Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (***)
Directed
by: David Lowery
Starring:
Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Ben Foster, Keith Carradine, Nate Parker, Rami
Malek
Seen:
May 17th 2014
***
Out of ****
The
title Ain’t Them Bodies Saints has more to do with a feeling director David
Lowery wanted to convey than it does with the movie itself. Lowery once heard a
folk song from which the lyrics partially stuck in his head (slightly misheard),
and eventually ended up as the movie’s title. Lowery wanted to achieve a
certain mood or tone for the movie through this title, to imbue the movie with
the feel of an old folk song or an old piece of Americana. To that end he has
succeeded, as the movie feels like 70’s America should feel, and is (at least visually)
reminiscent of a Terrence Malick film in its ponderous nature. Ain’t Them Bodies
Saints however feels more beautiful and substantive than it actually is,
leaving the viewer impressed but slightly underwhelmed once the credits roll.
Ain’t
Them Bodies Saints starts with a very determined Ruth Guthrie (Mara) walking
away from an apologetic Bob Muldoon (Affleck), framed by a beautiful sunset,
and shows them making up while she tells him that she is pregnant. In his
obsession with carving out a perfect life for them Bob commits a robbery, after
which he is cornered by police in a deserted home with Ruth and his partner in the
crime. There is a shootout where his partner is killed, and Ruth wounds Deputy Patrick
Wheeler (Foster). Bob takes the wrap for Ruth, and is sentenced to a 25-year
prison sentence.
About
five years later, Bob manages to escape from prison (after 5 failed attempts)
and he is deadset on returning to Ruth and sweeping her away again, driven by a
deep longing for the ultimate romance. This though may be Bob’s flaw; the fact
that he seems to be more enamoured with the idea of the ultimate romance and its
consequent foolish notions than he is in fact in love with Ruth and the
daughter he has not yet met. Bob is headed back home, but the concept of home
for Ruth has changed since, as Skerritt (Carradine), possibly her father, has
provided a safe and secure life for her and her daughter by now. Bob’s choices
will lead to a life on the run, one of danger, while Ruth’s current life can
continue with security and a future for their daughter. Skerritt warns Bob to
stay away, but knows Bob is too stubborn to listen. He sends men after Bob,
which eventually and unfortunately backfires, making the inevitable that little
bit more tragic.
Ain’t
Them Bodies Saints is short, but efficiently told. While only 96 minutes long,
it manages to feel pensive at times while still feeling condensed to only the
absolutely necessary. You get the feeling that missing a single minute anywhere
would potentially ruin the plot, the flow of this understated story. Affleck
gives us a single-minded Bob similar to but perhaps slightly more courageous than
his character Robert Ford in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward
Robert Ford. Rooney Mara continues to impress me, as after The Social Network’s
opening salvo and her extreme Lisbeth Salander in The Girl With the Dragon
Tattoo she gives a quietly muted portrayal as the solitary Ruth, stretched
between safe security and a fading longing for the triumph of a big romance.
Ben Foster to me is fantastic as some sort of moral balance, he wants to
protect Ruth and capture Bob, but he also seems a little more interested in
Ruth than he perhaps should be.
Ain’t
Them Bodies Saints plays like a dream, a dream you wake up from refreshed but
uncertain of whether it truly carried much weight. The movie is good, and each
character is faced with consequences for all they do (sometimes fatally so),
but I can’t help but feel that the memory of the movie will fade to little more
than the feeling the title was meant to convey.
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