Mudbound film review: Oscar nominations all round for a family saga full of poetry and grit

Mud, mud, glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. No, wait. In Dee Rees’s extraordinary saga, the brown stuff makes blood boil. That said, the Netflix fable (which is mostly set on a rain-lashed Mississippi farm) never feels overwrought.

The source novel by Hillary Jordan is crammed with unshowy poetry and we’re forced to appreciate Jordan’s words via a string of voiceovers. At first it’s hard to tune into so many different points of view, but it pays off. Our attention is spread wide, as opposed to thinly.

Two families exist in a state of mutual dependence, one led by black preacher Hap Jackson (Rob Morgan), the other by white, nervy daddy’s boy Henry McAllan (Jason Clarke). Mary J Blige plays Hap’s formidable wife. Carey Mulligan plays Henry’s.

At the outbreak of the Second World War Jackson’s eldest son Ronsel (Jason Mitchell) becomes a tank sergeant and Henry’s brother Jamie (Garrett Hedlund) a captain in the air force. When these traumatised men return home they recognise each other as soulmates, to the horror of Henry’s goblin-faced dad (Jonathan Banks).

There are seven great actors in this movie and they all deserve Best Supporting Actor nominations. My personal favourites were Morgan and Mulligan, but it feels cruel to single them out because this is such a team effort. (I’d have picked Mitchell too, except there’s an unintentionally amusing moment where Ronsel’s mum frets over the fact that he’s not eaten for days. Mitchell has a delightfully solid body and simply cannot pass as a man who’s off his food.)

Another quibble is that the simmering sexual tension between two of the characters leads to a predictable climax. But no matter. Even the bit players are haunting (Rees, like the photographer Walker Evans, has an eye for hard-scrabble faces). And Mako Kamitsuna’s editing is inspired (action set-pieces crash into tense domestic moments). This is a big picture. You can see it on TV, but at a Curzon cinema — where it’s on limited release — it’ll be twice as glorious.

Cert 15, 134 mins