Husband and wife Bob (Casey Affleck) and Ruth (Rooney Mara) are on a crime spree when suddenly they are cornered in a remote farmhouse. During a shootout with the police, Ruth critically wounds police officer Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster) but Bob pretends it was him to save her from going to jail for a long time. Years later, Bob escapes from prison and makes his way across the Texas hills to reunite with his wife and daughter whom he’s never met.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is some sort of direct adaptation of the work of Terrence Malick. With its soft-focused yet striking visual style, it evokes Badlands and even Days of Heaven as it attempts to create a mythical ode to the more ethereal Westerns out there. Poetic in nature and often hard to work out in all its purposeful elusiveness (the perplexing title, for instance, is meant to conjure a mood and in fact has no meaning as it’s a case of the director misquoting lyrics of an old folk song), this deliberately paced and haunting crime drama creeps along with a quiet sense of foreboding.
It’s filled with beautiful Malick-esque imagery, striking shot composition, a peculiar but somehow perfect soundtrack (ranging from choreographed clapping to low-fi folk guitaring) and some tremendous performances. The ever-reliable Casey Affleck really captures the sense of a tortured husband trying his best to get back to his family no matter the cost while Rooney Mara is magnetic as his faithful wife held in stasis as she waits for her fugitive husband to return but knowing he probably won’t one way or another. Foster continues to prove his scene-stealing ability even as he takes a leaf out of Ryan Gosling’s book of saying a lot by saying a little.
It sets things up very well and does a brilliant job of creating a melancholic atmosphere that stays with you longer after the credits roll. However, it’s when the rather conventional plot kicks in especially towards the end (it plays out as a sort of more modern day Bonnie and Clyde) that it doesn’t quite come together satisfactorily. There’s a potentially interesting subplot involving Foster’s cop – who is still holding out hope he’ll catch the man who almost killed him years prior – growing attached to Mara’s character that never quite goes anywhere. And Keith Carradine, although playing a crucial role as the father of one of Bob’s fellow outlaws who died in the shootout that led to his arrest, feels rather wasted in the bigger picture. Gunplay and bouts of fairly strong bloody violence both liven things up and take away from the otherwise delicate, other-worldly tone.
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints ultimately works more as a mood piece than anything else and in that regard writer/director David Lowery (who notably edited Shane Carruth’s recent mind-bending experience Upstream Colour) should be applauded for creating one that gets under your skin. It functions as a homage to the American New Wave era of the ’70s and in its mythmaking of an American outlaw would make for an interesting double-bill with this year’s excellent Mud. It’s a measured slow burner of a film that tackles themes of loss, longing and consequences of actions with admirable tenderness. Its reach ultimately exceeds its grasp and is sometimes slow to a fault but this epic yet intimate film succeeds on the strength of its picturesque imagery, a trio of great performances and an ambitious sense of purpose.
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