Mystic River
The author of Mystic River Dennis Lehane called his novel a ‘street opera’ and Sean
Penn’s dominating performance in today’s film certainly does show grand emotions we
would associate with an operatic performance.
Clint Eastwood, the director, achieved a scoop with getting his first choice of actors for
all the main roles. No-one could complain with actors such as Kevin Bacon and Tim
Robbins to complete the pivotal trio of leads.
The three leads which we first see as the much younger Jimmy, Sean and Dave do have
an odd kind of friendship; born more of geographical convenience than any real affection
for one another. This continues into their mature lives when we meet them again, now
bonded by a local murder, with one now the cop, one the father of the victim and one a
suspect in the crime.
Released in 2003, Mystic River won best supporting actor for Tim Robbins and best Actor
for Sean Penn at the academy awards. At the time, Sean Penn had just shaken off his
reputation as a movie brat with a fiery temper and also for his action packed marriage to
Madonna. He had quietened down his image by 2003 and was proving himself a talented
actor when able to harness his energies on screen.
Although elements in Mystic River play according to the form of a police procedural, the
movie is about more than the simple question of guilt. It is about unspoken secrets and
unvoiced suspicions, and very much about the private loyalties of husbands and wives.
The film runs for 2 hours and 12 minutes. Although the library closes at 4.00 the
basement car park will remain open until you have all exited the building. If you want a
second cup of coffee please hold on to your cup and saucer.
Join us afterwards for a discussion about dialogue, interesting scenes and character
motivation in the movie.
Our next film Doubt starring the incomparable Meryl Steep, will screen at 2.30pm but
starting April with The Grapes of Wrath we will revert back to the original time of a
2.00pm start.
Toilets are behind you and fire escapes are to your left against this wall.
Mystic River
Directed by Clint Eastwood (2003)
Tagline: “We bury our sins, we wash them clean”
Filmed in Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Based on the novel by Dennis Lehane
Principal cast:
Sean Penn as Jimmy Markum
Laura Linney as Annabeth Markum
Tim Robbins as Dave Boyle
Marcia Gay Harden as Celeste Boyle
Kevin bacon as Sean Devine
Laurence Fishburne as Whitey Powers
Tom Guiry as Brendan Harris
1>> A review of the original novel of Lehane’s observed;
“As children, Jimmy, Sean and Dave have an odd kind of friendship, born more of
geographical convenience than any actual affection for one another.”
Do you think the film successfully translates this “odd friendship” to the screen?
2>> The abductor of Dave has a prominent gold ring on his finger with a cross on it.
Do you think this was a comment on the Catholic Church or could it mean something
else?
Film fact: An entire chapter of the novel is devoted to young Dave’s return to the
community which is summarised in the film with one brief scene outside Dave’s and the
adult’s comment “Looks like damaged goods to me.” Then we see Dave’s silhouette at
the upper window and Sean gives a little acknowledgement to him before the blind is
drawn down by the guarding parent.
3>> When Jimmy’s daughter is murdered the three former friends are thrown together
again but at least one is bound for self destruction.
What do the following 4 scenes have to say about the 3 lead characters?
What trauma do they all hold from their lives?
Is ‘Mystic River’ more than just a crime drama?
[Detective Whitey Powers comments on Jimmy’s appearance]
Whitey:
Your pal Jimmy Markum, the moment I laid eyes on him, I could tell he’d done
time. They never lose that tension, it settles in their shoulders.
Sean:
He’s just lost his daughter, that’s what’s in his shoulders.
Whitey:
No, that’s in the stomach, the tension in his shoulders; that’s prison.
[Dave’s wife comes home to find Dave watching a vampire movie]
Dave:
I’ve been thinking about vampires. They’re undead but I think there’s
something beautiful about it. Maybe one day you wake up and you forget what it’s like to
be human. Then it’s okay.
AND
[Dave tells a parable to his son]
Dave:
Because sometimes the man wasn’t a man at all. He was the boy, the boy
who escaped from wolves…. Living in a world the others never saw….I just got to get my
head right, catch a nice long sleep and the boy will go back to the forest.
[Sean takes another silent phone call from his estranged wife]
Sean:
Oh, me? I’m tired of wishing things made sense. I’m tired of caring about
some dead girl. Sending killers to jail is where they’ve been heading all their dumb pathetic
lives. The dead are still dead.
A good line: This neighbourhood needs a crime wave. Get property values (and rent)
back to where they belong.
4>> What do you make of the working relationship the two cops have?
What sort of dynamic does it add to the movie?
Sean: One of these days my wife will phone, I’ll pick up, and she’ll tell me why she left.
