The one in the car is Dave, the one with the hat.
"Mystic River" is the work of director Clint Eastwood after 70 years old. The three protagonists in the story have very different personalities and their life trajectories are also different. Perhaps the director wants to use their experiences and choices to describe the painful entanglement in human nature. Those spiritual prisons imprison people's souls, allowing the audience to see how they struggle and ultimately sink.
As a viewer, I can understand some of the director's intentions, such as the ambiguity of good and evil, such as the undercurrents in a peaceful life, such as the emptiness of life and different interpretations. But it is difficult for me to make a similar evaluation aloof. What shook in front of my eyes was always Dave's shadow.
His life was so miserable. He was sexually assaulted as a teenager, and the shadow has been following him ever since. He became conscientious, weak, and withdrawn, and after twenty-five years like a living dead, there was no life at all. Finally one day, he rescued another child who was sexually assaulted on the street, and began to really walk out of the shadows, but because of this, he fell into the suspicion of the murder of the daughter of his old friend Jimmy, and even his lover could not fully believe him.
When Jimmy mistakenly thought Dave was the murderer and pressed him, why did Dave admit that he killed his daughter?
He said: "I want to make up for my youth. I have never had youth. If you got in the car, you would understand." When
he said these words, Dave's eyes were unwilling, desperate, and endless. Depression and pain. But the next second, Jimmy stabbed his body with a knife, and Dave's life ended like this. His last sentence was: "I'm not ready (to die)".
Dave rarely had warmth in his life. He worked hard to support his good father as his youngest son Michael, and a good husband to his wife, but his heart has been locked in the cellar at the age of ten forever.
Two childhood friends, Jimmy and Sean, they never really understood and cared about Dave. Twenty-five years ago, they stood on the road and watched Dave being taken away; twenty-five years later, they still looked at him like this without helping. Although they have admitted guilt and discussed what would happen if they were taken away; they even regretted their indifference, but at best it was just a hypocritical self-comfort.
When Dave told Jimmy aloud: "If you were in the car, you would understand", Jimmy said in his heart: "It was not me who got in the car."
The subtext of this sentence is: You can only admit that you are unlucky.
There is no sympathy, no comfort, only selfishness and selfishness. This is the saddest part of the story. Even if the police officer Sean suspected that Jimmy killed Dave, he just said "Jimmy, you have to send an extra money to his family from now on." Even more ridiculous is that when Jimmy blamed himself for killing Dave by mistake, after his wife gave an outrageous exhortation, Jimmy immediately hugged his wife and prepared to make affection.
Jimmy’s wife said this: You are the ruler of the family, you love this family, and it is understandable that you do anything for your family and for your children.
"For the family, for the children", don't you have to bear the consequences if you kill someone? Hearing such a grand-sounding and shameless confession, I was speechless for a while.
So dark, so cruel. On the surface, "Mystic River" tells how regrettable the murder of a 19-year-old girl is, but behind it is the story of Dave. In this story, we watched how a cute and lively boy was persecuted and abandoned. He tried to live, but was eventually killed and forgotten, sinking into the bottom of a mysterious river.
At the end of the story, the Sean family and Jimmy's family were reunited and watched the children's float parade with a smile. Only Dave's wife was in the crowd chasing the same dejected son Michael in despair. The misfortune that Dave experienced when he was a boy is now likely to reincarnate again in his son Michael. The mysterious river flows, washing everyone's sins. The body sank and the past was buried. It seems that as long as everything does not surface, no one will care about the truth.
But thinking of Dave's eyes before his death, so helpless and desolate, how not heartbreaking.
This article first published the WeChat public account: Burning Crusade (TBC1096), welcome to follow.
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