Western: “The Homesman” by Tommy Lee Jones: The scoundrel and the Virgin – Tagesspiegel

00:00 clock Christian Schröder

The old Western resulted from the east into the plains. “The Homesman” by Tommy Lee Jones goes the opposite way – back to civilization. And sends Hilary Swank on a delicate mission.

The world, playing in “The Homesman”, composed mainly of sand, labors and prayers. Middle of the 19th century Nebraska inhospitable territory in which the survival means continuous effort. The settlers who are still animated by the pioneering spirit and the puritanism of the Pilgrim Fathers, till the land, as the Bible calls, six days per week by the sweat of their brow. On the seventh they go to church. Some men brutalized in this environment. Some women are crazy.

A woman no longer speaks and carries a doll around with you, which they consider to be their baby.

Another bites around like an animal and needs to the bed are tied. A third hisses again and again: “God will strike you down.” Troubled souls, for the men in the world of farmers and artisans is no more room. They should be placed on the east, where there are flowering gardens, brick houses and nursing homes. So it decided by the council. Someone must accompany the women 640 km long way to Iowa. Their husbands are expressed. In the end, the choice is Mary Bee Cuddy.

Hilary Swank plays this Mary Bee, and as it does, this is an event. Mary Bee itself has a small farm, in the first shot of the film she is plowing a field with a groan. Hardness and self-confidence radiates Swank on the Tomboy role, but including longing and sadness. In her wooden house is always a fresh bouquet, also Mary Bee has ordered a Melodion, a keyboard instrument that was smaller and cheaper than a piano.

The farmer makes a marriage proposal

“I consider it here, not without music, “she says. In men, the farmer will trip with their education and their pride flight instincts. When she makes a neighbor to marry him, replied the frightened: “They are just too bossy and too dry on top of that” – and disappears. To stop a hand, which is the task of the man, not the woman. This is the drama of Mary Bee Cuddy

In the classic western road continues east to west, from civilization in the wilderness. For to be emancipated early. In “The Homesman” Tommy Lee Jones has staged a novel by Glendon Swarthout, it is vice versa. The time of the great adventure is over, the country is domesticated and measured. Now it’s no longer about battles, but to consolidate. Mary Bee Cuddy breaks up with the three women in a latticed wooden car that is reminiscent of fellow, as they used healer in the Middle Ages. She will be accompanied, in addition to two mules and a horse, of George Briggs, a drifter.

“Are you an angel?” Asks Briggs, Tommy Lee Jones plays himself, as Mary Lee him knitting of a cuts. She replied dryly: “You are not dead.” Drawn and Linked been placed on his horse he was, because he had occupied a strange gold mining pit. Briggs is a crude guy with dubious military past, the Cuddy once declared that the hands are washed in before you eat. A scoundrel and a virgin. So a perfect couple.

In the classic Western went from the countryside next to the danger always sublimity from. Also in “The Homesman” there are impressive landscapes, but nature seems bleak, no trace of the death Beauty of Death Valley. Indians emerge as drunk Desperados. Perilous they are anyway. It is a way to heat and snow, and on this trip, Tommy Lee Jones has directed pleasantly old-fashioned, you wonder more and more whether Briggs mitreitet merely because he needs $ 300 reward, or because he is interested in Mary Lee , The answer is a surprise

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