Mystic River

This was originally posted to the now-defunct "parlons film" on July 11, 2005.

**CONTAINS SPOILERS**

The first time I watched this movie I felt like it was a justification of a violent male code of conduct; or if not a justification, at least an impartial look at it. Having viewed it a second time, I'm not so sure. I think I missed the importance of Kevin Bacon's character, near the end of the film, saying something like, "Maybe we're all still eleven-year-olds locked in a dark cellar." My own hang-ups about that masculine code led me to react to the film in the same negative way I reacted to the characters, but now I think the message of the film is a judgment on the masculine code.

Here is what I wrote after my first viewing (commenting on another review).

You can find a synopsis on imdb.com or elsewhere, but here's a very brief plot summary: three eleven-year-old friends, Jimmy, Sean, and Dave, are playing street hockey one day in their working-class Boston neighborhood when a car stops and two men pretending to be cops force David into a car, and take him away, lock him in a cellar, and sexually abuse him for four days until he manages to escape. Twenty-five or so years later, Jimmy's 19-year-old daughter is brutally murdered in the same neighborhood where the three friends still live. Jimmy, who has gone through crime and doing time and has gone straight, is heartbroken. Sean, a detective with the State Patrol, is investigating the murder with his partner. Dave has become an introverted, broken man, with a wife and a young son, and he becomes a lead suspect in the murder. Even his wife suspects him, and she tells Jimmy, who, with his thug friends, takes matters into his own hands and kills Dave. In the meantime Sean and his partner solve the case, overpowering the teenaged killers in the nick of time.

It's a good story, based on interesting characters, with plenty of suspense and unexpected twists, and Clint Eastwood's direction is flawless. I watched it with Jen and she commented that it's a summary of all classic film. We wondered how septuagenarian Eastwood finds the energy to keep making films and surmised that he might feel he has to because if he doesn't, no one else will - no one else can.

Anyway, back to the story. My initial reaction was one of anger, which I am starting to learn is a good sign that the movie was good enough to draw me in and make me react to the characters as if they were real people, which is not as easy at it seems. I admit that I have a big problem with the tough-guy code of honour which sees the best man as the one who accepts no insult and wins all his fights. I tend to see someone who gets in fights as being a big loser. It's the 'What-did-you-say-about-my-mother?' mentality, which looks for imagined insults when real ones are not present, in order to prove one's masculinity again and again. It's the constant fear of losing masculinity, and it makes victims out of all those who can be dominated, put down, or controlled. It's what makes those of weak character, who have no confidence in their own masculinity, try to prove something that they never really believe: that they are good enough, tough enough, manly enough.

On my first viewing, I was especially offended by the fact that when Jimmy blatantly confesses the murder of his friend and neighbor to his wife, she completely supports him. She doesn't look at him as if he's just admitted he's a monster, she tells him that he was acting in the best interests of his family. The fact that he killed the wrong man doesn't seem to bother either of them, and their lust for revenge is apparently spent; there is no mention of killing the actual murderer. What's more, police officer Sean knows that Jimmy killed Dave, and yet does nothing about it. I took the support of the wife and the non-action of the cop to mean that Eastwood was telling us this was all inevitable: that the stunted system of playground honour these men live by is reality, and even if mistakes get made, it's a necessary system.

Now, however, I think that Eastwood does what few directors do: he allows the audience to make up their own mind. I think that he is showing us just how limited and immature these men are, and how their code of honour makes them into lesser human beings. But instead of telling us that, he allows us to infer it from their behaviour. They wear their crosses (Jimmy has a giant one tattooed on his back), but that's all about being Irish-Bostonian-American, not about anything Jesus might have said about forgiveness and mercy.

Eastwood tells his story in a classical way, and has a very subtle touch with irony - the old-fashioned kind of irony, the way it was before self-conscious post-modernists beat us all over the head with it. He simply shows us what the characters believe about themselves, and what they say about themselves, and he shows us that it's not really true, at least not on every level.

A final note is that these are great actors, and the performances are amazing. Despite their well-known faces, I saw nothing but the characters they were playing. Laura Linney doesn't have much of a role here (there are no strong female characters), but I liked seeing the hardness she portrayed here, since I'm more used to seeing her in cute, dimple-oriented roles. Everyone deserved the awards they got or were nominated for, and if Tim Robbins didn't have political problems in Hollywood, he would have been all over that supporting actor award!