*** Official MYSTIC RIVER Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Cagri]

Huh? I think this is one of the MOST realistic parts of the movie. Every character, except for the police, are in shock, either from committing a murder, or from having their daughter/niece/cousin/friend brutally murdered. The whole movie takes place in 2-3 days, so there wouldn't be a chance for anyone to regain their composure and start acting "normal" again.

Hmm...
What is "normal" then?
What I am saying is, they do not by any means act "normal" as people would act in such a situation. I am not expecting them to act like nothing had happened.

Look at this way;
2 men kidnap a boy in the middle of the day in the middle of a street after a 5 minute conversation and keep him for 4 days.

A 19 year old girl doesn't come home after a night out and she knows it's her sister's first communion. Father calls the friends she has been with, they don't know where she is. Father goes to church and attends the communion with a smile on his face like there's nothing to worry about. Now for me these were the signs of what would follow afterwards. I wasn't wrong.

The kidnapped boy grows up in the same neighbourhood and marries to the cousin of Jimmy, who was with him the day he was kidnapped. The cousin does not know what her husband has been through. Dave hasn't told her wife anything about what had happened to him. Then one night; and look at the holy coincidence that this is the same night the 19 yr old girl gets killed; he comes home with someone else's blood all over him. His wife gets suspicious of him the minute she hears that the girl is killed, and she starts to believe her husband is the killer in the next following days. She immeadiately goes to her cousin, which is known to be an ex villain, and tells him that her husband is the killer of his daughter. What happens next is, the father of the daughter kills her husband who is also the father of the wife's little boy.

Within this broad frame of totally irresponsible and unexplainable events, there are many small details which I am not bothered to mention.

Well, if you are able to accept this as a 'normal' way of behaviour and act, than you are correct, the film is great otherwise.

One more thing that bothered me about this film is the way it characterises Dave. He is mostly pictured as a person who bears the traumatic affects of the incident he has been through, a person who is not very clever and loses his control under pressure. His explanations about the murder he commited and his behaviour to Jimmy was all supporting this personality built by Eastwood. But remember how cool and how clever he was when Morpheus was questioning him. That doesn't fit his character at all, and makes you wonder "man, if you are a guy of such solid nerve how on earth you fucked up and got killed because of a murder you haven't comitted!!!"

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Well, if you are able to accept this as a 'normal' way of behaviour and act, than you are correct, the film is great otherwise.

I do not know where you are from, but in the hardscrabble streets of a town like South Boston, adults damaged by childhood trauma, irresponsible 19 year old girls, kidnapped/molested little boys (*catholic priests* *cough*cough*), murdering street thugs, overworked state police and wives who are married to men with secrets are par for the course. It is this realism that Lehane brings to his novels (Lehane is from Dorchester - my birthplace - a blue collar part of Boston similar to Southie) that makes him a popular author among Boston area residents. The novel and the movie were spot on for realism in depicting my area, right down to the street hockey nets in the middle of the road.

If you do not come from an area of this type, I can see where it would seem unrealistic to you, but trust me - unrealistic is the last thing a Boston resident would call Mystic River.

 

[Brent Bridgeman]

Exactly! Great point Lew. This movie (and the book even more) really sticks with you and makes you think about it for days or even weeks afterwards. It's not a tidy package where the "good" guys win and the "bad" guys get their commupance. There are many, many shades of gray in this story, and that's what I love about it.

And Jeff, thanks for the insight on South Boston. That helps give it even more perspective.

 

[Lew Crippen]

One more thing on the realism issue: Eastwood has constructed a classic tragedy. Total realism is not the point, any more than it was for Aeschylus or Shakespeare. A sense of heightened reality helps us understand both the fall of Jimmy and the sense of the inevitable for all the characters as they play out their parts.

I mostly agree with Jeff’s depiction of the possibility (perhaps even the probability) of all this occurring. But to demand or even expect complete realism is to miss the point that I believe Eastwood is trying to make.

Of course you may well feel that he has not done a very good job in what he is trying to achieve.

 

[Cagri]

Gee, early plot points in a narrative actually leading up to what happens later in the narrative, who would have thunk it? If they did not lead to anything, the critics would be saying they were unneccessary tangets or subplots. You just can't win with some people.

I don't have an idea what you're saying here unless you misunderstood my words. Those two scenes in the beginning made me think that the film was upto some unrealistic plot and I wasn't wrong. I did not predict what was going to happen, but in what way it was gonna happen.

You're right I'm not from South Boston. Maybe that's why I find it too difficult to believe that a father won't care if the 19 year old daughter doesn't come home on her sister's first communion day and the girls she had been together don't know where she is; but at the same time he cares enough for her to not let her see the boy whose father he'd killed in the past.

I take from your post that you also find it very common practice in South Boston for wives to get their husbands killed. You also find it common that people in South Boston do not talk about a kidnap incidents which had happened in their neighbourhood in the past so that the guy's wife doesn't know anything about it, they prefer keeping it as a secret...

Yeah, it is difficult to win with some people but I have difficulty to understand why it effects your eyes...

 

[Brent Bridgeman]

Dangit, I wish you guys would stop posting while I'm typing! You make too many good points!

 

[Brent Bridgeman]

Obviously, it doesn't.:rolleyes

 

[Jeff Gatie]

I take from your post that you also find it very common practice in South Boston for wives to get their husbands killed. You also find it common that people in South Boston do not talk about a kidnap incidents which had happened in their neighbourhood in the past so that the guy's wife doesn't know anything about it, they prefer keeping it as a secret...

