Mystic River
Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River is a tightly woven tragedy in which one singular, traumatic event ensnares three boys, disallowing them to move beyond it completely. Like the concrete square in which Jimmy and Sean scrawl their names and in which Dave only gets to his DA, they are boxed into a psychic prison together. Although they may have drifted apart—“just a hi around the neighborhood”—their identities have been significantly shaped by the day they scratched their names into the cement and the two men snatched away Dave to abuse him sexually for days in a cellar from which he’s never been able to escape psychically.
Tim Robbins plays the adult Dave. We are reintroduced to him as he walks his boy home from a baseball game. They go through the old block and right up to the old gutter to which he lost so many balls as a kid. The gutter holds more than lost balls though. Symbolically, it contains Dave’s irretrievable youth. A badly placed swing sent the last ball into the gutter the day they decided to write their names in the cement, the act which resulted in Dave’s being snatched away. Thus a fateful mischance forever locked Dave into that dark underworld where the sun never shines and voices resonate weakly like far off echoes against the walls he constructed for protection but which eventually will cause his downfall. Tragic fate looms large in Mystic River as something sprung irrevocably from the smallest actions or decisions. To heighten its presence, Eastwood filmed in a neighborhood whose climate is pitilessly cold.
Robbins is excellent in the role of Dave. He can break your heart as well as terrify you. No wonder his wife Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden) is such a mess. Sitting on Jimmy’s (Sean Penn) back porch, during the wake for Jimmy’s daughter (Emmy Rossum), Dave looks like an overgrown child. He is a tall figure slouched over himself, leaning dangerously out, as if he’s about to topple from the lack of any proper foundation. Dave’s eyes are often downcast or turn inward, away from all life outside him, except that of his son. When he does make eye contact, his eyes seem to have traveled a great and desolate distance. The script heightens his alienation by having him verbalize his acute loneliness to his wife and by demonstrating that he can only speak of his trauma as a fairy tale, a boy versus wolves. The cement tells the tale. Dave is permanently incomplete: his identity frozen in childhood, a soundless stutter of pain.
Robbins is not alone with his powerful acting though. Eastwood has every actor at peak performance. Even the minor parts have strong character presence and leave lasting impacts: the elderly woman, who with pride and chin held high asserts that she does not look out her window with her nightgown on, the liquor store owner (Eli Wallach) who loves talking cop with the cops, and the mother (Jenny O’Hara) of Brendan (Tom Guiry), Katie’s boyfriend, who cannot keep her two cents in her own pocket no matter how unsolicited it is, particularly when she feels insulted.
As for the major players, Kevin Bacon plays Sean, the disillusioned cop who will not close his eyes no matter how badly he might want to. He clamps his jaw down tight and goes where it is necessary. Penn brings Jimmy to life. As a child he was the “hard case” of the group, and as an adult, he is the ex-con, changed by love and a daughter, the very daughter he losses in the film. He has a large capacity for love, but just as much for anger, since both swell up from the same deep cask within him, which runneth over. The intense Penn-squint merely suggests the extreme effort required to keep it all in check. When it does break forth, it takes more than a handful of cops to hold him back.
Since the actors often dazzle the viewer with their talent, it is easy for the viewer to fail to appreciate Eastwood’s subtler work as a director. In the film, he shows a mature director’s ability to place his characters and move them about the screen for great effect. In addition, his camerawork is poignant. The camera has the tendency to fade out the scenes by looking up into the sky as if it is the only free space not yet claimed by fate. Even if it only offers the brief respite of a dream or prayer, it has its pull on the characters and eventually the viewers.
By effectually removing his directorial presence from the film, Eastwood has let his actors bring the script to fruition. The result is a 137-minute film whose verisimilitude so enchants the viewer that it happens like a strong jolt, which leaves the viewer stunned. Admirably, the film registers all the pain of loss, but refuses to let its characters restore their losses through violence, the only means they attempt. Jimmy’s wife, Annabeth (Laura Linney), ensures him of the rightness of his actions. Since his heart is so big, he can do whatever he feels necessary to protect those he loves. However, his overwhelming sense of rightness leads him to forsake due process of law, to act without valid evidence, and to punish the wrong man by the wrong means.
It will be difficult for anyone to walk away from this film certain that Jimmy has restored the proper moral order. In a time when a strong desire for vindication is present in America, and the proof that it can lead us wayward is blatantly evident, Eastwood’s film can serve as a reminder that violence does not always fix what is wrong. In the end, Jimmy still needs to heal and I wonder how much another death has helped him. Is he not still standing in the same street to which he lost Dave? Still as weak and wounded as before? It is not necessary for a film to provide answers, and Mystic River proves that debunking certain ones is sometimes the most valuable thing we can do. For its bravery and maturity, amongst its other admirable qualities, I give it an A. |
