Aint Them Bodies Saints (15.)
Directed by David Lowery.
Starring Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Nate Parker and Keith Carradine. 103 mins.
I’m still not entirely sure if I actually like that title but it sure did get me into see it. If it were called anything else there’s no way this period tale of an outlaw couple trying to get back together after he breaks out of jail would be getting reviewed.
It fits the film too – oblique and enticing but slightly too pleased with its poetic melancholy. After a botched robbery ends up in a shoot-out in which a cop (Foster) gets injured, Bob (Affleck) is sent to prison, longing for the day he can be reunited with his pregnant love Ruth (Mara.) By the time he manages to break out he has a four year old daughter and the recovered cop is taking a keen and sympathetic interest in his lady.
It’s an archetypal outlaw lovers on the run film, without the running. Writer/ director Lowery’s notion of visual poetry is too geared towards the tableau to allow for much in the way of movement. It sure does look pretty though and much as I’d like to make this a rare reviews that doesn’t mention the influence of Terrence Malick it’s hard not to when it opens with the trademark Malick shot of a back of a head moving away across a field at twilight.
Everything is shot in a murky dusky half-light that gives the film a soft painterly beauty but also bathes everything and everyone in sleepy torpor. Perhaps that is why nobody moves around much; they are afraid of tripping over or bumping into stuff in the gloom. Nobody has the energy to say much, or move their lips much when saying it.
That it carries you through to the end is down to the cast and Daniel Hart’s inventive and thrilling score. The music is busy and varied, tirelessly trying to maintain some dramatic tension and impetus, but is never obtrusive or overblown. Foster is almost unrecognisable as the sensitive lawman but Affleck, who seems to have dedicated his career to the portrayal of slightly dim Texas law breakers, is all too familiar. The revelation is Rooney Mara. She was good enough in the US version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but here she has the bearings of a star. Watching her here you can almost see the Oscar feted, grand dame of cinema acting she will be two decades from now.
Directed by David Lowery.
Starring Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Nate Parker and Keith Carradine. 103 mins.
I’m still not entirely sure if I actually like that title but it sure did get me into see it. If it were called anything else there’s no way this period tale of an outlaw couple trying to get back together after he breaks out of jail would be getting reviewed.
It fits the film too – oblique and enticing but slightly too pleased with its poetic melancholy. After a botched robbery ends up in a shoot-out in which a cop (Foster) gets injured, Bob (Affleck) is sent to prison, longing for the day he can be reunited with his pregnant love Ruth (Mara.) By the time he manages to break out he has a four year old daughter and the recovered cop is taking a keen and sympathetic interest in his lady.
It’s an archetypal outlaw lovers on the run film, without the running. Writer/ director Lowery’s notion of visual poetry is too geared towards the tableau to allow for much in the way of movement. It sure does look pretty though and much as I’d like to make this a rare reviews that doesn’t mention the influence of Terrence Malick it’s hard not to when it opens with the trademark Malick shot of a back of a head moving away across a field at twilight.
Everything is shot in a murky dusky half-light that gives the film a soft painterly beauty but also bathes everything and everyone in sleepy torpor. Perhaps that is why nobody moves around much; they are afraid of tripping over or bumping into stuff in the gloom. Nobody has the energy to say much, or move their lips much when saying it.
That it carries you through to the end is down to the cast and Daniel Hart’s inventive and thrilling score. The music is busy and varied, tirelessly trying to maintain some dramatic tension and impetus, but is never obtrusive or overblown. Foster is almost unrecognisable as the sensitive lawman but Affleck, who seems to have dedicated his career to the portrayal of slightly dim Texas law breakers, is all too familiar. The revelation is Rooney Mara. She was good enough in the US version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo but here she has the bearings of a star. Watching her here you can almost see the Oscar feted, grand dame of cinema acting she will be two decades from now.
