It’s going to be an interesting awards season for a number of reasons, and one of them is the question of whether Netflix will be able to properly crack the Oscars this year. It’s no secret that the streaming giant has been trying to make an awards splash for a few years, but while rivals Amazon arrived in a big way last year with “Manchester By The Sea,” Netflix have so far only really managed to figure into the documentary categories.
But if any movie’ll do it, it could well be “Mudbound.” Dee Rees’ post-war melodrama was one of the buzziest films of Sundance, and was snapped up by the company in one of the biggest festival details in memory, with no bones made about their ambitions to give the film a big awards push, in part in the hope of making Rees the first African-American female director to be nominated.
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The movie’s been playing at other festivals to pick up buzz and is already making a splash on the awards circuit (it’s picked up Best Ensemble at the Gotham Awards already), and with the release a few weeks, Netflix have now dropped a new trailer for the movie. It’s a good taste of a film that, while imperfect, is a sprawling, old-fashioned melodrama that has a lot to recommend it. Will awards voters take to a film that hasn’t gone the traditional theatrical route? We’ll be finding out in the coming months. In the meantime, “Mudbound” will hit Netflix and some theaters from November 17th. Check out the trailer below, along with the official synopsis.
Masterful filmmaker Dee Rees vividly captures the 1940s American South in the film Mudbound, based on the international bestselling novel by Hillary Jordan. The film, an adaptation co-written by Virgil Williams and Rees, is the timeless and timely story of two families – one black, one white – bound together by the farmland of the Mississippi Delta during the Jim Crow era.
A powerful ensemble cast including Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Mitchell, Jason Clarke, Jonathan Banks, Mary J. Blige and Rob Morgan portray the richly nuanced relationships between the McAllans and the Jacksons.
Rees commands a team of top craftspeople including a remarkable roster of female department heads – including cinematographer Rachel Morrison, editor Mako Kamitsuna, composer Tamar-kali, Oscar® nominee sound engineer Pud Cusack and makeup department head Angie Wells – to bring the past into the present and shine a light on a chapter of American history rarely seen on screen before.