The Homesman Dvd

The Homesman is a 2014 Western historical drama film set in the 1850s Midwest, directed by Tommy Lee Jones. The screenplay by Jones, Kieran Fitzgerald and Wesley Oliver is based on the 1988 novel of the same name by Glendon Swarthout. The film stars Jones and Hilary Swank and also features Meryl Streep, Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, Hailee Steinfeld, John Lithgow, and James Spader.

Plot

In 1854 Mary Bee Cuddy is a 31-year-old spinster from New York, a former teacher who journeyed to the Midwest for more opportunity. She is an active member of the small farming community of Loup in the Nebraska Territory, and has significant financial prospects and sizable land ownership. She seems strong and independent, but suffers from depression and feels isolated. She makes dinner for her neighbor Bob Giffen, and sings to him, but when she proposes he turns her down saying she is “plain, and too bossy”; he then leaves to find a wife back east.

After a harsh winter, three women from the community begin to show signs of mental instability due to the hardships they have faced. Arabella Sours has lost three children to diphtheria, Theoline Belknap kills her own child after a poor harvest puts her family at risk of starvation, and Gro Svendsen, a Danish immigrant, is shown to be in an abusive relationship with her husband and has a breakdown after her mother dies. Reverend Dowd calls upon one of their husbands to escort the women eastward to a church in Hebron, Iowa that cares for the mentally ill. One of the men refuses to participate in the lottery to determine who will escort the women; Cuddy takes his place, and the lot falls on her.

While preparing for her journey, Cuddy encounters George Briggs, a claim jumper, who is about to be lynched for stealing Bob Giffen’s land while he is away. Briggs begs Cuddy for help. Scared to make the trip alone, she frees him, and in return demands his help escorting the women. He immediately casts doubt on the job and insists he be free to abandon her at any time. To persuade him, Cuddy tells him that she is mailing $300 to await his arrival in Iowa, but secretly keeps it with her.

Briggs’s experience comes in handy when the group crosses paths with hostile natives, and he is able to bribe them by giving up one of their horses. Later, when Arabella is kidnapped by a freighter, Briggs gives chase, and the two men have a violent scuffle before Arabella kills her kidnapper. Eventually the caravan comes across the grave of an eleven-year-old girl that has been desecrated by Indians, and Cuddy insists they stop and restore it. Briggs vows to push on, so Cuddy stays behind and agrees to catch up with him. After restoring the grave, Cuddy sets out on horseback. However, she loses her way, and after riding all night discovers that she has gone in a circle and her horse has led her back to the grave.

Finally catching up to Briggs after another night of riding, Cuddy, distraught over having to wander the desert, suggests they marry. Briggs, like all the previous men, rejects Cuddy saying he “ain’t no farmer”, and is only along for the promised reward. Later that night, a naked Cuddy propositions him, and despite his initial protestations, the two have sex. Rising late the next morning, Briggs finds that Cuddy has hanged herself. Briggs chastises Sours, Belknapp, and Svendsen, blaming their illness for Cuddy’s death as he buries her body. He discovers that she had kept the $300 with her the entire time, and so takes a horse and abandons the three women. However, the trio surprisingly follow him on foot, and Arabella almost drowns while chasing him across a river. Briggs saves her and decides to continue taking them to Iowa instead.

Briggs seeks food and shelter at an empty hotel belonging to Aloysius Duffy, who informs him that they have no rooms available for the caravan as a group of 16 investors are expected shortly, and the women would sour the establishment. Briggs lashes out at Duffy, whose men pull out guns of their own, resulting in a brief stand-off. Briggs leaves, but returns that night alone on horseback. He sends away the young cook, instructing her not to look back, and sets the hotel on fire, and shoots Duffy in the foot. Briggs takes a suckling pig to feed himself and the women and exits the hotel, leaving all inside to be burned alive.

Briggs reaches Hebron, passing the women into the care of Altha Carter, the wife of the church’s reverend. He informs her of Cuddy’s death but does not disclose the true cause. Guilty about having rejected Mary Bee’s proposal, he has a wooden slab engraved with her name and plans to mark her grave with it. He gives a pair of shoes to Tabitha Hutchinson, a hard-working young maid at the hotel he is staying at, and then proposes to her, after advising her not to marry some young man going west, but to stay in town. She replies by telling him “maybe”. He then boards the ramshackle, open-decked river ferry heading back west, and starts to sing a rowdy drunken song with two musicians he encounters on deck. When people at the pier complain about the noise, Briggs halts, fires his pistol several times toward shore and angrily shouts that they are headed west even if it’s against the will of the devil. Briggs then returns to singing and begins to dance enthusiastically, his vigorous stomping making the wooden boards of the ferry’s deck shake. As the ferry departs further out onto the river, Briggs’ dancing continues and Mary Bee’s grave marker is shaken closer to the unguarded edge of the deck by the commotion. Eventually one of the bargemen kicks the grave marker which is now sitting on the edge of the deck, and unnoticed by Briggs, it slips overboard and sinks into the river.

Cast

Tommy Lee Jones as George Briggs
Hilary Swank as Mary Bee Cuddy
Grace Gummer as Arabella Sours
Miranda Otto as Theoline Belknapp
Sonja Richter as Gro Svendsen
Meryl Streep as Altha Carter
John Lithgow as Reverend Dowd
James Spader as Aloysius Duffy
Hailee Steinfeld as Tabitha Hutchinson
Caroline Lagerfelt as Netti Nordstog
Tim Blake Nelson as The Freighter
Jesse Plemons as Garn Sours
William Fichtner as Vester Belknap
David Dencik as Thor Svendsen
Barry Corbin as Buster Shaver
Evan Jones as Bob Giffen
Jo Harvey Allen as Mrs. Polhemus
Karen Jones as Mrs. Linens