In “The Keeping Room”, two sisters and a slave girl defend their plantation from a pair of violent Union soldiers in the waning days of the Civil War. A brutal and unsentimental portrait of the cruelties of war not only on the battlefield, but also at home, the film opens with an ominous scene of violent cruelty, setting the tone for what gradually becomes a bleaker and bleaker (but always captivating) viewing experience.
Dark and almost belligerently atmospheric, the film stars indie queen Brit Marling as Augusta, a woman who, alongside little sister Louise (Hailee Steinfeld), and family slave Mad (Muna Otaru), keeps her South Carolina farmstead going in the absence of her Confederate…
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