Analysis/Opinion Humanity's problems are complex and unique, and we should perceive them as such to be able to help those that have been marked for life like Dave

Rating: 10/10 (29 March 2020)

Mystic River has one of the most solemn and contentious stories I have seen this year. It leaves you with a bitter pill that showcases the inefficiencies and corruption of the justice system at bringing "justice" to those negatively affected. It makes us care about the characters even if they end up participating in loathsome and immoral activities. We start the movie by caring for Jimmy and his portrayal of a loving family man that is aggressively overprotective, sympathetic of Dave's agony for being abducted and sexually abused as a child, and compassionate for Sean's marital situation and apparent devotion to his job. The movie makes us care, but then elucidates complex characters with inconsistent moral convictions and violent behaviors. It accomplishes excellently the goal of delivering multi-dimensional characters.
The little allegory of the names drawn on the pavement is an interesting demonstration of how people can be broken since their early stages in life and remain broken until society finishes them off. Dave's reason to murder was his rage against child molestation and injustice. Unfortunately this marked his life from beginning to end. Sean (justice system) was not fast enough to be able to solve the situation and evil (jimmy) remained unpunished. Only at the end of the movie, when Sean informs Jimmy that he found the culprits, is the justice system able to give Dave some justice, but he is already dead. It is remarkable how we get to care about Jimmy so much and then see him descend into immorality by a tragedy.
There are several scenes that captured my attention. When you see a sign of a cross in a movie and a scene where a child seems to be in danger, you can almost predict what's going to happen. We also see him receiving the bad news as his daughter is receiving her first communion. In my opinion, the movie's main message is that humanity's problems are complex and unique, and we should perceive them as such to be able to help those that have been marked for life like Dave. Sean in a sense is that archetype of the man that seeks to defeat complexity and find truth and justice. We also get emotionally involved in his journey to seek redemption and forgiveness and he finds it by capturing the killer and getting back with his wife.
The movie maintains a tense atmosphere intertwining the stories and helping us understand how people can connect with each other at different levels. It explores counterfactuals in a way that makes us use our imagination of how the stories could have been different for every character. We end up with the idea that anyone of them could have been the person abducted and that in life the weak die and the strong live, arbitrarily.