I watched Mystic River last night. I figured since I was already in a jacked up mood, might as well make the most of it instead of bringing myself down when I'd gotten back up. I have much to say about this movie (and the novel from which it was adapted) and the first is that it actually PERKED ME UP. It's sick, but true. I guess it just put everything right back into perspective - none of my nearest and dearest are dead in a ditch somewhere, so everything is peaches.

Anyway, it is an EXCELLENT read. I was already a fan of Dennis Lehane, but I put off reading this one because I had a tinkling of what the subject matter was, and kidnapping with a side order of sexual abuse is never my cup. Neither is brutal and needless murder of the innocent. Being a religious freak about reading the book first, I also couldn't let myself see the movie (released 2003). Plus, Sean Penn puts me off a little. Not a big fan. I will get back to that.

Let me start in on the movie by saying how I want to meet Clint Eastwood and shake his hand for how he handled this story. He did an awesome job, and the script was nearly word-for-word the novel. The one complaint I have is that they cut some really important characterization of the Laura Linney character, which builds up and gives a lot more weight to the final scene between her and Penn. I really would have liked to Linney sink her teeth into what Lehane gave the character, because she's got a good grasp on coldness that you still kind of like.

Secondly, Tim Robbins. Wow. I know every critic states that Sean Penn is the emotional center, and I will get back to that. But I think that Tim Robbins had a harder job in this film. First, his physical size was something that he had to work around, or overcome, in order to make his portrayal even get off the ground. In the book, he is a small child/man, which is why people feel free to abuse or ignore him. From Tim Robbins's posture in the film, I read it almost as though after becoming invisible to everyone after the abuse because they don't want to deal with what happened to him, he begins to WANT to be invisible, and he rounds his shoulders and hangs his head in such a way that he's not so much hiding as disappearing into himself. And the way he talks - watch how his lips hardly move to attract as little attention to the fact that he's speaking. AWESOME. The other difficult job was the fine line he had to tread between being the victim and the possible victimizer. He has to constantly tread between making us feel sorry for him and making us feel afraid of him.

Now, on to Sean Penn. Let me repeat that I've never been a fan, really. He strikes me as kind of a punk. I say that Tim Robbins has the harder job because an angry, violent Sean Penn is not so hard for me to buy into. HOWEVER. He did things here that should force the Academy to start a new category of Best Portrayal of Parental Love or something along that line. There are three or four stand-out scenes which you will know when you see it. But the trickier thing is all the stuff he holds back. He's wound so tight around his pain: moderating it for the sake of his surviving daughters, for the sake of getting all the details right for his murdered daughter, and for the sake of keeping it together so he can fuck the murderer's shit up and walk away without prison time. Watch the scene where his asshole father-in-law gives him some ill-advised instruction on how to handle his grief. If you closed your eyes, you could hear how badly Sean wants to punch him in the throat. I tell you, in every scene Penn beat me down again and again until I started screaming mentally, "OKAY SEAN I GET IT YOU'RE AN AWESOME FUCKING ACTOR NOW STOP PUNCHING ME IN THE LOVE SAC OR I'M GONNA VOMIT!"

I'm sure he'll sleep better at night now that he's won my respect.