'Ain't Them Bodies Saints': Movie's better than the title
Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara are romantic desperados in the moody, '70s-throwback drama "Ain't Them Bodies Saints."
THE WILLFULLY strange title of "Ain't Them Bodies Saints" cries out for an explanation.
Well, it can cry all it wants, because none is forthcoming.
It's possible that star Casey Affleck divulged the meaning of the title at some point in the film, but I only understood half of what he mumbled in "Saints," and I think that's intentional (he's like an art-house Bane).
The movie has the what-are-they-saying audio of Robert Altman, the empty Texas landscapes of "The Last Picture Show," the rural, romantic desperadoes of Arthur Penn and Terrence Malick.
And in case you miss the back-to-the-'70s vibe, writer-director David Lowery has set the movie there, decorated it with period Plymouth police cars, and another '70s relic, Keith Carradine.
The plot - also in '70s style - is divulged incidentally, via shrugging asides, as if secondary to the film's larger purpose.
We figure out that Carradine is the semiretired head of a local crime outfit. At one time, he picked up wayward kids and raised them as his own, trained them in banditry.
Two grew up to be Bob and Rose (Affleck and Rooney Mara) and, at the movie's outset, they're tearing across the landscape in an old truck, shooting it out with police.
Bob goes off to jail, Rose raises their tiny daughter on her own, under the watchful eye of her stepdad, and also a cop (Ben Foster) who takes an interest in Rose that's more personal than professional. Always there is the looming spectre of Bob's return, which hovers over the movie like a threat and a promise.
"Saints" is pretty to look at and broodingly well-acted by performers who specialize in holding the camera by not saying or doing much. At the center is Mara's Rose - all the men are motivated by some loving impulse to protect her, and it's this impulse that may doom them to violent death.
It's the stuff of tragedy, and there are some affecting moments, but the movie - for all of its artistry, or because of it - generates a curious lack of feeling once the gun smoke has cleared.
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