Whitey:
Yeah? Well maybe she’s waiting for you to say something.
Good production design: When Dave is watching the vampire movie he gets out of his
armchair to voice his thoughts to a scared Celeste. He now looks like an extra from a
horror movie. The room is dim and in a murky green colour wash reminiscent of a black
and white film. A single light source is from above gives him a creepy look and the dark
wooden furniture behind him is antique and therefore from another century.
Dave:
It’s like vampires, once it’s in you it stays.
Celeste:
What stays? You’re scaring me Dave!
5>> Dave is often asked about the damage to his hand and he gives a different answer
each time! First it’s moving a friend’s couch, and then it’s a garbage disposal unit.
Why does Dave tell so many lies and half truths?
Can you recall a time early on in the film when he did tell the truth, and what happened
as a result?
Why does Dave give a false murder confession to Jimmy?
Film Trivia: The waterfront ‘Emerald Bar’ where Dave has his last drinks before being
murdered, was constructed just for the movie, then torn down later as it was a rented
site. Tim Robbins says: “An unlikely place for a bar, not a lot of foot traffic” and also “If
you have ever done a home renovation in NY city you realise how slow building can be,
then you go on a film set and they build a complete shack in three days!”
6>> [Sean tells Jimmy the news that they have found the killers, but Jimmy has already
acted on his suspicions and killed Dave.]
Sean:
When did you last see Dave Boyle?
Jimmy:
That was 25 years ago going up this street in the back of that car.
Sean: Jimmy! What did you do?
Jimmy: Thanks for catching my daughter’s killers Sean. If only you had been a little faster.
Sean: Are you going to send Celeste Boyle 500 a month too?
What is the significance of the last line?
Do any of you sense any other parallels of Mystic River to the 1974 film The Godfather?
7>> An important theme of the movie is the role of the men’s respective wives.
Jimmy’s wife Annabeth supports her husband, even in his murderous quest for revenge.
The anxious and confused Celeste doubts the explanations of her husband because of his
worsening habit of keeping secrets and bizarre vampire talk.
Lauren as the wife of Sean, I think, really just neatly completes the trio of partners, and
some may consider their sudden reconciliation rather weak and happens just to give a
neat closure pattern for the 3 central couples and finish the movie on some positive note.
Consider this interesting scene now called ‘The King’s wife’ or ‘Lady MacBeth’:
[Jimmy returns to Annabeth after the night of the murder]
Jimmy: I killed Dave. I killed him and threw him in the Mystic. But I killed the wrong man.
Annabeth:
Last night, when I put the girls to bed, I told them how big your heart
was….and that their Daddy would do whatever he had to do for those he loved…and then
the girls fell asleep at peace.
Jimmy:
Last night, you knew what was going to happen?
Annabeth:
Celeste called me, she was worried about Dave. She told me what she told
you about her suspicions. What kind of wife voices those things about her husband? And
why did she go to you?
Jimmy:
Why didn’t you call?
Annabeth:
It’s like I told the girls, their Daddy’s a King. And a king knows what to do and
does it, even when it’s hard, and that’s all that matters. Because everyone’s weak Jimmy,
everyone but us.
When Annabeth tells her calming story to Jimmy, what type of story is it worded like?
8>>What is the error of ‘The Queen’s’ or ‘Lady MacBeth’s’ line of reasoning here?
9>> Can you think of any more parallels to The Godfather (and the duty of the mafia
wives to their husbands)?
Film Trivia: Author Dennis Lehane called his Mystic River a ‘street opera’ and Sean
Penn’s dominating performance, introverted and self-persecutory, bursting with
elemental rage, certainly enforces this.
10>> Days later at the street parade, Sean mimes firing a bullet at Jimmy, who, just like
the kid of their pasts, mimes an explosive impact. In this neighbourhood world it now
seems that Jimmy gets away with murder.
What else is going on in this important scene?
Who is powerful?
Who is weak?
Who is a threat?
More film trivia: The Godfather Part II has a flashback scene which features a street
parade in an Italian neighbourhood of old New York where a young Don Corleone
covertly executes a local standover man which establishes his reputation and power.
11>> Mystic River has been criticised as;
“Dwelling in a bleak realm of eternal misery and character ambiguity”.
Do you agree with this comment or find it all part of the film’s message?
Suggested answers (don’t cheat!) to the questions
1>>I thought the three young boys playing in the street were well cast as an unlikely
group of friends; Sean the tough guy verging on criminality, Dave the vulnerable one,
Sean the passive observer. But it made sense they would still play together as
neighbours.
As adults we then see how life has changed them, with some kind of resentment or
unease below the surface.
