Mystic River (film)

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Movie
German title Mystic River
Original title Mystic River
Mysticriver-logo.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2003
length 138 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 14
Rod
Director Clint Eastwood
script Brian Helgeland
production Clint Eastwood,
Judie Hoyt ,
Robert Lorenz ,
Bruce Berman
music Clint Eastwood
camera Tom Stern
cut Joel Cox
occupation

Mystic River is a literary adaptation of the novel of the same name by Dennis Lehane . Clint Eastwood directed the award-winning melodramatic thriller in 2003 based on the script by Brian Helgeland .

action

The action begins in a working-class district of Boston : The three friends Dave Boyle, Jimmy Markum and Sean Devine - around 10-12 years old - are playing on the street and writing their names in the still damp cement of the sidewalk when they are told by an authoritarian man, who pretends to be a police officer. He accuses them of a crime and announces that he will take one of them with him. The choice falls on Dave. He was mistreated and raped for four days until he managed to escape.

25 years later, the paths of the childhood friends cross again under tragic circumstances. Jimmy is now a retired criminal who runs a small supermarket. Katie is his 19-year-old daughter from the relationship with his first great love, Marita, who died of cancer while he was in prison for two years. Since then, the two have been very close. On the other hand, Jimmy harbors an incomprehensible hatred of the family of his missing former friend Ray Harris. Now Katie is in a relationship with his son Brendan of all people, so the two of them have to keep the relationship a secret and have decided to run away without saying goodbye. Katie is murdered on her way home the previous night.

Sean, now a police officer, takes on the case as an investigator. It quickly turns out that Dave, who has been disturbed since his kidnapping, has a lot to hide: He behaves strangely after the murder and cannot explain a bloody wound to the hand to the investigators. He had told his wife Celeste, a cousin of Jimmy's second wife, that he had been attacked by a mugger and that he feared that he had killed him emotionally. But his wife becomes suspicious when she finds none of it in the papers and instead learns about Katie's murder. The investigators also question him as a suspect, as does Brendan Harris.

Ray Harris, who has been missing for years, is initially considered a suspect, especially since Katie was shot with a gun that he had already used in a previous robbery. His son Brendan Harris passes a polygraph test, and investigators don't see any motive he could have had. In the course of further investigations it turns out that Jimmy's prison sentence was connected to a betrayal by Ray Harris and that Jimmy could therefore not be there when Katie's mother died from cancer. Ray Harris disappeared without a trace shortly after Jimmy's release.

Dave tries to help those affected, but due to the horror of his own actions, he is confronted with the demons of his childhood again and is unable to talk about it. Meanwhile even his wife believes that her husband is the killer and tells Jimmy, who with the help of his criminal friends lures Dave to the banks of the Mystic River at night . Dave admits that on the night in question he slew a pedophile he caught abusing an underage boy. But Jimmy doesn't believe him and promises Dave not to kill him if he confesses to Katie's murder. Under this pressure, Dave falsely confesses to the murder and invents a motive. Jimmy breaks his promise, kills Dave and throws his body in the river.

The next morning, the true tragedy of the story opens up for Jimmy: Sean tells him that two neighboring boys killed his daughter Katie and that Dave was innocent - but he is wanted in connection with the killing of a convicted pedophile. One of the boys next door is Brendan's younger brother, who didn't want to lose him because of Katie. Katie's murder was a coincidence. The boys accidentally shot her with the gun and then killed her in a panic for fear of the consequences. Sean finds out indirectly from Jimmy that he murdered Dave, but does not arrest him, but lets him get away with it. Jimmy's wife persuades him to feel guilty and blames Dave's wife for denouncing her husband. In the final scene, Jimmy can be seen with his clan as a spectator at a holiday parade, while the desperate Celeste waves to her troubled son, who now has to grow up without a father, at the parade. From the other side of the street, Sean gives him a gesture that he will keep a close eye on him, but Jimmy is emphatically unaffected.

