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While I was watching Clint Eastwood's cinematic treatment
of the David Lehan novel Mystic River, my mind was
drawn to another recent film adaptation of repressed childhood
memories, Barry Levinson's Sleepers. This was released
in 1996, shortly after a significant flap about whether the
author - Lorenzo Carcaterra - had made up the events in the
book that he claimed were non-fiction and depictions of his
life. For the sake of the reader who doesn't remember this
fleeting "memoir", Carcaterra documented four Bronx
boys who were sent to an upstate correctional facility where
they were sexually abused by the guards for the term of their
sentence. The book jumps ahead as the boys have grown up and
the two most "damaged" men murder one of their tormentors
as the other "more functional" men try to fix the
court system so their buddies can live in guilt without being
proclaimed guilty for their crimes. Pretty riveting, if it
were true. Some reporters did some digging and revealed that
Carcaterra didn't miss a single day of school in the year
he says he was incarcerated. The New York D.A.'s office also
reported that no case they ever tried resembled either the
trial that sent the boys to prison or the trial later in life.
After this came out during the publicity for the film, Carcaterra
refused to disclose any further details and the "reality"
of the book was dismissed as a stunt. While there are many
stories of childhood events haunting adult life, this particular
anecdote struck me now because River raises two questions:
1. When a storyteller is dealing with a theme as troubling
as sexual abuse towards a child, how could you possibly make
something up to garner attention to the work? This is a deep,
dark theme that - in the proper hands - doesn't need to be
real in order to feel real and to bring up strong emotions
with the audience. 2. Even if it's not true, why complicate
it with unnecessary plotting? Sleepers suffered from
a third act where the boys had to convince their childhood
priest (played by Robert DeNiro) to lie and say he was with
the defendants when they were commiting the crime. The events
and the structure of this scenario felt so trite and mechanical
that there could be no dispute that this was the work of fiction.
Bad fiction. There's no reason for manufactured reality or
a complicated script when River shows that a emotion
hungry-cast with the right hands directing can make such a
story so compelling and disturbing on the facts alone. Going
into the film, there was no doubt that a cast including Sean
Penn, Tim Robbins, Laura Linney, Marcia Gay Harden, Laurence
Fishburne, and Kevin Bacon would be dynamo. What is so surprising
that Eastwood's minimalist approach with his clear-as-an-autumn-day
eye would allow themes of childhood pain and guilt would hit
the gut so hard.
Mystic River starts with three young boys Jimmy, Dave,
and Sean playing stickball in the street of their blue-collar
Boston neighborhood. A car pulls up with two men claiming
to be policemen pushing Dave into the back seat. All Jimmy
and Sean can do is stand back and watch as their friend is
driven away. As it turns out, these two shady looking detectives
were child molesters and the events endured by Dave over the
next four days are seen only in merciful glances. He escapes
from his captors and the film fast forwards several decades.
Jimmy (Penn) has a wife Annabeth (Linney), a few daughters,
and a local grocer. He went through a life of crime in his
high school days resulting in a few years behind bars. He
has the tense look of a criminal trying desperately to stay
on the right path for the sake of his family and for the sake
of his soul. Oddly, he comes off as the most functional at
the beginning. Sean (Bacon) is a detective for the Massachusetts
State Police and works on homicide cases with his partner
Whitey (Fishburne). He plays everything straight with his
job; resisting the temptation to act overzealously on behalf
of victims. He can't connect with his wife, who fled to New
York recently. Then, there's Dave (Robbins) who appears as
a shell of a man. He's married to Celeste (Gay Harden) and
they have a child. He can never keep a job and keeps all of
his emotions bottled up. But his shell encapsulates anger
and fear. More on that later. While they all live in proximity,
they rarely talk and it takes another tragedy to bring them
back together. Jimmy's daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum), is murdered.
Sean and Whitey are the first detectives to respond to the
murder scene while the victim is unknown. The night she is
killed, Dave comes home covered in blood claiming to have
been in a fight with a mugger. He soon becomes the main suspect
in Sean's eyes. Jimmy does not consider it at first, but he
is resolved that he will find the killer before the police.
Each character becomes a set clock: Sean is tightly wound.
Jimmy is a time bomb waiting to explode. Dave is a time bomb
waiting to implode. Mystic River becomes a film about
which clock will go off first.
