Review: Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013)

Cast: Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster
Director: David Lowery
Country: USA
Genre: Drama
Official Trailer: Here

Editor’s Notes: Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is now playing in limited release.

Tensions run high throughout Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, director David Lowery’s second feature, yet for most of its runtime they are a blessed afterthought. Multiple deeply important questions for the characters linger over the proceedings, but they are always backgrounded by the film’s interest in contemplation; this is a movie far more interested in watching its characters work through their complex feelings and contend with the years of history that inform them than in resolving the conflicts that have them all reconsidering. Things do happen, and conflicts do come to a head, but the movie shines in the long, meandering moments that make up the road to resolution.

Multiple deeply important questions for the characters linger over the proceedings, but they are always backgrounded by the film’s interest in contemplation; this is a movie far more interested in watching its characters work through their complex feelings…

Set in Texas in an indiscriminate late ’60s time period, the film opens with a quarrel between two young criminals in what they don’t seem to recognize is a classic “doomed love”: Ruth (Rooney Mara) wants more for the two, while Bob (Casey Afleck) is more than willing to provide (an perhaps a bit too confident in his ability to do so). They fight, even though he finds it hard to take her threats too seriously, and they recommit to their eternal bond when she reveals she is pregnant. The two just need to pull one last job to secure a future for themselves and for their child. For many films, this robbery would form the cornerstone, yet Ain’t Them Bodies Saints skips straight ahead to its inevitable, violent failure, during which Ruth shoots Patrick (Ben Foster), a young police officer, and Bob agrees to take the fall to ensure her safety. The police drag the two away, and they lean against each other like the other’s touch is all that’s keeping them alive. This is the sort of young, self-obsessed love that is so all consuming it becomes impossible to even fully see the person you are committed to; though neither realizes it, they are both in love with the idea of the other person far more than they have ever taken the time to love the actual human being.

There’s a truth to the aphorism that “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” but only in that it is always easier to love the person you imagine someone to be than it is to love someone actually in front of you on a day to day basis. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints never comes right out and says this, but it shows us the way Bob pines for Ruth in ways that are too abstract to be actual; he loves her too much for that love to be contained by any living person. Ruth, meanwhile, has had their daughter to contend with in the years Bob has been in jail, has had a society to live in, relationships to form, time to grow and mature in a way that prison has not allowed Bob. He is tied up in their youthful dream of the future, in the way the two played at being adults in the passion of their early love. She has had time to become an adult and to understand that some of her childish dreams are impractical.

Whether, and if so how, the two will reunite is the main driver of the film’s plot, but it is hardly the central concern. Bob breaks out of prison, and his promises that he’ll be coming for his family the first chance he gets hang heavy over the proceedings. Yet the true suspense here is drawn not from whether Bob will make it home, but from what he will find when he gets there, from whether reality can possibly match up with each party’s idealized notions of the other. The film follows Bob as he slowly tries to make his way to Ruth and avoid capture by both the law and some old enemies looking for retribution, but it spends equal time with Ruth, who has been raising their daughter and developing ties to the community, including a burgeoning relationship with Patrick.

Try as I might, it is impossible to discuss the visuals of the film without reference to Terrence Malick, whom Lowery and cinematographer Bradford Young exhibit clear reverence for.

Try as I might, it is impossible to discuss the visuals of the film without reference to Terrence Malick, whom Lowery and cinematographer Bradford Young exhibit clear reverence for. There are numerous loving shots of nature, and a keen understanding of the mood that can be evoked by twilight here. The film is far more than just a stylistic mimic, however, and as much as it relies on Malick’s visual palette, it questions the ecstasy of emotions that director so often relies on for a thematic and narrative drive. Bob is a character that would be at home in a Malick film, an idealistic seeker always straining for transcendence. Yet Ruth grounds things with her subtle reticence. She still feels for Bob in the abstract, but she knows that what they had might be better left behind. The tension between these two viewpoints pulls viewers in both directions. We are well trained that love should conquer all, yet reality has also taught us that time and circumstance can change us, sometimes irrevocably. It is not always clear what kind of story we are watching, and that, more than the threat of bloodshed, gives the film its considerable suspense.

The acting here is uniformly excellent. Casey Affleck has given a similar performance countless times before, but it is a brutally effective one. He’s ultimately naïve, an innocent wounded by his encounters with the real world. Rooney Mara is beautifully elusive, making Ruth hard to read and all the more compelling as a result. Ben Foster gives a quietly stellar performance, suggesting years of accumulated feelings and suspicions, and the way one counteracts and ultimately trumps the other is a thing of beauty to behold. If Affleck is a shiftless dreamer, an idealistic romantic without much time to test his notions of perfection, Foster is more wearied. His feelings are more complex, and his gentle stability suggests a tranquility that could be all-too comforting, if only he was given a chance.

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is a captivating film, with painterly visuals so perfectly executed you could watch the movie on mute and still be moved, and a meditative story that is quietly transcendent and wonderfully even keeled. No one is completely correct, and no one is flawed beyond recognition. Each character has been shaped by their relationships, and the accumulation of their experiences is present in each and every moment. There are several long, revelatory monologues where characters manage to lay out their world-view and give us a look into their internal life, but it never feels too writerly or forced. These are the words of people who have made hard choices and will have to make more, who are living with consequences they can never quite leave behind them. They’ve all experienced the magic of that twilight hour when it seems like anything is possible and their whole future is before them. But eventually, the sun goes down and they have to choose whether to close their eyes to what they’ve done or look forward to a better tomorrow. Those that choose the former hope for sweet dreams. Those that choose the latter labor long and hard to put their mistakes behind them. They don’t sleep as easy, but they wake up to better days ahead.

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Jordan Ferguson

Staff Film Critic

Jordan Ferguson is a lifelong pop culture fan, and would probably never leave his couch if he could get away with it. When he isn’t wasting time “studying the law” at the University of Michigan, he writes about film, television, and music. In addition to writing for Next Projection, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Review To Be Named, a homemade haven for pop-culture obsessives. Check out more of his work at Reviewtobenamed.com , follow him on twitter @bobchanning, or just yell really loudly on the street. Don’t worry, he’ll hear.

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