Emergence

Clint Eastwood got the idea to make a film by Dennis Lehane after reading a summary of the book in the newspaper. The entanglement of various characters in a single fateful event appealed to him in such a way that after reading the book he contacted Lehane and asked for the film rights. For his part, Lehane had previously categorically rejected a film, but Eastwood accepted. For the creation of the script, the two of them selected Brian Helgeland , who had already received an Oscar for the best adapted screenplay for LA Confidential . A parallel between the two stories is that L. A. Confidential also focuses on three very different main characters.

The shooting took place in Boston, where the novel is set. It was important to Eastwood to show the story as authentically as possible and pushed through the more expensive filming location compared to alternatives (e.g. in Canada). His concept of authenticity also means that the film was shot without digital effects and so is more reminiscent of conventional dramas from the 1970s in terms of style.

Clint Eastwood is also said by actors and employees that, unlike many other directors, he creates a pleasant atmosphere of calm on location instead of the typical high level of tension. He relies on the acting skills of his actors, which is expressed on the one hand in the fact that he gives the actors a lot of space to embody their own characters. On the other hand, Eastwood seldom shoots more than two takes of a scene and often has it recorded during rehearsals, which enables the actors to use their energy in a more targeted manner. The actors also emphasized how much the novel had helped them to shape their characters, as it provided them with background information and in this way answered many questions that otherwise would have had to be clarified by the director.

Film music

  1. Mystic River Main Title
  2. Abduction
  3. Communion / Katie's Absence
  4. Jimmy's Anguish
  5. Meditation # 1 - Piano
  6. Orchestral Variation # 1 of the Music from Mystic River
  7. Escape from the Wolves
  8. The Morgue
  9. Brendan's Love of Katie
  10. Meditation # 2 - Piano
  11. Dave's Past
  12. The Confrontation
  13. The Resolution
  14. A full heart
  15. Meditation # 3 - Piano
  16. Orchestral Variation # 2 of the Music from Mystic River
  17. Theme from Mystic River
  18. Cosmo
  19. Black Emerald Blues

(Source: )

Reviews

"The [...] psychological study of violence, an early shock with late effects and various forms of friendship and family ties draws its inner tension less from the cool and complicated storylines than from the subtly portrayed emotions of the excellently portrayed main characters."

- Lexicon of international film

"A really weighty drama, which in these times, when teenagers have long become the main target audience of the film industry, demands attentive, independent, adult viewers in order to show them again what the narrative cinema is actually capable of."

- Daniel Bickermann : "Mystic River" in "Schnitt - das Filmmagazin"

Trivia

Awards

The 24th directorial work by Clint Eastwood has received numerous awards. Among other things, she was nominated for six Academy Awards , five Golden Globe Awards and four BAFTA Awards .

Oscar

Awards:

further nominations:

Golden Globe Award

Awards:

further nominations:

British Academy Film Award 2004

Nominations :

Cannes International Film Festival

  • Golden Coach (Carrosse d'Or): Clint Eastwood

César

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating “particularly valuable”.

literature

  • Dennis Lehane: Mystic River (the book for the film), Ullstein Tb. November 2003, ISBN 3-548-25796-8 .
  • Eberhard Ostermann: Mystic River or the absence of the father . In: E. O .: The film count. Eight exemplary analyzes . Fink, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-7705-4562-9 , pp. 29-43.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for Mystic River . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , October 2003 (PDF; test number: 95 397 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Mystic River . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ a b c cf. Interviews with the director, actors and other stakeholders included in the bonus material of the double DVD release, Warner Home Video 2004
  4. ↑ Thom Jurek: Clint Eastwood - Mystic River [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]. AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek. In: AllMusic. Retrieved May 12, 2020 (English).
  5. ^ Mystic River in the Lexicon of International Films , accessed September 21, 2007 Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used
  6. ↑ Daniel Bickermann: A long, calm river. In: cut . Cut online, accessed May 20, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Biographical Notes on Bruce Ricker at Pasoroble Film Festival
  8. ^ Mystic River . In: FBW . German Film and Media Rating (FBW), accessed on November 20, 2017 .