They took me for a four-day ride. And they buried me in this ratty old cellar with a sleeping bag, and, man, Celeste, did they have their fun. And no one came to help old Dave then.
Dave had to pretend to be someone else. As Celeste gets more agitated, Dave confesses, "Dave's dead. While all trauma is challenging to discuss, it's often even more taboo for men and boys thanks to constructions of masculinity that demand stoic silence, particularly in the blue-collar milieu of Mystic River.
Male survivors often don't get the mental healthcare they need to heal. Killing the pedophile broke something anew in Dave. Because he wasn't able to talk about what happened to him as a child for so long, his increasingly erratic behavior leads his wife and old friend to think he snapped and killed Katie. There are many visual motifs in Mystic River , including the river itself, of which Jimmy says, "We bury our sins here.
We wash them clean. But a more disturbing theme in the movie is that of the backseat of a car. This small space has a huge impact on all of the events in Mystic River, symbolizing a loss of control over the characters' own destinies. When Dave was kidnapped by the perverts, they put him in the backseat.
He looked back, a haunting fear in his eyes as his friends watch him get taken away. After Katie's death, Sean sends cops to pick up Dave and they put him in the backseat yet again. We can only imagine how terrified and retraumatized Dave must have been, remembering that other time he was taken by supposed cops.
When Jimmy's goons come pick up Dave so Jimmy can get him to confess, they again put Dave in the back. In his moving performance, Tim Robbins embodies the little hurt boy that still lives in Dave's tall, adult body. When we first meet Brendan, he's hiding in the back of her car, startling her. Later, police find blood in the back after she's shot. It's seeing Katie's abandoned car that sparks Jimmy's extraordinary grief over her loss and eventually leads to Dave's murder.
And all this, it's just a dream," Sean says to Jimmy at the end of Mystic River. Imagining what our lives would have been if we'd escaped. Their names carved into the sidewalk, with Dave's unfinished, is testament to this. After Katie's murder, Jimmy has a disturbing monologue where he talks about the fact that if he'd been kidnapped, he would've been destroyed like Dave and never would've had the courage to talk to beautiful Marita.
He says if he'd never met Marita, Katie wouldn't have been born. If she'd never been born, she couldn't have been murdered. It's a shocking line of thinking that shows the long-term ripples of trauma and how they can affect not just those experiencing it firsthand, but also the subsequent generations. If Just Ray hadn't kept the gun he used to rob a store, his son Silent Ray wouldn't have been able to use it on Katie.
She might have lived. And if Dave hadn't spent so much time dissociated, he might have been higher-functioning, like Sean, and nobody would ever think him capable of murder. The only person posed to break the cycle by the end is Sean, who gets back together with his wife and finally meets his daughter, Nora.
Sean shows he will be keeping an eye on Jimmy, and hints that an official kind of justice might one day be served. The kidnapping of Dave Boyle. The stolen boy turned traumatized man. Boy witness turned adult thug. Childhood friend turned cop. Katie and Brendan echo Romeo and Juliet. Celeste Boyle and Annabeth Markum at odds. The limitations of vigilante justice. The taboo subject of male sexual assault.
The backseat as a motif. Dave was fighting himself a war as a child molester. He fake admitted that he was the one who killed Katie so that he could escape his current life. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. In "Mystic River" how come no one mentioned the second murder?
Ask Question. Asked 8 years, 5 months ago. Active 2 years, 7 months ago. Viewed 28k times. Improve this question. Shiz Z. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Jim Stevens Jim Stevens 2 2 silver badges 4 4 bronze badges. I guess "this morning" would have helped, but the ending would still frustrate me as a viewer because it hinges on not just one but two very unlikely events: 1 a second murder having happened on same night as the first, and also 2 second murder undiscovered until just after Dave's death.
To me, this felt like the screenplay cheated its way to resolution -- and I can't believe such a movie won Best Picture. Point taken, I think I commented on another post either concerning this movie or another similar movie situation where I offered that this a really just a writer's technique to make everything seem to work. Either they never think about how realistic it is to the viewer or they simply think the viewer won't notice.
Definitely a good catch on your part! I also think the better plot twist or ending to the movie would be to make you think Dave really DIDN'T do it but then at the last second you find out he did. The reason for this, however, is seeded earlier on when we see Sean being apprehensive about arresting his childhood friend Dave.
This is also why he gets emotional trying to get Brendan to confess to having a gun — to shift the blame away from Dave. It is, therefore, no surprise that he is not keen to arrest Jimmy immediately. This is one of many subtle yet interesting ways in which Eastwood has tied up this masterpiece.
We later find out that Ray double-crossed Jimmy in the past, for which he ended up going to jail. This is damning enough. In the opening scenes of the movie, when Dave is abducted as a kid, we briefly see an old man in the front seat of the car. The man wears a prominent gold ring that is worn by the clergy, and we later learn that he and his accomplice sexually assaulted Dave. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reddit Email. Loading Comments Email Required Name Required Website.
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