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The West is Cruel in ‘The Homesman’

'The Homesman' is a little puzzling, but in a good way. It seems resolved to deny the audience the typical pleasures of cinema, to buck convention in its construction of its portrait of frontier life.

The Homesman is set in 1854. Mary Bee Cuddy (Hillary Swank) is described more than once in the film as being “bossy” and “plain.” And this is why she’s having trouble finding herself a husband, despite having built herself a fairly successful claim and a rapidly expanding farm. Cuddy is an anomaly among the women of the Nebraskan frontier. Three other women from this community have been driven mad by the pioneer life, and can no longer function. Cuddy is tasked with taking these women on a wagon trip back East to Iowa, where they will be taken care of and brought back to their families.

Along the way, Cuddy encounters George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones), who has been left to hang for jumping on another man’s claim. Cuddy helps Briggs out, asking that he accompany her to Iowa in exchange. Briggs reluctantly agrees, and he guides Cuddy through the merciless frontier landscape. Apart from its synopsis, it’s kind of difficult to describe what The Homesman actually is. It’s kind of a buddy movie through the frontier West, taking a pair of opposites and finding some humor in their tense interactions. But it’s also far more brutal than that. It’s a rather strange film that isn’t altogether satisfying, but is always kind of interesting.

The movie seems to resist form. It has a disorienting structure that seems to have little regard for the established narrative structures of cinema. Early on, it jumps into flashbacks as it studies the circumstances of the women that are driven crazy. It does not continue to use this device later on, even when it explores the past of one of its characters. It often feels as if the movie is moving through several separate episodes, each with its own distinct cinematic flavor. The movie can alternate between being unflinchingly brutal and weirdly lighthearted, before hitting on something even stranger a little later on.

This might sound like a difficult viewing experience, but there is just enough holding all these seemingly disparate parts together. These different episodes all seem to be driving towards the same point. Even in its lightest moments, the film never lets one forget the harshness of this frontier life, and the sheer awfulness that women faced in the era. The plot, with its wild twists and turns, doesn’t really stay with its threads long enough for them to be satisfying. But taken as a whole, it paints this bizarre, compelling portrait of the brutality of the West.

Tommy Lee Jones’ direction is workmanlike at best, but it serves the material well. And he gives the actors room to fill in the blanks left by the script. Hillary Swank is excellent in the lead role. She makes the slow erosion of her resolve deeply felt, her entire body shifting as the despair sets in. A bunch of really amazing actors fill in the smaller roles in this film. Meryl Streep, James Spader, Hailee Steinfeld, Steve Zahn and the like show up for a couple of scenes at most and make their presence felt.

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The Homesman is a little puzzling, but in a good way. It seems resolved to deny the audience the typical pleasures of cinema, to buck convention in its construction of its portrait of frontier life. Because the film isn’t about the heroes and villains of Westerns past; the brave gunmen who win or lose or get to ride off into the sunset. The Homesman takes a wider view at the world that surrounds these characters, the harsh realities of living in these pioneer times. Men are cruel in this movie, and the West makes them crueler.

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