The Homesman

The Homesman is something of a mess, but in fractured moments it possess a stark, uncompromising poetry and a stellar pair of lead performances. The problem is, instead of just leaving well enough alone and pointing the camera at Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones, Jones, who also directs, takes the narrative from wild turns of ambiguity and calamity into wild torrents of absurdity. There seems to be some internal struggles throughout The Homesman between regurgitating western totems and tropes with little thought to challenging them or their meanings, and giving the whole genre a feminist spin. Guess which one wins out in the end.

In its earliest moments, we believe that The Homesman will give voice to the women so often regulated to the sidelines or completely left out of the narrative in a western. Then we realize that the movie intends to speak for them, and not with them. That makes all the difference, as the three women driven to insanity for a variety of reasons (all of them understandable given the circumstances) are rendered mute for much of the film, frequently cast aside as helpless victims with all the faculties and depth of a trio of toddlers. This is a great shame, but a greater one is forced silence built into the plot when they reach their final destination and the minister’s wife instructs that she doesn’t wish to hear of their plights. We know them because we saw them play out in the earliest scenes, but we don’t know how any of these women feel about their predicaments or if they even understand.

Much of the talking, and explaining, is left to Jones’ character who is forced into helping them out by the machinations of Swank’s Mary Bee Cuddy, a spinster with the task of transporting the three women from Nebraska to Iowa for mental care. Selfishness and bravery, compassion and desperation got confused for one another, or blood together to reach the same ends, and it’s Jones who ends up the hero of the film despite entering it as a near-death drunkard. His performance is solid, but then again, he’s played this type so often that he could do this tender-hearted rapscallion thing in his sleep. He’s much better playing second fiddle to Swank’s pragmatic, slowly breaking heroine, and the first two-thirds are the better parts of the film despite their problems for this very reason.

Once we land in Iowa, and Meryl Streep in a glorified cameo as the minister’s wife comes out to deify Jones, we’re in trouble. Hell, even before this part, Jones angrily burns out a hotel that refused him (and the women) service in revenge, stealing food, and leaving James Spader (yet another glorified cameo in a film littered with them) to burn in his wake. The haunting specter of tragedy looms large over The Homesman’s characters, and these sequences are supposed to underscore all that has been lost and all that has been compromised to reach this point, but it plays out in aggressively overindulgent tones. And the last scene is a bit of a confusing head-scratcher – was that supposed to be a great tragedy, a cruel joke of irony, or something else entirely?

So praise be to Hilary Swank for making this material work so effectively. Even if the plot pulls her character into mawkish territory during her final scenes, the actress digs deep into Mary Bee’s internal conflicts and slow emotional breakdown. Her performance taps into Swank’s hard to cast peculiarities, like her tough, athletic frame, and ability to project both strength and weakness at the same time. That iron exterior goes deep, but her core is soft and fluid. She is a woman of few options in this, but she’s fascinating to watch as she expresses her agency and demands respect. So when the film drops her to focus in on Jones, The Homesman ultimately feels like a superficial bait-and-switch vanity project.