Tommy Lee Jones says his Cannes film ‘consideration of American imperialism\'|

Actor-director Tommy Lee Jones has said that his new film, The Homesman, set during the mid-19th century western expansion of the United States, was about "American imperialism" across the continent, The Guardian reported.

Speaking to journalists at the Cannes film festival after the world premiere screening, he said: "I won't try to hide the fact that a consideration of American imperialism on the west side of the Mississippi river is the film's underlying theme."

He added: "[The film] is a consideration of the history of western expansion; a way of looking at what the schoolchildren of America learn when the subject of manifest destiny comes up."’

"Manifest destiny" is the term used to describe the doctrine held by European settlers to the US that they held a natural (and divine) right to move west and occupy the remaining land, resulting in long-running conflict with Native Americans and large-scale alterations to the natural landscape.

The Homesman tells the story of religious homesteader Mary Bee Cuddy (played by Hilary Swank) who hires "homesman" George Briggs (Jones) to help her transport three mentally-ill women away from their hardscrabble lives on the frontier back east to the care of a cleric in Iowa. It is Jones' fourth credit as director, and his second film at Cannes after The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada in 2005, which won best actor (for Jones) and best screenplay (for Guillermo Arriaga).

Read more here>>>