2>>Tim Robbins confirms it was not a comment on child abuse in the church but more
one of adults wearing a dubious cloak of authority and using that perceived power to
manipulate children.
3>>All of the three leads are traumatised characters.
The film is also about guilt and mistakes and agony resurfacing after decades of
secretiveness:
3b>>-Jimmy is a criminal who has turned his back on past ways but whose daughter’s
murder pulls him back into the criminal ways of retribution and violence.
-Dave was always damaged after his childhood abduction and watches vampire movies
to find metaphors for the way he feels but after killing a man using the services of a boy
prostitute this brings his unstable broody nature to the fore.
-Sean’s wife has left him taking away his unborn daughter whose name he doesn’t even
know. He is hurting badly from this desertion and his work seems futile to him.
3c>>All three are now awkwardly bound together again and the film now looks at the
loyalty of family and friends and how far old bonds can be tested.
4>>They are like an old married couple who bicker away in their cruiser.
They irritate each other at times but always have concern for the other.
Notice that Whitey’s comment was to prove profound.
5a>>Lying has become a habitual impulse to protect himself from any imagined threat.
He tells lies if he thinks that is what someone wants to believe.
5b>>The one time we see him tell the truth (and his friends protected themselves by
lying) was when he gave his real address to the abductors and he ends up experiencing a
trauma that lasts a lifetime. So telling the truth did not serve him well in the past.
If he had told the truth to his wife that night he came home with the busted up hand and
knife wound then none of his tragic consequences would have followed.
5c>>He trusted Jimmy’s word that he would be safe if he ‘confessed’, so he lies once
again to tell Jimmy what he thinks he wants to hear. But Jimmy recants his promise and
kills him.
6a>>Sean is dryly suggesting that Jimmy may now become a benefactor to Dave’s
bereaved family or is it merely a cutting remark to show his knowledge of Jimmy’s other
subterfuge of sending $500 a month to Ray’s wife to maintain the fiction that he is alive
somewhere.
6b>>Eastwood recalls a scene from the Godfather film by intercutting the police
discovery of the murder scene with Jimmy and family attending his children’s first
communion.
(Coppola had a baptism of Michael Corleone’s infant child intercut with scenes of the
family’s new found enemies being assassinated.)
7>>It sounds like a fairytale! Especially with its hushed tones just like one would calm
children at night, and fuel their fanciful dreams.
8>>She encourages a fantasy of the vengeful king acting righteously and justly. Not so!
Tim Robbins’s comment: “I find it curious that some people take this scene as condoning
his actions, I don’t agree. If you look at Shakespeare’s play of MacBeth they were both
doomed because of their acceptance of their murderous crimes. If they are stand-ins for
the MacBeths and she is feeding into his desire for power then the violence will continue
on and on and revisit his family and the people he loves, he is returning to the world of
the gangster filled with vengeance and retribution. That’s the tragedy; even if he does
get away with Dave’s murder the violence will not end.”
9>>The wives of the mafia operatives would regularly go to their church to pray for the
souls of their criminal husbands! (Perhaps that is from the book.)
A weak and confused Celeste trustingly approaches the ‘Godfather’ (Jimmy) of the
neighbourhood to voice her concerns rather than approaching the police (or her God!)
Her weak faith in her husband’s unexplained behaviour results in his murder.
Annabeth: “What kind of wife voices those things about her husband? And why did she go
to you?
10>>This street parade scene seems to be confirming a new hierarchy.
Who is powerful? Is Jimmy’s leather jacketed appearance on the steps with his wife and
Savage brothers in attendance actually confirming his resurgent power as the king of the
neighbourhood?
Who is weak? Celeste Boyle is the weak and tragic figure now frantically waving from
behind the crowd and trying to catch her son’s attention on the baseball float. Her son is
yet to learn of the loss which will now shatter his own life because of the ‘vampires and
wolves’ that really did pursue his father to death.
Who is a threat? Is the director hinting that the case is not yet closed and Sean will bring
Jimmy to justice? Is this the only threat to Jimmy’s new found dominance?
Kevin Bacon’s comment: “He should never have taken up the case, he is too close to the
people involved…he’s definitely a flawed character, flawed in terms of his policing
technique and that’s part of the ambiguity of the ending; will he let Jimmy get away with
it?
11>>Tim Robbins’s comment: “The moral ambiguity of the film which allows people to
make their own decision about it is really important. The flip side of the coin is where
everything is tied up in a neat little package, and the guilty are arrested, is not true to
life…Imagine getting to the end of Hamlet and the cops show up and arrest the bad guys
and take them away. It’s not real. Bad guys get away with things. Good guys get caught
up in tragedy. No-one is all good and no-one is all bad.”