Frontier life was tough in the 1850s, particularly if you were a woman. That’s the prime message of The Homesman.
Winters were harsh. Crops were uncertain. Disease was rampant. Foreplay had yet to be invented.
Directed and co-written by Tommy Lee Jones, and based on a novel by Glendon Swarthout, The Homesman takes place in pre-statehood Nebraska at the end of a particularly brutal winter. In one community, the hardships have robbed three women of their sanity. Their symptoms include hostility, withdrawal and—as depicted in the film’s most horrific scene—infanticide.
The local minister (John Lithgow) decides the solution is to transport the women to a church in Iowa where they can receive care. That leaves the question of who’s going to undertake this difficult journey across the desolate plains.
When the local men are unable to accept the task because their families need them, an unmarried farmer named Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank) volunteers. The others agree she’s as capable as any man, and they provide her with a mule-driven wagon equipped with a padlocked enclosure.
