliberately uneasy portrayals of tone, feminism and genre, the handsome and tricky film is as crushing as it is rewarding — just like the lifestyle it portrays.
IN CINEMAS NOVEMBER 21