Plot
Three women who have been driven mad by pioneer life are to be transported across the country by covered wagon by the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy, who in turn employs low-life drifter George Briggs to assist her.
Release Year: 2014
Rating: 6.7/10 (6,221 voted)
Critic's Score: 69/100
Director: Tommy Lee Jones
Stars: Tommy Lee Jones, Hilary Swank, Grace Gummer
Storyline
Three women who have been driven mad by pioneer life are to be transported across the country by covered wagon by the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy, who in turn employs low-life drifter George Briggs to assist her.
Writers: Tommy Lee Jones, Kieran Fitzgerald
Cast: Tommy Lee Jones -
George Briggs
Hilary Swank -
Mary Bee Cuddy
Grace Gummer -
Arabella Sours
Miranda Otto -
Theoline Belknap
Sonja Richter -
Gro Svendsen
Jo Harvey Allen -
Mrs. Polhemus
Barry Corbin -
Buster Shaver
David Dencik -
Thor Svendsen
William Fichtner -
Vester Belknap
Evan Jones -
Bob Giffen
Caroline Lagerfelt -
Netti
John Lithgow -
Reverend Alfred Dowd
Tim Blake Nelson -
The Freighter
Jesse Plemons -
Garn Sours
James Spader -
Aloysius Duffy
Trivia:
Danish director Nikolaj Arcel recommended fellow Dane Sonja Richter to Tommy Lee Jones, for the part of Gro Svendsen. Arcel revealed he was approached by Jones in order to find Danish actors, minutes after his film En kongelig affære (2012) had been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. See more »
Quotes:
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User Review
Author:
Rating: 8/10
Tommy Lee Jones has a wry, dry character -- rich and deep as unwatered
open plains of the Americas. He's transferred his particular
personality power to the story of The Homesman. He's successfully
created a fine work of "auteur cinema" (much as I personally think this
form rarely exists).
The Homesman is an emotionally and powerful, idea-rich, almost
humorless story -- with an immense amount of humor. It has very tight,
economic tale telling with no fat on the bone; in which much is
implied, historical accuracy hits its target by nuance, and the story
itself is deeply respectful of an intelligent audience.
The Homesman is not "entertainment" in the haha, shoot-'em-up Western
sense. It's realism committed to a moral cause -- criticism of the
disenfranchised, the homeless, the people who cannot make it no matter
how hard they try. It has a brilliant sense of time and place that
tells the life stories of dozens of hard-enduring, long-suffering
"forgotten men" -- the women no less than the men.
The key heartbreaker is Hilary Swank's character of Miss Mary Bee
Cuddy. She's born into a Western frontier world where she and everyone
else believes and practices that "No man, having put his hand to the
plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." Hard workers
and decent people. But tragically that is not enough. Why? The Homesman
leaves that question deliciously unanswered. Life is not fair. God is
not just.
Beautifully The Homesman does -- kind of -- answer life's problems with
the value of sheer vitality and gutsiness itself. Thus that key visual
motif in the movie that comes from: George Caleb Bingham, "The Jolly
Flatboatmen". We must dance the dance of life, however mad.
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