Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Ain't Them Bodies Saints Blu-ray Movie Review

They is, yes they is.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater December 17, 2013

Some might say that after the self-absorbed To the Wonder, director Terrence Malick deserves to lose his long-held title of America's cinematic poet laureate. I disagree, but for the sake of discussion, here's a question: If Malick can't hack it anymore, to whom might that particular mantle be passed? Pre-Pineapple Express, David Gordon Green had a reasonable claim—his George Washington and All the Real Girls and Undertow are rife with Malick-y turns of visual phrase—and Benh Zeitlan recently announced his own candidacy with the jubilant Beasts of the Southern Wild. What about Paul Thomas Anderson? Or perhaps Upstream Color's Shane Carruth? Malick's influence clearly looms large over a group of young(er) auteurs, who borrow many of "Terry's" tricks while also trying to stake some new filmmaking territory of their own. The latest of these is David Lowery. After a low-key career in indie moviemaking for the past twelve years or so—directing several shorts, two barely-seen features, and editing Upstream Color, coincidentally—Lowery has finally announced his presence with Ain't Them Bodies Saints, a period thriller/romance that channels Badlands and Days of Heaven, invoking the mythicism and golden-hour glory of Malick's American West.

Lowery has said that the film's mouthful of a title—just say it like a mantra: Ain't Them Bodies Saints, Ain't Them Bodies Saints—is meant to set a tone and prep viewers for the kind of movie they're about to see. Colloquial and literary. Spirit and flesh. Filled with questions that may never be answered. (Or that have never been properly asked. Shouldn't there be a question mark after Saints, after all?) The title is suggestive, not illustrative, and the film as a whole follows suit, with Lowery favoring ambiguity over exposition, giving us small pieces of narrative information but leaving it up to us to mentally assemble them.

Set in small-town Texan hill country during the early 1970s, the film opens mid-argument, with Ruth Guthrie (The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's Rooney Mara) threatening to leave her boyfriend, the small-time criminal Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck). We don't know what they're fighting over, but it doesn't matter; Muldoon tries to woo Ruth back, and she turns around to drop the sudden bombshell that she's pregnant. By the next scene they've reconciled, and Ruth waits in the getaway truck while Bob and an accomplice rob a store. Lowery doesn't show us the robbery, only its aftermath in an impressionistic blur: Police surround their house. The accomplice is shot and killed. Ruth picks up a pistol and fires near-blindly out the window, hitting Officer Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster). The couple give themselves up, holding on to one another as the cops manhandle them away from the premises. And then the passing of years; Muldoon is locked up, having taken the fall for the robbery and the injured cop, while Ruth— now a single mom with a four-year-old daughter—gets by on the generosity of Skerritt (Keith Carradine), a neighbor who owns a general store and is tied to Ruth and Bob in ways that are not immediately apparent.

There's not much in Ain't Them Bodies Saints that is immediately apparent. The characters' pasts are only foggily hinted at, and even the present action—the middle act appearance of a trio of bounty hunters/bandits—is stripped down and largely unexplained, which may frustrate some viewers while engaging others. The storytelling is oddly reminiscent of Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive; both films are bare-boned thrillers that give no more detail than is absolutely necessary. This sense of withholding and succinctness has the side-effect of poeticizing and enlarging the material. Bob isn't just a man who loves a woman, he's every man who has ever pined away for an idealized future with the woman he loves. Or thinks he loves. The illusory nature of Bob and Ruth's feelings towards one another is one of the film's key thematic underpinnings. When Bob escapes prison and goes on the run, Ruth holds out for his return, resisting the romantic gestures of Officer Wheeler, a kind, honest man who has grown to care for her, unaware that she was the one who actually fired the slug into his shoulder years prior. Lowery never nudges this love triangle into melodrama, letting the three characters keep their desires close to their vests.

Or, rather, close to their flannel work shirts and cotton sun dresses, which are 1970s-accurate but also smack of the contemporary, hipster-y reclamation of "authentic americana." Ain't Them Bodies Saints is a film that clearly romanticizes the past—from the folky title to the simple rural existence of the characters to the period automobiles and quaint houses—and Lowry seems equally enamored with bygone U.S. cinema. Specifically, the New Hollywood that briefly encouraged American auteurs and produced films like Badlands and Bonnie & Clyde, The Wild Bunch and The Last Picture Show, all of which Ain't Them Bodies Saints recalls in one way or another.

