‘The Homesman’ is a bleak, beautiful look at life in 1850s Nebraska

Brutal. Tommy Lee Jones’ “The Homesman” is a stark and beautiful and bleak portrait of life in the Midwest in the 1850s. The Nebraska territory is so unforgiving, conditions so harsh, you wonder why anyone chose to live there. This is more of a Midwestern than a pure Western, and it contains not an ounce of romance about the time period. There’s no majestic score, no choreographed gunfight, no scene where the hero walks into a saloon in the middle of the day and it’s filled with gamblers, roustabouts and women of ill repute. “The Homesman” is a film about women who go mad after having to bury their children, ranchers barely eking out a living and bargains that are struck in the name of survival. Hilary Swank, as good as she’s ever been (and we’re talking about a two-time Academy Award winner), is Mary Bee Cuddy, who lives alone on a small patch of land, doing the back-breaking work herself while comporting herself as a lady. (After a hard day plowing the fields, Mary Bee washes up and tidies up her home, meticulously placing a vase of flowers just so on the table.) Mary Bee’s in search of a husband, but as a neighboring farmer bluntly tells her after she’s cooked him dinner, sung a tune for him and proposed marriage, she’s far too bossy and plain...more