BEFORE: I'm doubling up on movies today, with Casey Affleck carrying over from "The Killer Inside Me", to get me to my Easter movie for tomorrow. TCM and I are sort of on the same page, we've both programmed movies with Rooney Mara. "Carol" runs at 2:00 am on Sunday, right in between me watching two Rooney Mara films, I suspect.
THE PLOT: The tale of an outlaw who escapes from prison and sets out across the Texas hills to reunite with his wife and the daughter he has never met.
AFTER: At first glance, it's a very simple story - two men rob a bank, one gets killed, the other breaks out of prison and tries to return to his wife. But things get complicated very quickly here, then they continue to get more complicated throughout the picture. Things remain unsaid, letters are written, censored and perhaps not delivered, and therefore the overall picture feels a bit oblique at times, but digging into the story deeper reveals that these unsaid, undelivered things have great impact, and further repercussions. We the audience know what's been said, even if the messages don't always reach their intended recipients.
Take that opening shootout, after the robbery. Patrick, a deputy, shoots Freddy, one of the robbers. Ruth, the wife of the other robber, shoots back and wounds Patrick. When the police close in, Bob, Ruth's husband, takes responsibility for shooting the deputy, and claims that Ruth was an unwilling accomplice. Based on how affectionate the two are when they're led away in handcuffs, perhaps the cops don't really buy this story, but Bob goes to jail for the robbery and for shooting the deputy. (It's a bit like the reverse of that Bob Marley/Eric Clapton song...)
Time goes by, and Bob swears that he will return to Ruth, and their young daughter (who brings a pregnant woman along with them on a shootout? Just sayin'...). He writes letters but the prison staff censors them, as they tend to do. Meanwhile, Patrick, after recovering from his shooting, seems to circle around Ruth, and perhaps is interested in her, though he doesn't seem to know (or want to know) that she's the one who shot him. The father of the dead robber, who runs the local hardware/general store, also adopts a protective role.
When Bob does bust out of prison (he claims that one day the cell door just opened up, and he strolled out, which doesn't seem likely) there are reports that he's been spotted heading north to Montana, but we all know he's probably headed south, back to Texas. Once there, he's got to contend with all these factions and more, like a gnarly group of bounty hunters who figure he's likely to turn up in his old hometown, sooner or later. He thinks he can just swing by the house, pick up his wife and daughter, and drive off again, but by no means could it possibly be that simple. Again, there are messages written, some get delivered but some don't, which means that there's no way everyone could possibly be on the same page.
Because this is set in rural Texas, and because everyone communicates by letter, and not text or e-mail, there's a real timeless quality to this - we never learn what year it takes place, could be in the 1970's, or it could be the 2010's. I'm not really proficient enough with car makes and models to nail it down, but I think ultimately that's a good thing. And with a 90-minute run time, even if you don't care for the story, it won't take up too much of your time. The director of "American Honey" could sure learn a thing or two from watching this, like how to tell a coherent story that keeps moving forward without repeating itself over and over.
The IMDB tells me that the film's title is a "mondegreen" - a nonsense phrase based on misheard song lyrics, such as hearing the Beatles lyric "the girl with kaleidoscope eyes" as "the girl with colitis goes by" or the Jimi Hendrix lyric "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" as "Excuse me while I kiss this guy". There are many other notable examples - but nothing on line tells me what song was misheard to create the title "Ain't Them Bodies Saints". I have a feeling, however, that the song was "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" - but not the original version, I'm thinking it was the cover by the Rolling Stones. Mick Jagger slurred so much while singing that song, it's probably possible to hear just about anything in those lyrics. I used to hear that song on the radio and think that Mick was singing a song about Aunt Jemima...
Also starring Rooney Mara (last seen in "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot"), Ben Foster (last seen in "Hostiles"), Keith Carradine (last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Kennadie Smith, Jacklynn Smith, Nate Parker (last seen in "The Birth of a Nation"), Robert Longstreet (last seen in "Doctor Sleep"), Charles Baker (last seen in "Wild"), Augustine Frizzell (also last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Kentucker Audley, David Zellner, Turner Ross, Rami Malek (last seen in "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2"), Will Beinbrink (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Frank Mosley, Steve Corner, Annalee Jefferies, Gwen Waymon, Artist Thornton, Richard Jackson, Steve Corder.
RATING: 6 out of 10 pickup trucks
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