Months of Meryl: The Homesman (2014)
Thursday, November 15, 2018 at 12:06AM John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.
#46 —Altha Carter, a minister’s wife who gives comfort to three disturbed women.
JOHN: The Homesman is one of the best films Meryl Streep has ever had the good fortune to be in, and yet, she’s on screen for no more than five minutes. Set circa 1850 in the Nebraska territory, Tommy Lee Jones’ adaptation of Glendon Swarthout’s novel is a gorgeous and unsettling theatrical follow-up to his 2005 stunner The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.
Hilary Swank stars as Mary Bee Cuddy, a self-sufficient spinster who volunteers to transport three insane women from their town to a church in Hebron, Iowa that cares for mentally ill patients...
Traumatized by domestic abuse, rape, stillborn children, and the aftermath of a harsh winter, these battered women (Miranda Otto, Sonja Richter, and Streep’s daughter Grace Gummer) are in dire need of asylum, but prove to be far too much for Cuddy to handle on her own. Before departing, she stumbles upon the loony and irascible felon George Briggs (Jones), looking like the canary in a coal mine, set to hang by horse for theft and other undisclosed crimes. Briggs begs Cuddy to set him free, and in return, he reluctantly agrees to accompany her to Iowa, whereupon she promises a $300 reward for his services. The two form an unlikely team as they begin their trek through the harsh and forbidding Midwest with a caravan of madwomen, enduring treacherous weather, fearsome strangers, and other prairie dangers along the way.
Swank excels as Mary Bee Cuddy, playing yet another character whose steely resolve and undeterred bravery evoke qualities considered more traditionally “masculine” in movieland. A pious woman and an already financially successful merchant, Cuddy alas has had no luck in securing a husband. Men repeatedly call her “bossy” and “plain as an old tin can.” When she volunteers for this grueling mission, it’s as much a way to avert her loneliness as it is an assertion of her prodigious faculties for cooking, riding, shooting, and caring for these women better than any man possibly could. Swank is completely assured and unfussy in scenes that require her to toil and labor under immensely difficult circumstances, and underplays beautifully in her moments with Jones, whether the pair are conversing about their horses’ names or strategizing on how to evade an ambush. (Spoilers ahead!)
In a pivotal, devastating scene near the end of their journey, Cuddy propositions Briggs, laying out a marriage proposal with equally advantageous reasons on both sides for the two to merge their assets and help each other survive. He declines the proposal, reiterating her plainness and stern demeanor. Later that night, she appears before him nude and crawls under his buffalo-hide blanket, begging him to give her some comfort; the two copulate awkwardly under the stars. Briggs awakens the next morning to find that Cuddy has hanged herself. He starts back home alone but the three women manage to find him as he makes his way across the river, and he resigns himself to completing the mission and delivering them to safety.
An odyssey this taxing appropriately concludes with an amiable, calming Meryl Streep, who initially appears to ease troubles and soothe pains. As Altha Carter, Streep dutifully receives Briggs’ women and begins the process of accommodating them under the church’s care. With a slight Midwestern lilt and a chic bonnet, Streep is a very-late-film delight, and even sneaks in a Streepian face-touch© when Jones offers her his wagon! We already know that Streep is sometimes very charitable with gifts for her daughters: in Evening, Streep at least had something interesting to play and was afforded the opportunity of acting opposite Vanessa Redgrave. In The Homesman, Streep’s truncated presence is welcome but almost too distracting, effectively redirecting our attention away from Briggs and the significance of his completing Cuddy’s journey. All I could think about for those five minutes was the fact that she was playing opposite her daughter, giving Gummer and Jones as much on screen aid as her character gives to the trio of disturbed women.
What else can really be said about one of Streep’s shortest and most charitable performances?
MATTHEW: From The Devil Wears Prada onward, Streep has been as committed as ever to hiding herself within characters generally dissimilar from the convivial, sharp-witted, even-keeled celebrity who appears equally comfortable fielding questions on 60 Minutes as she does yukking it up on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Then again, one could argue that this same superstardom has no longer made it possible for Streep to truly disappear into her roles. Perhaps this is why her most popular endeavors of the past 15 years (Devil, Mamma Mia!, Julie & Julia) hinge on her participation and foreground her presence with an almost winking, metatextual understanding that we are watching a luminary we know and adore try on a new disguise, a new genre, or a new, real-life persona for size. Even The Iron Lady bestows it first end-title credit, usually reserved for the director, to its leading lady, bringing up Streep’s name before her wizened Margaret Thatcher has even departed the frame, not so much shattering an illusion as emphasizing the very fact of Meryl Streep.
The Homesman also can’t help but emphasize the very fact of Meryl Streep. Her presence is a veritable favor to friend and one-time co-star Jones, a cameo that could have easily gone to Ann Dowd or Margo Martindale had Streep found herself too consumed by her overlapping shooting schedules for The Giver and Into the Woods, which also arrived in theaters in 2014. But Streep came to the aid of her Hope Springs husband, briefly upping the star-wattage on his sad and sophisticated western, which dares to foreground a woman’s story and provides an actress prone to miscasting with one of the finest roles of her career.
Hilary Swank may not always be the most graceful or psychologically-astute interpreter, but every note in her Homesman performance rings true. She doesn’t heroize or exceptionalize Mary Bee Cuddy, but plays her for what she is, which is to say what a patriarchal, 19th century society would have her believe she should be: a woman who can only value herself based on her proximity to marriage. Mary tries to keep her despondency buried like a secret, but her inability to do so only heightens her ultimate tragedy. Swank’s gradual surrender to this character’s all-consuming sorrow makes for a character portrait at once heart-wrenching and clear-sighted, aided on screen and off by Jones, who has a great deal of empathy but an iron refusal of audience-baiting sentiment.
