CANNES - The Hollywood Reporter

REVIEWS
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
An exceptionally beautiful, if a bit fuzzy-headed, romantic
Texas outlaw saga that announces a considerable talent in
writer-director David Lowery BY TODD MCCARTHY
A beautiful, densely textured
elegy for outlaw lovers separated
by their misdeeds, Ain’t Them
Bodies Saints will serve most decisively
to put director-writer David
Lowery on the map as one of the
foremost young standard-bearers
of the Malick and Altman schools
of impressionistic mood-drenched
cinema. This poetically told Texas
crime saga is deeply and, to be
honest, naively sentimental at its
core, which creates something
of a drain on its seriousness. But
it’s a constant pleasure to watch
and listen to, and stars Rooney
Mara and Casey Affleck both have
strong scenes. To be sure, this is
an out-and-out art film, one that
looks to enjoy a measure of success
on the festival circuit and in
specialized release.
Ruth (Mara) and Bob (Affleck) are
separated by Texas lawmen.
Saints begins with a messy
shootout, after which the criminal
team of Bob Muldoon (Affleck)
and Ruth Guthrie (Mara) are led
off, with Bob destined for prison
and the pregnant Ruth let go.
Set in the Texas hill country,
probably in the very early 1970s
based on the models of the cars,
the film evokes a number of
sympathetic outlaw classics made
around that time, specifically Terrence
Malick’s Badlands and Robert
Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
Far more attention is given to
the couple’s intense bond than to
clarifying the nature of what just
went down; piecing together tiny
snippets of information discreetly
released here and there, it would
seem that a robbery led to a police
raid for which Bob took the rap
for a cop actually shot by Ruth.
Lowery might parcel out key
plot elements with great reluctance,
but he manages to keep
things interesting and even moderately
gripping, partly because
of the managed uncertainty over
where everyone stands in relation
to others.
It all inevitably ends in gunplay
and a measure of tragedy, but of
the kind that literally and figuratively
bleeds into the history
and mythology of the West. This
sort of fate has been idealized,
poeticized, beautified and canonized
countless times before in all
manner of popular art forms, and
Lowery buys into its lyric potential
wholeheartedly.
But that said, and for all its
derivative poetics — as many
exteriors as possible were shot
during or just after magic hour,
a la Malick — the film is a lovely
thing to experience and possesses
a measure of real power.
Having played a really, really
bad Texas bad guy in The Killer
Inside Me three years ago, Affleck
delivers a milder variation on
one here, to stronger effect; one
monologue he delivers to himself
in a mirror is particularly striking.
Pretty quiet through most of
the film, Mara has a gravitas that
makes her rewarding to watch
no matter what, or how little,
she’s doing.
Critics’ Week
Cast Rooney Mara, Casey Affleck,
Ben Foster, Keith Carradine
Director-screenwriter
David Lowery
104 minutes
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