“Ain’t Them Bodies Saints” is the kind of film that wears its influences like a thrift-store coat two sizes too big—trying to look vintage but tripping over its own hemline. Directed by David Lowery, who must’ve wandered into a Terrence Malick screening one day and said, “Yes, but what if it were slower?”, this 2013 outlaw romance is an exercise in aesthetic suffocation. It’s a love letter to longing, silence, and natural lighting. Also: boredom.
Set in 1970s Texas—or at least some sepia-toned purgatory with cowboy hats and pickup trucks—the film follows Bob Muldoon (Casey Affleck) and Ruth Guthrie (Rooney Mara), two outlaws who look like they’ve never robbed anything more aggressive than a fruit stand. After a bungled shootout with the law, Bob takes the fall, gets carted off to prison, and promises to return to Ruth and their newborn child. Years later, he escapes. And then… nothing happens. For a very long time.
Lowery wants this to be a mythic, tragic love story. What we get instead is two hours of people staring out windows, writing letters in cursive, and talking in hushed tones like they’re afraid the scenery might hear them and wake up. You could make a drinking game out of every time Casey Affleck mumbles a line like he’s trying not to disturb a sleeping goat.
Let’s talk about Bob Muldoon, the outlaw with the emotional range of a windshield wiper. Casey Affleck is a master of anti-charisma here, moving through the film like a somnambulist with a heart full of molasses. Bob is supposed to be driven by desperate love, willing to risk it all for Ruth and the daughter he’s never met. But Affleck delivers every line like he’s trying to remember if he left the stove on. This is a man whose idea of emotional intensity is blinking slightly slower than usual.
Rooney Mara, meanwhile, plays Ruth as if she’s permanently trying to hold in a secret. Her gaze is intense, haunting, and devoid of all human warmth. She speaks so quietly you’d think every line was a confession to a ghost. The chemistry between her and Affleck is supposedly the film’s emotional backbone, but they interact like two tree stumps sharing a vague memory of fire.
And then there’s the sheriff, Patrick Wheeler (Ben Foster), who might be in love with Ruth, or might just be suffering from severe hay fever. He’s soft-spoken, morally conflicted, and wears his sheriff’s badge like it’s made of paper mâché and regret. His scenes with Ruth are supposed to be filled with tension, but instead they feel like job interviews conducted in a funeral home.
The cinematography, to be fair, is gorgeous. Bradford Young makes every frame look like it was painted in old whiskey and candle smoke. The sun flares are plentiful. The shadows are brooding. The dust hangs in the air like artistic pretension. But after a while, the beauty becomes oppressive. It’s like being trapped inside an Instagram filter with no Wi-Fi. Every scene looks like it belongs on the cover of a folk album no one listens to.
The soundtrack is all mournful strings and ambient sighs, as if someone commissioned a band to score the sound of two people remembering a sad picnic. It drones on behind the whispery dialogue, reinforcing that everything is very, very important, even if you’re not entirely sure what’s going on. Because here’s the rub: this movie is allergic to plot.
Bob escapes prison. People look for him. He writes letters. Ruth reads them. Bob sits in cars. Ruth stares at curtains. Ben Foster drops off groceries. A few vague threats are made. Someone maybe gets shot. Someone might have a change of heart. Then it ends, kind of, like a whispered apology in a parking lot. You don’t feel resolution—you feel relieved it’s over.
There are gunfights, technically. But they’re shot like post-coital flashbacks, blurry and lethargic. No tension. No stakes. Just another excuse to have Bob stare into the distance like he’s listening to ghosts discuss tax reform.
The title? Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. What does it mean? Who the hell knows. It sounds like a line of Southern Gothic poetry scrawled on a gas station bathroom wall. It’s symbolic, of course—something about sin, redemption, the American mythos. But mostly it’s just obtuse, like the rest of the film. It promises myth and delivers a lukewarm sermon in beige.
The real problem here is that Lowery seems more interested in being poetic than saying anything. He loves the idea of tragedy, of doomed romance, of aching silences. But he doesn’t earn them. He just stacks them on top of each other like he’s building an art-house Jenga tower. And when it finally topples, you’re too numb to care.
Final Verdict?
Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is a beautiful, boring dirge masquerading as a Western fairy tale. It has all the ingredients of a haunting love story—star-crossed criminals, yearning, guns, Texas—but forgets to include urgency, stakes, or basic narrative momentum. Watch it if you want to see actors mumble emotional monologues into the dusty void. Or if you enjoy being emotionally waterboarded with vintage lighting. Everyone else? Just stare out the window for two hours while listening to a sad fiddle. Same effect. More honest. Less whispering.