As I rewatched Jones’ severely underrated film, I found myself asking a variation of the question that has been mulled over by Streep’s doubters and disciples alike: What more might the actress have achieved by now had she sought out more projects as singularly strange as The Homesman and more directors as intelligent and individualistic as Jones? Who knows? Although Streep has dared to test our knee-jerk sympathy for her characters in films like Devil, Doubt, Iron Lady, and August: Osage County, it is hard to argue against the assertion that she has grown fundamentally risk-averse in her choice of both parts and collaborators. It’s interesting to consider what Streep might have done with a role like Mary Bee Cuddy some decades earlier; the part seems to demand a steelier and spikier personality (in my dreams: Mercedes McCambridge) than the types we normally associate with Streep’s characters, but when is the last time the actress even opened herself up to the possibility of miscasting for the sake of furthering her artistry — Devil? The Manchurian Candidate?
Streep’s actual performance in The Homesman is minute but slyly layered. Altha Carter is introduced to us as a beacon of warm-voiced, soft-cheeked goodness, an assumption that Streep will moderately warp in her few minutes of screen time. (Directly before this, Jones casts no false illusions about the type of Christian virtue that awaits the women in Hebron when he includes a Missouri-bound wagon of chained, black slaves in the same image of Briggs and company crossing the banks of the river into Iowa.) Streep plays her part with the same tough-to-nail mannered realism that the rest of the ensemble uniformly achieves and quickly exposes the character’s beaming snobbery with some choice lines. As the trio of disturbed women sit silently in her parlor, Altha wonders at the reason for their near-comatose state before deciding out-loud that “perhaps each remembers a parlor from their own past,” blithely unaware that these women belong to a class firmly below hers. Best of all is her farewell to Briggs, in which Streep drops the beatific propriety and utters a curt “You may go now,” an utterance that unveils this minister’s wife as a figure of pious and lightly disapproving superiority.
Yes, the part verges on the downright negligible and Streep’s participation produces little more than a moderately amusing diversion. But The Homesman is an undertaking so ballsy and complex that it becomes heartening to see Streep align herself with a cinematic vision of such sublime unconventionality, if only for a matter of minutes.
Reader Comments (20)
Isn't this a Hilary Swank film?
I really think this movie is a masterpiece, an underrated gem from a director capable of an aching and understated humanity, with a great eye for acting. It reminds me a non-violent version of Sam Peckinpah's The Deadly Companions, in which Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith part on journey through west sharing an unbearable pain and a beautiful sense of compassion. That was O'Hara's best performance. This Swank's best moment, including Boys Don't Cry.
This belongs to the top best five movies Streep has ever been in.
This is a very good movie. A very very sad one. I would haver preferred Linda Emond or anyone else in Meryl's role (same goes for Sufragette).
When Swank is good, she's very good. Let's give her that.
Swank is amazing in this and should have received a nomination for the piano playing scene alone which has more feeling & nuance in it than anything in her M$B role,the films tone is off esp TLJ performance until the later stages of the film and this is just Meryl helping a friend out on her day off.
As a declaration of a type of love Swank's line delivery of "We make a good team you and i " is heartbreaking
Should had been nomination #3 for Hilary Swank.
By the way, that year was no a good year over nominations.
My five would be:
Rosamund Pike - Gone Girl
Resee Whiterspoon - Wild
Marion Cotillard - The Immigrant
Hilary Swank - The Homesman
Jessica Chastain - Miss Julie
My winner in 2014 is Marion Cotillard in The Immigrant. My nominees would be Marion Cotillard in Two Days One Night, Lindsay Duncan in Le Weekend, Paulina Garcia in Gloria, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond the Lights. Swank, Davis (Babadook), Swinton (Only Lovers Left Alive) and Knightley (Begin Again) all great options too. A great year for actressing, but a lackluster Oscar roster.
Wow. So glad to see the support for Swank on this site, and in a post about Meryl Streep! This was a very good film, and unfortunately, underseen.
Swank can be undeniably great when the role is right. She's a bit like Jodie Foster in that way. There's a lot those two can't do onscreen but bitches (Bening) better beware when the material fits.
I haven't seen this, but I can imagine that the genre and character would suit her well. Honestly, I forgot this movie existed.
If Swank had won that year I would have been cool with it. Magnificent and overlooked. With the right material she soars as high as the greats.
I liked Meryl Streep in this. There’s a sense of exhausted relief that the women have finally reached their destination. You hope that they will be okay in the care of Meryl, but... you’re not quite sure.
Unsettling always. You grieve with the movie.
I agree that Swank is great here and that The Homesman is a very good film. However, I was only inclined to see this movie because Streep is in it. Keep in mind that her presence is a massive draw - including for people like I who see many films in a year.
Matthew Eng may not always be the most graceful or psychologically-astute film critic...
Swank is truly heartbreaking in this.How did Felicity Jones get in over her?
Sasha Stone if I remeber championed Hilary Swank right up until the nominations,we nearly got Adams or Aniston for the 5th spot and Pike is all wrong as Amy in Gone Girl,she's just too British.
She didn't get in because of some category confusion, I think.
And yes, my winner that year was Marion Cotillard in The Immigrant, too. It's still the best performance in English of the decade.
I agree with everyone that Swank should have been nominated for this--it's one of my favorite performances of hers, and one of my favorite films she's made. Adams also would have been in my top five, but I don't necessarily begrudge any of the actual nominees as I thought they were all deserving. But, if we're going THERE, I'm also going to agree that Cotillard deserved recognition for The Immigrant, one of the very best films of the last 10 years. It's hard to pout too much about that though since she was rewarded for her equally devastating work in Two Days. Another stacked year for actresses!
Thanks for the write up. I missed this film when it was released but will definitely watch it now.
SWANK4EVA