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Ain't Them Bodies Saints

  • Film
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • Recommended
Ain't Them Bodies Saints
Ain't Them Bodies Saints
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Time Out says

4 out of 5 stars

‘Ain’t Them Bodies Saints’ is one of those movies where everyone’s dirt poor and dressed like a hick – but in a fashiony way that could pass in Dalston. Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck play lovers hellbent on killing, like Bonnie and Clyde. This is 1970s Texas. And writer-director David Lowery is trying hard to make the Great American Film.

The shadow of Terrence Malick (‘The Tree of Life’) so often hangs over such films, and this has its fair share of corn-wafting-in-the-wind- at-sunset scenes. But it’s fiercer – a slow, banjo-string-tight thriller. Affleck is Bob, a dumb kid with big dreams, born for the electric chair. Mara is Ruth, his pregnant girlfriend. When the police ambush their hideout after a robbery, it’s Ruth who injures an officer (Ben Foster) in a shootout. There’s a hypnotic scene as the lovers are marched out in handcuffs. Bob takes the rap and Ruth promises to wait out his 25-year sentence. When he escapes, she’s a hardworking single mum. And that cop she shot has been sniffing around looking all soulful and sad-faced.

Mara gives her best performance yet as Ruth. She’s a closed book. Is she waiting for Bob? Or have four years of sleepless nights bringing up her daughter knocked those teenage, me-and-you-against-the-world ideas of doomed love out of her system? Is she the most heartless one here? ‘Bodies’ gets under your skin and stays there. And the gospel handclapping soundtrack feels like it’s drawing you into a dream.

Written by Cath Clarke

Release Details

  • Rated:15
  • Release date:Friday 6 September 2013
  • Duration:97 mins

Cast and crew

  • Director:David Lowery
  • Cast:
    • Casey Affleck
    • Rooney Mara
    • Ben Foster
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