The Homesman

Directed by Tommy Lee Jones (2014) ***1/2

The western on film has made evolutionary strides over the past 120 years; like many genres, westerns started strong in the silent era, with actors like William S. Hart playing characters of partially attempted realism, and revolutionary advances in editing, in Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 The Great Train Robbery. Then came sound and the ridiculous singing cowboys. It took decades of gradual progression for westerns to sober up again, in films by, consecutively, John Ford, Anthony Mann, Sam Fuller, Sam Peckinpah, Sergio
Leone, and Clint Eastwood.

Now that westerns are no longer a leading force in popular culture (and are looked at with both derision and boredom by many younger viewers), the genre has been producing some of its most important films. Specifically, a series of what one could call feminist westerns has recently made the biggest impact; that list would include Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog, the Coen brothers’ True Grit (2010), Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2011) and The Homesman. It’s worth noting that all four of these films were written by, or based on, novels by men.

Jones previously directed The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005), a neo-western. Jones also starred in the neo-western No Country for Old Men (2007) by the Coen brothers and he brings here some of the wry wit, classical compositions and realism employed in the Coen’s western outings. Humor and tragedy, sickness and joy are intertwined in this western, with a heavy melancholy resting over the landscape, even when sunny. This is not the kind of “adult” western landscape portrayed in Gunsmoke or even Deadwood; this is a stark, windy, desolate land where any vestiges of civilization are far away, and survival is paramount.

Hillary Swank plays Mary Bee Cuddy, a single woman living in Nebraska, a person of formidable talents, but living in quiet desperation. She’s told twice in the story that she’s unmarriageable because she’s plain and bossy, in that order. The story begins when she volunteers to take three mentally ill women back eastward to Iowa, a five-week trip through hostile territory. She soon meets up with and rescues George Briggs (played by Tommy Lee Jones), a gruff and taciturn claim jumper who agrees to help her make the crossing.

This setup may sound cliched in an African Queen sort of way, or remind one of “fun” romantic westerns of the ’70s, but the results are just the opposite; The Homesman is made of poetic bleakness and sadness. It reminds one of the multitude of people who entered the west, struggled to survive there, died there and are completely forgotten. Mary Bee, though herself depressed and desperate, risks her life to do a good deed. She has a beneficial effect on Jones, but by story’s end that effect and even memories of her prove to be ephemeral; the theme of the movie and its ironic ending reminded me of nothing less than King Vidor’s masterpiece, The Crowd (1928).

I can only fault the film for some early domestic scenes which seem both poorly edited and in unnecessary poor taste — blemishes which can be overlooked in a film that is otherwise, I think, one of the best westerns made. The Homesman also benefits from fine small roles by Meryl Streep, Streep’s daughter Grace Gummer (of Mr. Robot), Hailee Steinfeld (also of True Grit), James Spader and John Lithgow.

—Michael R. Neno, 2014 December 10