Mystic River - the Film

This essay discusses the movie Mystic River. The film Mystic River is not a fairy tale, and unlike fairy tales, it contains some basic ambiguities that remain unresolved. Custom art essays are Paper Masters specialty.

The film Mystic River (2003; dir. Clint Eastwood, based on Dennis Lehane's novel of the same title, from 2001) is a wolf tale in disguise: it skillfully weaves together different strands from each, "The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids" and "Little Red Cap" by the Brothers Grimm, "Little Red Riding Hood" by Charles Perrault, "The Story of Grandmother," and "Bisclavret" by Marie de France (and even alludes to certain aspects of the precursor tales about Zeus and Cronos by Hesiod and about Lycaon and Zeus by Ovid). 

Watch the film with these tales in mind, and write an interpretive essay in which you explain in detail where, how, and to what end the film utilizes which parts of which wolf tale. In particular, focus your essay on proving for the film the following thesis (which sums up what all the wolf tales have in common)--namely that a wolf is s/he who takes a family member (and/or their humanity--from Cronos onwards). Thus, discuss how the different wolves in the film go about this "taking" and what the "taking" amounts to in each instance, given the particular tale that it is patterned on. In this term paper, also identify whom a given film character plays wolf to, that is, concentrate on character roles, and discuss them based on a figure's appearance and actions in the film as compared to those in the wolf tales. Consider that, in the film, these roles change and shift, depending on which scene from which tale is played through in the film and in relation to which other characters a figure is placed.

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