Review of Mystic River (2003) by Arum Padma O — 23 Jul 2012

Mystic River, Great Movies.

*Mystic River* is a very American take on genres more usually evoked by Europeans, a sophisticated cross between the kitchen sink working class British films and the spare, family-style murder mysteries, and that has only otherwise been achieved in the U.S. through whole seasons of "The Sopranos.".

The clues to the mystery are subtly given to us within the first ten minutes when we meet the very individual yet deeply connected characters embedded within a powerful sense of place, isolated from downtown and change by the titular geography, with the looming bridge a constant visual landmark, only a notorious traffic bottleneck to most Bostonians.

The accents aren't completely accurate, but at least some regionalism is attempted. Overlooking it from the bridge, one of the key trio early on calls it "the old neighborhood," as he's somewhat left it, as in parallel his wife has somewhat left him, but both keep feeling silent tugs to come back.

Memory and time catches up to the audience too in seeing two of our finest actors as gray-haired fathers, but Sean Penn and Tim Robbins are masterful as damaged men and even more damaged parents haunted by their mutually touched yet separately karoomed past and present. They are living demonstrations of Faulkner's dictum "The past is never dead. It's never even past," with horrific consequences for all.

The strong theme of the sins of the fathers keeps the men up front, but their wives are crucial fulcrums for loyalty and motivation, and Laura Linney's and Marcia Gay Harden's characterizations chillingly match the men one-on-one at the climax and conclusion.

The constant sense of brooding unease is promulgated enormously by director Clint Eastwood's masterful music which floats up like a body in the river and keeps up the tensions in even quotidian-seeming scenes. Sound in general bubbles up for atmosphere, from Red Sox games to telephone rings.

The cinematography is lusciously saturated for gray skies that ironically clear up to blinding sunshine at the uneasy end, for a neighborhood parade that celebrates Patriot's Day while most of Boston is doubtless cheering on the marathoners.