While positioned as a murder-mystery of sorts, the film is
more about watching these characters reveal themselves. Make
no mistake, the plot plays out nicely. Brian Helgeland's script
maps out a criminal investigation that never feels like it's
too fictional or too mired in factual details but includes
developments and twists that never cheapen the momentum of
the story yet all seems logical when it's all said and done.
Having said that, these men and the actors who possess them
is what is the most compelling. Penn's Jimmy is a study in
quiet rage. As Whitey points out, Jimmy carries himself as
a man with lots of internal tension. Penn does this even in
the peaceful moments at the beginning. His first reaction
to his daughter's murder is horrific yet understandable. The
scene where he discovers the crime scene is quietly reflective
in showing his anger. Once she is buried, he goes into a state
where everything works on the inside. The only hint we get
is with a wince in facial gesture or Jimmy grabbing at his
guts as though he's infected. In a film like this, we expect
a calculated revenge. Here, Penn outwardly grieves and allows
the idea of finding the killer to sneak up on everyone in
the film and in the audience. It's a unique approach but one
that's makes this angry and revenge-filled father unique.
Robbin's Dave starts out shaky. We know this is a guy who
has suffered something unspeakable but the image of Robbins
sulking around like a Frankenstein monster for 2 1/2 hours
is not going to exactly be a torrent of a performance. But
he builds and builds upon this. The script and Eastwood give
him a few speeches about vampire and werewolf movies that
brings the character of Dave into pure tragedy. Dave is a
monster, pieced together from the ghosts of childhood to the
violent urges of adulthood. Probably the most surprising out
of the performances is Bacon's Sean. I'm not saying that Bacon
isn't a good actor, but if you were to put him in a competition
between Penn and Robbins on most days, I wouldn't have to
think hard about who would land in third place. But Bacon
has a tough role. He has to play this cop with a sense of
honor yet bearing full witness to the injustice of the damaged
and the helpless. His Sean is no cop cliché: He is
a obsessive professional yet an emotionally troubled man.
Nothing in his work eats at him more than the estrangement
with his wife. Add Fishburne's voice of objective observation
in the background and Bacon brilliantly bridges the gap between
Mystic River's childhood drama and the police thriller.
He becomes the detective that should have been patroling the
neighborhood that day. And while their roles aren't in center,
Linney and Gay Harden bring a real despair as the women who
have taken on the sins and the regrets of their husbands in
their own lives. Linney is particularly stunning; her reaction
to Jimmy's plan is a grabber. As far as acting nominations
go at the year, this is a cast who won't have to worry about
a lack of DVD's being sent out.
Even with great casts in the past, Eastwood as a director
has faired his share of missteps. Whenever he's not dealing
with a Western (which he is clearly an expert in the genre),
he shows a disinterest in enhancing underwhelming material.
Indeed, the canvas on which he works needs to be in fairly
good condition before he arrives. This does not work with
something like Space Cowboys, a film that could have
been about men past their prime and the metaphysical concept
of space and the heavens. With Eastwood at the helm, it was
about dentures and Donald Sutherland's ass. But then look
at a film like A Perfect World where Eastwood allowed
Kevin Costner's fatherly instincts to guide a sweetly dark
film about losing innocence in pre-Kennedy assassination Texas.
Mystic River also captures that theme of lost innocence,
just not as nostalgically as his earlier film. Eastwood never
complicates the matter with plot contrivances and far-reaching
twists. He films his story and his actors in bright Boston
fall colors which makes the film feel familiar and a little
too close. Eastwood has bragged that he likes to only shoot
two takes and he expects everyone to come onto the set well-prepared.
Well, when you've got Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon reading this
kind of dialogue, one feels a sense of relief that another
storyteller wasn't on hand to make himself the star.(So don't
expect Quinten Tarantino to make a film like this anytime
soon.) This is where Carcaterra made his most fatal flaw:
Thinking a story about damaged childhood memories needed to
be sexier. This is simply cheap and manipulates the audience.
While dealing with the very exact topics, Mystic River
does neither. This is the true testament to the film that
it can captivate so effortlessly without making us feel wrong
for watching these characters go through their pain. This
is human insight at its purest and film making at it most
brilliant.
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