Mystic River

Yes­ter­day, after Tiffany got home from her trip to Iowa City, we went out and rented Mys­tic River for the evening. We put Aidan to bed, washed up, and set­tled in with some trep­i­da­tion. Since hav­ing Aidan, we haven’t felt that we were really emo­tion­ally ready for pow­er­ful dra­mas, how­ever good they might be. We’ve been avoid­ing House of Sand and Fog, for exam­ple. Mys­tic River was another one of those.

I’m happy to report that we can han­dle it. The movie was very good, with fine act­ing and excel­lent direct­ing, but I gotta say, it wasn’t as wrench­ing as I had been led to believe. Oh, it was plenty dra­matic, no doubt. And the pay­off really came in the last few scenes of the movie. The scene where Jimmy and Sean meet on the street and Sean tells Jimmy that they’ve caught his daughter’s killer starts a roller coaster of fan­tas­tic scenes… that one ends with Sean tak­ing a long awaited phone call that trans­forms him and seals Jimmy’s free­dom, and the trans­for­ma­tion is sub­lime. And the next scene, between Jimmy and his wife (Laura Lin­ney) is chill­ingly Mac­beth… and the­fi­nal scene at the parade, when they all see each other again… I found it only a shame because Tim Rob­bins wasn’t there… and he did such an excel­lent job in this movie.

Really very good. Much recommended.