Clint Eastwood: Interviews, Revised and Updated

Mystic River: Eastwood, without Anger or Forgiveness

189 Mystic River: Eastwood, without Anger or Forgiveness Samuel Blumenfeld / 2003 Published as “Mystic River: Eastwood, sans colère ni pardon” in Le Monde, October 15, 2003. Reprinted by permission; translated from the French by KC. Samuel Blumenfeld: Mystic River comes out just before The Matrix Revolutions, another Warner Bros. production with an enormous budget. What does Warners think about your film? Clint Eastwood: I’m not especially interested in coming in first at the box office. I’m counting on word of mouth. On the set of Mystic River, I often joked that my greatest ally was Matrix. Warner Bros. was producing the last two parts of the trilogy and had forgotten my picture. They left me alone. It was a low-budget film for them. SB: Mystic River is very close to the series of social films that Warners produced in the 1930s. Warners should be especially proud of you . . . CE: I made Mystic River with respect for tradition. But I doubt that most Warner Bros. employees know the history of their company. Iconic Warner Bros. actors, particularly James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, have influenced me greatly. They were not afraid to get involved in projects outside of the norm. Bogart’s haircut in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is amazing—his hair goes flying in all directions. There was nothing glamorous about him. Cagney could commit the worst horrors onscreen. He seemed to be ready for anything, and laughed at what the public thought. SB: What was it that attracted your attention in the novel by Dennis Lehane? CE: The mixture of genres. You don’t know if it’s a mystery or a drama. 190 clint eastwood: inter views There are two parallel stories that eventually merge, and the complexity of the narrative structure really excited me. I suggested to Brian Helgeland , who I’d worked with before, that he should adapt the novel. He’s originally from Boston, where the novel takes place, and that was crucial to me. SB: The city is a major player in many of your films . . . CE: A city is a character. Otherwise, I could have shot Mystic River the old way, as Warner Bros. suggested, in a studio in Toronto, where production costs are lower. But that made no sense. Before shooting started, Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, and Kevin Bacon scattered all over Boston, soaking up the city’s atmosphere. I had them meet Dennis Lehane. Kevin Bacon spent time with the local police. SB: The way in which Boston emerges here, divided by a river, brings us back to The Night of the Hunter, back to an ancestral curse laid on the characters’ heads. CE: Many people in Boston don’t know that there is a Mystic River. Real Bostonians know it, there’s an entire neighborhood around it called Mystic. The name has weight and symbolism, as I was aware. There was a reason to go prowling around there. SB: As the story progresses, the lighting of the film becomes darker and darker. CE: The idea was to achieve desaturated colors. It took a ridiculous amount of time in the lab, much more than usual. I remember a screening where I said that the color scheme of my film wasn’t supposed to look like Dorothy and Toto in The Wizard of Oz. I wanted cold colors, no warmth at all. SB: Cinema is often interested in the figure of the sadist or the killer. Since Sudden Impact, your films have ceaselessly investigated the theme of the traumatized child. CE: The loss of innocence obsesses me. In Mystic River, the rapists and the murderers aren’t important. On the other hand, Tim Robbins has an obvious vulnerability that interests me more than anything else. It also has dramatic resonance in the film. In the final parade sequence, on Columbus Day, we understand that this trauma won’t end with Tim Robbins . His son will never know why his father disappeared. His mother samuel blumenfeld / 2003 191 doesn’t understand anything about what’s happened, to her husband or her son. SB: During that scene, what’s the significance of the gesture of the police inspector played by Kevin Bacon, when he points his finger like a gun? It’s a very strong image. CE: And very ambiguous. I tried to frame it in a way that would leave its meaning open. It’s understandable...