21 pop culture moments in 2017 that spoke to the zeitgeist

Production still from Mudbound. Image: Steve Dietl/Netflix

Mudbound

If you need proof that diversity behind the scenes matters, look no further than Mudbound. For her adaptation of the award-winning 2008 novel by Hilary Jordan (who is white), writer-director Dee Rees (a lesbian black woman) employed women in several positions normally occupied by men. They include cinematographer Rachel Morrison; editor Mako Kamitsuna, who worked on Rees’s directorial debut Pariah; and composer Tamar-Kali. Although their influence might not be evident in the narrative, which stays faithful to the source material, it shines through in the care and warmth with which the film treats its characters and their world.

On the heels of World War II, two families cross paths in the heart of rural Mississippi. Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke) has bought a farm and moved there, his reluctant, Memphis-raised wife Laura (Carey Mulligan), their children, and his bigoted father (Jonathan Banks) in tow. Among their new tenets are the Jacksons, descendants of slaves who’ve lived and worked on the land for generations. Fraught from the start, the families’ interactions turn violent when Jamie McAllan (Garrett Hedlund) and Ronsel Jackson (Jason Mitchell) return from war and strike up a tentative friendship.

Similar to Ava DuVernay’s biopic Selma, Mudbound revitalizes a musty genre (in this case, the historical epic) by presenting a fresh perspective. Rees portrays the South as a sort of wasteland — a place of sweat and blood, heavy silences and thunderous passions, where sinners and outcasts wage biblical battles and ghosts wander. Think less Gone with the Wind, more As I Lay Dying.

In fact, this South, rooted firmly in the past despite its mythic aura, reads like a reckoning of the painterly, insular figment of popular imagination. As the ongoing debate over Confederate relics shows, it’ll take more than a story to undo a century of nostalgia. But Mudbound does its small part.