I have been thinking about The Homesman for two days now. I knew I needed more time to process it because it just might be brilliant. I’m not quite there yet, but it’s so damn weird it’s worth a look just to see a movie that throws genre against the wall and rips it apart.
Based on the novel by Glendon Swarthout, Hilary Swank plays Mary Bee Cuddy, a lonely frontierswoman who would prefer to find a husband and make a home. But the men won’t have her, so she takes a gig transporting three mentally ill women to Iowa, which is a long way on horseback. When Cuddy saves George Briggs (Jones) from hanging, she enlists his help on her job.
Hollywood has given us a few western heroines. I love The Quick and the Dead with Sharon Stone’s “Woman with No Name,” but even that and its lesser imitators are about women shooting guns and being tough. It’s really interesting that Cuddy wants the traditional things. It doesn’t diminish her strength or toughness. In fact it shows a depth to the strength, of knowing what one wants but getting by until it comes. Nothing against Quick and the Dead though. That’s still awesome.
Briggs is helpful, but he’s so hopeless, he doesn’t approach the mission with any kind of badass gusto. He solves problems, but fighting and shooting isn’t usually the answer. Well, one time it is but usually he has to do something unspectacular to circumvent the latest obstacle. Jones actually sings and dances in The Homesman, so that is an unusual reaction for any character in a movie, let alone a pioneer adventure, to display.
By the end of the movie, Briggs just acts like a baby when things don’t work out and throws a tantrum. A big, violent tantrum. The violence in The Homesman is weird. It seems to be here for the wrong reasons, as in not a moral question but just a waste of resources when they could be using their energy more productively.
In a way, with Tommy Lee Jones and four women, this is kind of a western Man of the House. I never saw that but I assume similar hilarity ensued with Jones and five cheerleaders. The three women Briggs and Cuddy are transporting (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto and Sonja Richter) do have shocking and horrifying conditions. The film is sensitive to them, and unafraid to say they may not be redeemed in an era of minimal psychological treatment.
Jones’s fourth directorial work is a strong vision unbound by genre. We’ll call it a western for shorthand, and I think The Homesman is in good company with unorthodox westerns that focus on the less commercial aspect of the frontier. Jones doesn’t want to label it though, and I think through the twists and turns of The Homesman, he’s earned that request.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
