‘Mudbound’ Cinematographer Rachel Morrison Makes Oscar History

It’s been about month since Natalie Portman called out the Golden Globes all male director category and 89 years since a woman was nominated as best cinematographer at the Academy Awards. For her outstanding work on Dee Rees’ ‘Mudbound’ (2017), Rachel Morrison is the first.

Inspired by Gordon Parks work in magazine, Morrison imbues a story of two farming families – one white, the other black – struggling to eke out a living on the Mississippi Delta in the segregated South with an elegiac intensity.

Beginning amidst a downpour drenching the white family burying their dead, Morrison contrasts the lives of black and white Americans tilling the same land with a commitment to authenticity and naturalism that confronts the actors barefaced and flecked with a pervasive patina of mud.

Breaking the glass ceiling at 38 years old, Morrison is a boon to the movements currently calling out gender inequality in the entertainment industry and is also the cinematographer behind the highly anticipated ‘Black Panther’ (2018).

Starring Carey Mulligan, Garret Hedlund, Jason Clarke, Jason Mitchell and Mary J Blige, ‘Mudbound’ is also a win for black filmmakers with Blige Oscar nominated for Best Actress and Best Original Song and Rees the first black woman to be nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for her work on reimagining Hilary Jordan’s novel of the same name.

As for the film itself, the accolades are well earned. Offering a glimpse into the life of two families bound by land, class and the trauma of war, ‘Mudbound’ is as engulfing as it is sobering.

Set in the 1940s in a world where black men find more acceptance in army barracks abroad whilst fighting for the country that will thank them with Jim Crow, clan killings and virtual indenture, the film explores the reality of then unnamed PTSD and poverty as a temporary and awkward equaliser.

Excellently cast, beautifully shot and not at all irrelevant to the present day, ‘Mudbound’ is a strange and eloquent thing that affects well beyond its lingering two hours.

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