The Homesman (2014)

It is 1854 in Nebraska Territory and a trio of women are suffering prairie madness, a fairly common ailment at that time.  Obviously, the sparsely populated region cannot care for them and it is determined to send them east.  Mary Bee Cuddy (Hillary Swank), who is an unmarried woman, is selected to transport them.  On her way to her farm with the wagon, she comes across a man (Tommy Lee Jones) with a noose around his neck and sitting on a horse.  She agrees to release him if he will agree to accompany her to Iowa.  Of course, he agrees.  The pair retrieve the three women - one is catatonic, one is bound and shrieking, and the last is listless.  The journey across the desolate prairie begins.

Hillary Swank is excellent as the lonely but self-sufficient frontier woman.  Her precise backstory is not detailed but she has a fine plot of land that is well-maintained.  She grew up in New York, can sing and play piano, knows how to handle a rifle, and is viewed as the equal of most men in her community.  Though she has tried to marry, she has thus far failed to attract a husband.  It is soon clear that she has a prepared script for proposing to single men.  However, she has been rejected for being plain and too bossy.  Mary is a caring and compassionate woman, but intensely lonely.  Swank embodies this beautifully.  Outstanding performance.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a disreputable prairie tramp who, through his association with Mary and the trio of mad women, is somewhat reformed.  Though he didn't want this task and has opportunities to abandon it, he sees it through.  His character is less well-developed than Mary's.  His motives run the gamut from duty to mercenary to compassion to vengeance.  In his final scene, he's a singing drunkard who is not paying attention to his property or the propriety of his actions.  Has he resumed his status as a prairie tramp?  Probably.

As I had no idea what a homesman was when I watched the movie, I looked it up.  A homesman is one who escorts settlers from the frontier to civilization.  "Go east, young man!"  One supposes that a person who led the wagon train on the westward journey was called a scout or guide, but he became a homesman when he traveled the other way.

Based on a story by Glendon Swarthout (who also wrote John Wayne's last movie, The Shootist), it deals with the real affliction of prairie madness.  People who were used to close neighbors in the East or, more especially, in Europe, were subject to deep depression in the sparsely-populated isolating prairies of North America.  One cure was often to just return east to counter the isolation.

The movie is mostly a tragedy - how could it be otherwise - but still engaging.  Certainly not a feelgood movie.  Nonetheless, recommended.