Clint Eastwood
Mystic River

A bleak fresco of today's society: Mystic River

Dear old Clint Eastwood, a true icon of spaghetti western, a tough and straightforward man of the past, has accustomed us in recent years to surprising results behind the camera. The diptych “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” is just the latest episode in a series of excellent films directed by him, among which the acclaimed “Million Dollar Baby”, the moving “A Perfect World”, and indeed, “Mystic River” stand out.

It's a film of great depth, without mincing words, dry and sharp, sometimes cold in depicting the quiet desperation, to put it in Pink Floyd's words, that shatters the lives of three ordinary kids – who then become men – from Boston.

Jimmy, Sean, and Dave play on the streets of their neighborhood; they are three ordinary boys who live their lives in the apathy and dullness of the city's most rundown areas. And like all boys, they pull some pranks; one day they decide to sign their names on some fresh cement. It's the beginning of the end; two shady figures, pretending to be policemen, take Dave away and, having locked him in a dark basement, take advantage of him for several days. The boy eventually escapes, but his life is marked forever. 

The story then moves to about twenty-five years later. The event that triggers it is the murder of Katy, Jimmy's nineteen-year-old daughter, now a tradesman after a criminal past. Investigating her death is Sean, now a detective. Needless to emphasize the situation's drama. The two, after their traumatic youth, had lost sight of each other. It is thus pain that reunites them. But not only that; Dave, the third friend, who never had a youth, becomes, due to some wounds and chronological inconsistencies, one of the main suspects. It is violence that reunites the three childhood friends; the inexorability of pain permeates the story, making it assume markedly dark and exasperated tones.

It is this web of suspicions and tensions that fuels the thriller's development, which takes on, for much of its duration, clear psychological nuances. In such a complex scenario stands the outstanding performance of all the actors. The various characters possess, from the outset, a well-defined and articulated character trait. But such depth would easily have been lost if the actors had not been up to par. Fortunately, this is not the case. Sean Penn is Jimmy, a father torn by grief, yet able to face reality with incredible lucidity. The shades of his expression are at times chilling, so believable and powerful as to deeply engage the viewer. Academy Award 2003.

Dave is played by a magnificent Tim Robbins, perfectly conveying the corrupt personality of a man consumed by the searing rancor towards those who prematurely took away his innocence. A person obsessed with the thought of those "vampires" who killed his soul. Academy Award 2003. When the two then converse, the result is even more touching. On one side, pain and anger, on the other, insecurity and fear of being suspected. It unfolds as a flow of catharsis and emotion, enveloped in a profound sense of incommunicability and loneliness; nothing is destined to be resolved for the better. Everyone fights their battle alone.

The part of Sean, also challenging, is entrusted to Kevin Bacon. He is a character who fights with his firm conviction of Dave's innocence, but must confront the cynicism of his colleague (Laurence Fishburne), firmly persuaded of the latter's guilt.

Now, if you haven't seen the movie, I suggest you do so before continuing to read.

The theme of pain is central and fundamental. The violent act never ends in itself, but always brings along repercussions. One way of saying that violence begets more violence. But Eastwood doesn't allow us to understand that immediately. For much of the film, the viewer believes Dave is indeed the culprit. Only in the last minutes do we discover that the wounds on Dave's hands and stomach were caused by a struggle with a pedophile who was assaulting a boy.

When we discover it, the regret is enormous. The malignant seed planted decades earlier has sprouted into a new terrible act of violence.

However, this murder does not exhaust the negatively haunting evil. In fact, in the finale, we await a sensational bloodbath. While Sean uncovers the true perpetrators of the murder, Jimmy, following some erroneous tips from Dave's wife, decides to kill the former friend.

It is a tragic ending, where violence engulfs everything, destroying the existence of innocent people.
We are shown with a biting coldness the impossibility of suppressing evil, once it has been born.

If you dig deep, the themes tackled in these over two hours of drama are much more varied and complex than they might seem.

There is the theme of incommunicability; when Celeste, Dave's wife, finds her husband wounded, she doesn't believe his words (though lying) but prefers to heed her own erroneous suspicions. When Dave tries to make her understand that he killed a person because they reminded him of the "werewolves" who assaulted him, she shuts herself in her shell of prejudice and superficiality. Even Dave says he "had to pretend to be someone else," "Dave is dead." Everything revolves around people's inability to be sincere and true. This impossibility is sometimes dictated by external factors (Dave's case), sometimes by hypocrisy and lack of sensitivity.

In this case, Jimmy can't bear the weight of truth with his wife and prefers to give in to her flattery. When Jimmy talks to Dave before killing him, he tells him to admit what he did; he denies it, but when his own life is put on the line, he surrenders to the convenience of the lie. Obviously, the promise is not kept.

The society depicted in “Mystic River” is thus at the very least devious and hypocritical.

But not only that; the prevailing logic is that of prejudice. Jimmy hates his daughter's boyfriend because his father, Solo Ray, was his enemy. Sean's colleague considers him "biased" because he knows he was a friend of Dave. In short, no one trusts the other. Prejudice negatively influences every relationship.

Acting for the greater good is never victorious; those who are stronger and smarter always get away with it. Jimmy is the embodiment of this; his violent act goes unpunished, while Dave, after a life of pain, pays the price for something he didn't do. Even Dave's wife, who confides her suspicions to Jimmy with good intentions, ends up a widow and desperate, abandoned by the same Jimmy with whom she had been so transparent.

To falsity and injustice is added the illogical nature of actions. We discover that Katy was killed by two boys who just wanted to pull a prank. It's the unpredictability element that blends with the perverse logic of evil and makes the situation explode.
But who pays for this? The answer is; those who have already suffered are destined to suffer again, until the end of their lives. Evil almost takes root in the lives of its victims and continuously haunts them.

Thus, when Sean and Jimmy realize that Dave was unjustly killed, they dismiss the matter in a few lines. Regret surfaces, but immediately vanishes in front of the selfish prospect that their lives continue; they were luckier. The question is; “why them and not Dave?”
When Sean asks Jimmy when he last saw Dave, he replies “it was 25 years ago along this road in the back of that car" referring to the moment he was kidnapped.

It is evil, which chooses its victims and follows them until death, while those who did not get into that car, and remained strangers to the pain, can only perceive from afar life's inexorable negativity, only to be distracted by personal affections and some amusing parade.
The randomness of our destinies; a life can be decided in a few seconds, in the choice of a worm selecting its prey.

A desolate vision of today's society.