Show + Tell with Paul Flynn
Original, enthralling and timely, Netflix’s new content shakes up the small screen
MUDBOUND IS A HANDSOME,
traumatic feature film about the KKK in the Mississippi Delta, set against the backdrop of the late American involvement in WWII. Normally, you’d say there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house. Only there is no house, at least in the collective cinematic sense. Mudbound is the first original content to debut on Netflix with the serious prospects of a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Picture. This is major screen news, with potential repercussions for the whole of Hollywood.
As it moves from mawkish, prettily rendered sentimentality to raw power, (the Oscars’ preferred narrative upshift), Mudbound unfolds the story of two families fielding war heroes to the alliance from a farm in the racially segregated Deep South. Dowdy Laura Mcallan (Carey Mulligan) waves off handsome, charismatic, carefree brother-in-law Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) while the stoic matriarch of the farm’s servile family, Florence Jackson (a superior, restrained Mary J Blige), sends her heroic son Ronsel ( Jason Mitchell) into battle in Belgium to earn his stripes. The best performance of an already showily stellar cast is by Jonathan Banks, Breaking Bad/better Call Saul’s Mike Ehrmantraut, who gives the hateful old racist Pappy’s every short scene a new texture of quietly vitriolic, terrifying bile.
The story is epically handled by director Dee Rees. She paces it with loving precision, packing its final, heart-rending punches to cleanly devastating effect. In an America driven by new depths of heinous social division, with fascism once again laundering its soiled sheets in public, Mudbound may yet turn out to be as timely in its messaging as The Color Purple.
Eighteen months ago, you’d have left the theatre in bits. Now, tears of collective societal guilt will be wiped at home. In an audacious creative gamble, this year Netflix has more than 50 additional original films in development. Two major Sony executives recently fled to Apple to develop their original movie wing. Streaming is poised to bulldoze the cinema experience, just as it did the music industry a decade ago, turning its physical manifestation into a niche, luxury purchase only for the time, cash and nostalgia rich. Mudbound is a line-in-the-sand moment. With material of this quality and distinction, a multiplex meltdown feels imminent.