Absolutely. A wife is more likely to go to the streets/family to solve something than to go to the police. People from that area do not go to the police for anything. Lehane wrote an entire novel based in Charlestown (just across the river from Southie) in which the main plot centered around the fact that Charlestown has the highest rate of unsolved murders in the country. This is because no one talks to the police and they let the street sort it out.

And what is so hard to believe about a man molested as a boy keeping the details hidden from his wife/peers? It has taken 20 years for some of the victims of the priest scandal to come forward; many of them still out there and many more with their lives ending in suicide or tragedy. Keeping secrets is the way you survive on the streets, it is not too hard to understnad.

 

[Brent Bridgeman]

Sounds like a great tag line for a movie trailer, Jeff! I can just hear that guy now.

 

[Michael Reuben]

The cousin does not know what her husband has been through. Dave hasn't told her wife anything about what had happened to him.

Celeste does know what happened to Dave. It's made clear in the movie that she does. This has been already been covered in detail.

M.

 

[Cagri]

One more thing on the realism issue: Eastwood has constructed a classic tragedy. Total realism is not the point, any more than it was for Aeschylus or Shakespeare. A sense of heightened reality helps us understand both the fall of Jimmy and the sense of the inevitable for all the characters as they play out their parts.

I disagree. This film was constructed as a realistic drama. No poetic storytelling or dialog, no symbolism, no deep character drawing, nothing complicated.

Jeff's picture of S.Boston is actually supporting my point about Jimmy's initial reaction. If it's such a rough place he should be much more worried.

While I don't think that what had been told in the film is "impossible" to happen in real life, I think the film is asking me to accept too much of irresponsible action. I'm not even started about the predictable ending, slow plot development, etc.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

BTW, if anyone wants to learn more about life on the streets of Southie, I can't recommend enough the book "All Souls" by Michael Patrick McDonald (there's a Southie name if I ever heard one). It is the blunt, scary and often comical memoir of a man who grew up in the Southie projects as 1 of 9 children of a single mother. The coincidences of tragedy and the involvement with gangsters, racism, drugs and death make the plotlines in Mystic River look positively simplistic by comparision and this is a true story. A depressing, yet marvelous, book about the largest, poorest and most drug ridden white ghetto in the United States and a unplanned primer to anyone trying to understand the culture/mindset depicted in Mystic River or to a lesser point, Good Will Hunting. For those that call Mystic River "unrealistic", this book will show you just how wrong that critique is.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Jeff's picture of S.Boston is actually supporting my point about Jimmy's initial reaction. If it's such a rough place he should be much more worried.

People who live in rough areas tend not to get as concerned when their 19 year old daughters don't come home after a night of partying. If outsiders were visting Southie, their kids would never leave the house. Longtime residents get immune to the dangers on the street and that combined with the street savy of the kids who grew up there tends to make you not as concerned as someone who may be petrified of the dangers of the street. That aside, Jimmy was concerned and was not oblivious to the danger she might be in, he just dealt with it as any streetwise thug would.

 

[Lew Crippen]

I disagree. This film was a constructed as a realistic drama. No poetic storytelling or dialog, no symbolism, no deep character drawing, nothing complicated.

Go back and watch the scene where Anabeth comforts Jimmy after he murders Dave. Aside from her first name, she repeatedly refers to him as a ‘king’.

IMO, this is a deliberate choice of words so that we understand Jimmy’s position (not that of the owner of a small business, but one of prominence and importance). This is to satisfy one of the base requirements of a tragedy: that one must fall from a height. A common person can never fit into this classic defination.

Eastwood has resolved for us the one remaining issue that kept this from being a true tragedy.

For me the dialogue as constructed makes no sense otherwise.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Eastwood has resolved for us the one remaining issue that kept this from being a true tragedy.

Exactly, Lew. This is what made Mystic River unique among Lehane's work. His other novels are great detective yarns, above the level of most, but still just detective stories. Mystic River is darker, deeper and grander than his other novels and he really raised the bar from good detective story to Shakesperean tragedy. It is a brave book and it is no surprise that those that read it come away with the feeling that there is much more to it than they thought there would be. The movie perfectly echoes this and your analysis of the film tells why. It is Shakesperean tragedy set on the (realistic) streets of today and I for one found it brilliant; despite the fact that I went in with reservations about seeing a film with Penn and Robbins starring. I'm glad I got over that personal flaw real quick.

 

[Cagri]

Jeff, you are making it sound like the criticism about realism is only made because of Jimmy's reaction to his daughter's not coming home. It's not only that, it's the many things I pointed out coming together and makes it hard to accept it as a whole, for me anyway...

And, actually if Clint Eastwood has intended to show us a place like you tell us, he is most unsuccessful ( I do not think his intention was that btw). You know the territory and look at what happens in the film from that point, but I haven't got the opinion that the place was such a terrible one from the looks of the streets the tobacco shop the hose the clothes etc.

 

[Cagri]

Lew, with all due respect, is this what you offer as an example ? Do you really think that is enough for calling this film a classic drama such as Shakespeare's masterpieces?

 

[Michael Reuben]

I may have missed that, but then it makes it all too much to accept. She knows what the guy has been through and all she does is pointing him as the killer of the girl... She should have tried to understand what he was going through before jumping to the conclusion that he was the killer of the girl.

I covered this in detail in a prior post, but given your view of the film, I doubt you'd find my explanation satisfactory.

M.

 

[Cagri]

Well, I've got things to do and I'll read and post later on, seems you're fired up about this and can't catch up with yous at the moment really among all the other stuff I've been doing.

 

[Michael Reuben]

seems you're fired up about this

I'd say that you're more accurately describing yourself. It's understandable that people who enthusiastically enjoyed a film would want to talk about it. What I can never understand are people who hate a film and yet want to keep devoting their time and energy to posting and posting AND POSTING about it.

M.