Mystic River

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Vengeance Is Theirs

Mystic River

By Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

The critical community has spoken: Clint Eastwood's Mystic River is a
masterpiece and a profound, tragic statement about who we are and the
inevitability of violence in our lives -- a pitiless view, in which
violence begets violence and the sins of the fathers pass to later
generations.

Presumably these qualities are also in Dennis Lehane's best-selling
novel, which I haven't read, but it's the movie that's drawing most of
the superlatives from American critics. The acclaim started after the
film premiered at Cannes, when much of the griping American press seemed
to see it as a vindication of American filmmaking, an answer to the
terrible state of cinema in general. Some of those critics may have seen
it as a vindication of U.S. patriotism as well -- one reason it's likely
to rack up plenty of Oscars.

(clip)

Because the whodunit in Mystic River isn't solved until very late, we
wind up sharing many of the doubts and uncertainties of some of the
characters, particularly Jimmy, Sean, and Dave's wife, Celeste (Marcia
Gay Harden). This uncertainty is given much more poignance,
significance, and force by something we hear Jimmy saying at one point
to his dead daughter: "I know in my soul I contributed to your death --
but I don't know how." This is precisely where the art-movie function
kicks in, because insofar as we share these characters' ignorance about
the murder, we become morally implicated in some of their decisions.

Eventually we discover how Jimmy did in fact indirectly contribute to
his daughter's death, though this realization registers as secondary to
his killing of Dave in the mistaken belief that Dave killed Katie. What
bothers me most about Mystic River is the emotional, as opposed to
logical, validation of this killing, a validation that reminds me of
George W. Bush's apparently proud indifference to the fate of the 152
prisoners executed while he was governor of Texas -- he's never shown
any doubt about their guilt and even publicly mocked one woman's plea to
live, a decidedly unadult, not to mention un-Christian, attitude.

Jimmy promises to let Dave live if he'll "tell the truth" and "admit"
that he killed Katie, which forces Dave to lie. That Jimmy kills him
anyway -- not for lying but for supposedly telling the truth -- isn't
allowed to interfere for a second with Jimmy's status as tragic hero
rather than pathetic, retarded monster. Dave, who committed a desperate,
vengeful murder of his own around the time Katie was killed, is seen as
pathetic and retarded because of his childhood trauma, though his victim
is viewed as another bit of collateral damage that needn't concern us;
there's a tacit assumption that because he was a sexual molester, he
probably deserved to die.

Jimmy, whatever his failings, is allowed to stand tall. A desire for
revenge -- no matter how illogical, misguided, and ultimately disastrous
its premises might be -- is probably the most validated emotion in
current American movies and current American politics. It's seen as so
noble and righteous that for some it justifies a loss of civil
liberties, as well as capital punishment, holy wars, and collateral
damage. Even if the wrong people die, at least we know our intentions
were good. This is a form of popular psychosis, and it gives even such
seemingly antithetical movies as Mystic River and Quentin Tarantino's
Kill Bill -- Vol. 1 a grotesque kind of kinship. I hasten to add that
the most winning aspect of Tarantino's frenetic movie is that it doesn't
in any way pretend to be grown-up, whereas critics are claiming
Eastwood's movie has all the wisdom of his 70-odd years, if not the
wisdom of Solomon.

full: http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/2003/1003/031024.html

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