Two Southern families bound by war and prejudice in Dee Rees' magnificent ensemble drama 'Mudbound'
The camera rarely sits still in "Mudbound," a sweeping epic of racial discord set during the 1940s, when Jim Crow held sway in the American South and Hitler loomed over Europe. At times, the movie, directed with striking verve and sensitivity by Dee Rees, shuttles back and forth across the Atlantic, contrasting one war zone with another. But mostly it burrows deep into the soil of the Mississippi Delta, a harsh, unyielding landscape of blinding sun, pounding rain and, yes, acres of mud.
Rees has an eye for the grubby poetic details - a possum lying dead in the dirt, a week's worth of grime being scrubbed from a woman's shoulders - but she doesn't linger on them so much as catch them on
