Mudbound (2017) quotes

Director
Dee Rees.

Cast
Carey Mulligan.
Garrett Hedlund.
Jonathan Banks.

Two men return home from World War II to work on a farm in rural Mississippi, where they struggle to deal with racism and adjusting to life after war.

You ever miss it sometimes? Being over there. I don’t mean being shot at, but sometimes, I actually miss it.
– Jamie McAllan
Yeah, me, too. Over there, I was a liberator. People lined up in the streets waiting for us. Throwing flowers and cheering. And here I’m just another nigger pushing a plow.
– Ronsel Jackson

What good is a deed? My grandfathers and great uncles, grandmothers and great aunts, father and mother, broke, tilled, thawed, planted, plucked, raised, burned, broke again. Worked this land all they life, this land that never would be theirs. They worked until they sweated. They sweated until they bled. They bled until they died. Died with the dirt of this same 200 acres under their fingernails. Died clawing at the hard, brown back that would never be theirs. All their deeds undone. Yet this man, this place, this law… say you need a deed. Not deeds.
– Hap Jackson

No, I don’t have favorites. I love them all equally. Every mother does.
– Florence Jackson

I don’t know what they let you do over there, but you’re in Mississippi now, nigger. You use the back door.
– Pappy McAllan
Go on, son. Son, we don’t want no trouble here. Go on. Go on.
– Henry McAllan
You know what? You’re absolutely right. When we was overseas they didn’t make us use the back door. General Patton put us on the front line. Yes, sir. You know what we did? We kicked the hell out of Hitler and them Jerries! While y’all at home, safe and sound…
– Ronsel Jackson

That mule made me a share tenant, not a sharecropper. And had me dreaming about having my own piece of land. Maybe that’s where the problem started.
– Hap Jackson

Violence is part and parcel of country life. You’re forever being assailed by dead things. Dead mice, dead rabbits, dead possums. You find them in the yard. You smell them rottin’ under the house. And then there are the creatures you kill for food. Chickens, hogs, deer, frogs, squirrels. Pluck, skin, disembowel, debone, fry. Eat, start again, kill. I learned how to stitch up a bleeding wound… load and fire a shotgun… reach into the womb of a heavin’ sow to deliver a breeched piglet. My hands did these things… but I was never easy in my mind.
– Laura McAllan

He hardly eats… hardly sleeps. Can’t sit still… can’t move. It’s like he’s just stewing. Waiting for somethin’. Waiting for whatever didn’t happen to happen.
– Florence Jackson
Men that died that day… they were husbands, fathers. They were good men. A lot better than me.
– Jamie McAllan