Untwist Me, Foul Wench
Concerning the case of the fine film Mystic River and its damaging coda.
Mystic River follows the struggles of three men who’ve been connected to one another since a traumatic incident in their childhoods. As adults, Sean, Tim, and Kevin have a guarded but genuine friendship. When Sean’s teenage daughter is murdered, old tensions come to the surface. While Kevin sets out to find the killer, Sean struggles with his increasing belief that maybe Tim is the one who killed his daughter—and we wonder, too. Finally, after we’ve learned (without Sean knowing) that Tim is, in fact, guilty of a killing, but not the killing of Sean’s daughter, we watch as Sean has the biggest decision of his life to make: to kill Tim, or not to kill Tim?
Decisions like this are the stuff of great drama and great tragedy. The way that moment of decision is built is completely organic to both Sean and Tim’s characters.
And then, in the closing moments of the film... dun dun dun! Sean has a moment with his wife, and it turns out it was Lady Macbeth, er, The Wicked Stepmother, uh, Six the Cylon, um, Laura Linney all along. The coda implies that Laura was manipulating her husband somehow. Well… what? Why? How? When? And all those other good questions.
This “twist” isn’t just unnecessary—it actually taints the experience of viewing the film. You don’t need a twist when the movie clearly plays out impossible decisions with terrible consequences for characters we empathize with. We were completely on board with the tragedy of Sean Penn’s final choice and decision. Then, with the “twist”, we left the theatre confused, and a bit abused.
No new directions in the last five minutes, unless we’re talking about a horror cliffhanger ending. Otherwise… let us feel the weight of consequences for actions we actually witnessed and understood.
Most people who still say they enjoyed this film, ignore this ending.
Yep, that’s anecdotal evidence, right there. Deal with it.
posted by Jennica at 9:56 a.m.
3 Comments:
I'm amazed at your ability to remember these stories well enough to write about them years after the fact.
I saw Mystic River twice. I sort of liked it the first time, even though I had misgivings about the ending. I mean, it's a classy picture, which you acknowledge.
The second time I saw it, it was in Spanish.
I don't know Spanish. I'm suspicious of all their upside-down punctuation, those rascally Spaniards.
So I watched it without the benefit of really being able to process any intricacies, except what I could remember from my first viewing, and my memory for those things is staggeringly bad.
All I had were the broad sweeps of the story, then--the big picture, and the visual cues, motifs, etc.
The movie sucks. It sucks so bad. It undermines itself in a profound and unnecessary way. You beat it out, and you realize you already have a twist there. It's called a a good character arc.
This is a long-winded way of saying I agree with you.
I will anxiously be awaiting you take on the twist in Million Dollar Baby, one that I was disppointed with
Hmm, Moviequill... maybe it depends on how you define twist? I presume you're talking about the last act of MDB?
I didn't see it as a twist. It was definitely a surprise-- and one I was glad I hadn't been spoiled on before going in-- but in the end, I saw the last act as the place this film was going all along. The story is essentially testing our protagonist, Clint's, ability to get fully invested in another human being again. He's not going to be able to "protect himself" this time.
That said, I get why you'd be disappointed... most of us though we were in for a boxing flick.
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