If not entirely original, Lowery's directing is confident and graceful. He stages some impressively tense violence late in the film, but he's best with small, quiet dramatic scenes, where shades of emotion and motivation change from one expression to the next. It helps that he's assembled such a stellar cast. Rooney Mara, mousier and softer here than in Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, still carries a fierce independence, and Casey Affleck is perfectly idealistic and delusional as Bob, who's sure of himself but shouldn't be. The most compelling performance, though, is from Ben Foster, whose sensitive, gentlemanly Officer Wheeler can't catch a break. The heart wants what it wants, Ain't Them Bodies Saints seems to say, in this case preferring outlaw passion over 9-to-5 stability.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bucking the trend in indie film production, Ain't Them Bodies Saints was shot on 35mm, not digitally. Cinematographer Bradford Young's work is beautiful—lots of natural streaming light and gentle handheld camera movements—and IFC's 1080p/AVC-encoded Blu-ray of the film reproduces it capably, barring a few minor compression issues. There are three of four spots where I noticed some slight color banding while taking screenshots—see the shadows on Ruth's leg as she cuddles with her daughter on the couch, for instance—but nothing you'd ever be distracted by from a normal viewing distance, even on a particularly large screen. Film grain is preserved—and owing to the reliance on existing light, it can sometimes spike considerably in darker scenes—and there are no traces of edge enhancement or other types of filtering. On the whole, the image is a little soft, but I suspect this has less to do with the transfer than with the way the film was shot. Regardless, there's a more than adequate level of high definition detail where it counts. Color is nicely graded to accentuate golden/brown hues—warming up skin tones—and contrast is right where it needs to be as well. Overall, this is a gorgeous film with a natural, strong, but not quite perfect high definition presentation.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

As with most IFC releases, Ain't Them Bodies Saints features two audio options, the default lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track and an uncompressed Linear PCM 2.0 mix. The multi-channel track is subtle but well-engineered, putting us in the middle of lots of breezy outdoor ambience —wind and insect sounds, mostly—and occasionally livening up with the pop, pop, ping of cross-channel gunshots. Composer Daniel Hart's score complements the film's changing moods with handclaps, guitar, and ominous strings, and the music sounds full and expressive throughout. There are a few patches where the dialogue sounds a bit thicker than usual—not to the extent that I could use muffled, but noticeably rounder—although this is an exception to the general rule of clear, easily understandable voices. The disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, which appear in bright yellow lettering.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Untitled Ross Brothers Documentary (SD, 13:22): Sibling documentarians The Ross Brothers (Tchoupitoulis, 45365) drop by the locations of Ain't Them Bodies Saints to capture some of the behind-the-scenes action and tedium.
• Deleted Scenes (HD, 8:59): Here you'll find a sizable deleted scene following the lonely life of Officer Wheeler, a quick vignette inside the police station, and a montage of unused shots.
• The Lights (HD, 3:32): A music video for a song performed by Keith Carradine.
• Behind the Scenes (HD, 4:48): Your usual EPK piece, with clips from the film and quick interviews with the director and stars.
• Trailer (HD, 2:29)
• Bob Muldoon Teaser (HD, 00:53)
• Ruth Guthrie Teaser (HD, 00:48)
• Color Bars (HD, 2:53): A bit of an Easter egg here; after the usual set-calibration color bars, you'll find a series of bloopers and outtakes.
• St. Nick (SD, 1:24:44): Quite a bonus feature. This is Lowery's undistributed 2009 feature, about a young brother and sister who have run away from home and live out in the woods, Badlands-style.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Writer/director David Lowery's Ain't Them Bodies Saints is one of the most quietly commanding films of the year, a throwback to the 1970s New Hollywood heyday that still feels contemporary and alive. Yes, there are some decidedly Terrence Malick-y turns here—epistemological voiceovers, golden- hour cinematography, the vintage Texas setting—but Lowery seems to be a filmmaker poised to grow into his own style. (Lest we forget, Malick's early films also owe a lot to his poetic cinema forbearers, Alexander Dovzhenko and F.W. Murnau.) IFC's Blu-ray release is good-looking and well-featured, so I see no reason not to pick this one up if you like nuanced, artfully made dramas. Recommended.