Mystic River - 6

How are stories and belief connected? This movie shows how what we believe about the world is influenced by the history and story behind our lives, the lives of others, and by the connections we make to in forming opinions about truth and reality. This movie is sad, precisely because the viewer has to step outside of the perspectives of the actors, and therefore has a different sort of knowledge and thus a different sort of pain and sadness about the story. Is this movie a tragedy? Yes, because to try to make sense out of life is to make judgments and then to respond with justice, peace, grace and forgiveness, and most often a sort of reserved numbness. Human fallibility lead to distortions of how this ought to take place. Finally, we have to ask ourselves how do we live and be responsible in an often non-sensical world?