I'm Still Thinking About: The Opening Scene In 'Mystic River'
- sarahkloepple
- Aug 31, 2014
- 2 min read
Three boys are playing mindlessly in the streets of a blue-collar Boston town when their ball tumbles down into a storm drain. If Stephen King has taught us anything, that is not a good sign in the opening of a story.
"Mystic River" is a 2003 drama directed by Clint Eastwood, centering around the dangerous politics of a small Boston town in the wake of a gruesome murder. But before we see those three boys, now grown (played by Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins), investigate this death, we're given a haunting opening scene that is hard to shake.
Jimmy, Sean and Dave have abandoned their lost ball and instead find amusement in a block of the sidewalk filled with wet cement. As we watch them immortilize their boyhood friendship by tracing their names, we know danger is lurking.
Eastwood aptly turns this small Boston neighborhood into a dark and somber one. The streets are dirty, the sky is in overcast and not a single soul is on that sidewalk besides three ill-advised boys enjoying a lazy afternoon.
Dave, the last to hesitantly trace his name, has just carved the letters "DA" into the cement when a dark sedan, carrying two passengers, pulls up. A middle-aged man claiming to be a police officer scolds the young boys for vandalizing. He demands to know where they live. Sean and Jimmy both live in one of the rickety wood-frame houses a few feet away.
Dave lives farther away.
The man's booming voice orders Dave into the sedan before finally shoving him in the dirty backseat. The older man in the passenger side, dressed in all black, menacingly turns to face Dave and places his hand on the back of the seat. He's wearing a bishop's ring.
(Side bar: It had been reported when the film was released that Eastwood turned one of the pedophiles into a priest as a way of reflecting the molestation crisis happening within the Catholic church.)
Sean and Jimmy stand dumbfounded, watching as the dark sedan pulls away with their friend, helpless.
Eastwood has already painted a bleak and terrorizing first few minutes in his Oscar-winning movie. If not for the innocence of boyhood being snatched away right in front of our eyes, then in our imaginations that run wild as we infer what happened to Dave after that sedan drove out of sight.
That's why I'll never forget this opening scene. It is not only terribly chilling and hard to stomach, but it's the catalyst that sets off the rest of the ill-fated events in the film. "Mystic River" explores the effects of this inescapable trauma as it breeds nothing but more violence and corruption in a small American town.
Those three boys were incurably changed in that opening scene. And it's one I'll reluctantly continue to think about.
