'MUDBOUND'.........FOUND: THE LOST ART OF NOVEL ADAPTATION.......

Mudbound (2017)   The art and craft required to dramatize a novel, converting it into a film of reasonably manageable length is formidable.

                It's no job for sissies.

                And some people (critics and fierce champions of the novel itself) will always find the adaptation deficient compared to its source........characters dropped, the plot streamlined,  the exclusion of favorite scenes and dialogue, etc, etc, etc,........

                 No wonder that directors, screenwriters (and the novelists) welcome the mini-series format......in that they're given the luxury of telling their story unfettered by any artificial time constraints......able to stretch out all the novel's many characters and turns of plot over multiple episodes.

                 Which can be a wonderful way to adapt a novel brimming with a large cast of characters and storylines.

                 Or a total disaster.

                For a worst-case-scenario example, look no farther than the 10 episode TNT mini-series of Caleb Carr's "The Alienist."  After aimlessly noodling around for 7 episodes so far, the show's virtually unwatchable.........7 hours in and it hasn't got an ounce of coherence or forward momentum,...nothing but a random collection of atmospheric scenes in search of a story.

               So we give a good old fashioned BQ standing ovation to director-screenwriter Dee Rees and her co-screenwriter Virgil Williams for their superb 135 minute adaptation of a novel by Hilary Jordan.

              Their work here is in the great tradition of the old-school Hollywood screenwriters who faced the daunting task of turning the rich literary tapestries weaved by novelists into compelling drama.....in roughly 2 hour running times.

              What impressed us even more.......Rees and Williams dared to borrow the most potent weapon in any novelist's arsenal.....the characters' interior monologues.

              They ran a huge risk of having this come off as too artsy-fartsy and precious........but the actors inner thoughts only add to the heartbreaking power of the film, a grim tale of poverty-stricken white and black Americans in post World War 2 rural Mississippi.

              How ironic.......last year we did a post on Otto Preminger's bloated 1967 disaster "Hurry Sundown", which plays like a ghastly, cartoonish, clown-show version of practically the same story told here........(only with ludicrous plot twists and a nauseating condescension toward its black characters)

              51 years later, it's an overwhelming pleasure to see the time and place depicted in "Mudbound" rendered not with caricature, but finally with genuine skill, artistry and a full palette of human behavior and emotion.  And it's a punch in the gut.....as it should be.

              BQ says Bravo to everyone involved in this. 4 stars (****)