Clint Eastwood's Second Life
By Josh Larsen

By all accounts, Clint Eastwood should have long since ridden into the sunset.

 

His career began as a minor contract player for Universal Pictures in 1955 and went on to blossom in violent genre pictures: spaghetti Westerns that first catapulted him to fame, then the Dirty Harry cop dramas that later defined his image. At 73, Eastwood should be an aging action star, a has-been content with a career tribute every few years to remind him of who he once was.

 

But Eastwood refuses to become a Hollywood dinosaur. In recent decades he has methodically carved out a second career as one of America’s most vital directors. A traditional genre craftsman, he’s managed to put his personal stamp on a wide variety of films. His twenty-fourth directing effort, Mystic River, stands among the crowning achievements. Having spent his childhood traversing California while his father sought work during the Depression, Eastwood is a determined laborer, and indeed has taken on more films than he could possibly polish to excellence. The 1971 Play Misty For Me, the silly romance thriller that served as his directorial debut, is downright awful, and his entire career is a hit-or-miss affair. For every sublime Mystic River, we get a miserable

True Crimes.

 

And then there are numerous efforts in between--respectable films like his early Western Pale Rider or his recent FBI drama Blood Work. Seemingly oblivious to box-office results and fluctuating critical responses, Eastwood just keeps at his work, year in and year out, like a tradesman who rises early every day to get the job done. That work ethic would be admirable in any case, so it’s doubly pleasing that it has led to a number of cinematic gems.

 

Eastwood has a way of adding personal details to genre stories to make them his own without sapping their wide appeal. That certainly is the case with Mystic River, an adaptation of a Dennis Lehane crime novel that simultaneously works as a riveting police procedural and a moving meditation on grief and guilt. Set in a working-class section of Boston, the movie follows three men--played by Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon, and Tim Robbins--uncomfortably united by a shared tragedy. When the daughter of Penn’s character is murdered, Bacon’s police investigator is assigned the case, and Robbins’ quiet family man becomes the main suspect.

 

From its grave opening sequence, which takes us back to the boys’ child-hoods, Mystic River announces itself as one of the director’s “important” projects. The mournful music, which East-wood composed, lends an air of gravity to the most routine of scenes, while his ponderous camera--often rising high above the actors--creates a sense of thoughtful omnipotence. The acting is intense and emotionally complex;the story rich with resonance.

 

Perhaps it’s good material that allows Mystic River to rise above any of the other films Eastwood has made since 1995’s The Bridges of Madison County. Eastwood has often jumped into the director’s chair even when he has a sub-par script.(Maybe it’s that work ethic again.) But when he has a strong screenplay like Unforgiven (1992),he is capable of creating a masterpiece.

 

Mystic River was adapted for the screen by Brian Helgeland, co-winner of an Oscar for 1997’s L.A. Confidential, and both movies share an overwhelming sense of dread. Eastwood layers that with an assured filmmaker’s eye, making every image count. By the time the movie reaches its harrowing climax we are immersed in emotional claustrophobia. We ache with the shame, rage, and sorrow of the characters as if they were our own.

 

In his spaghetti Westerns, Eastwood’s character was known as the Man With No Name. Today, Eastwood has made himself an indelible name as a Hollywood director. Mystic River is the latest confirmation of that.