Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013) on Netflix
Bob Muldoon and Ruth Guthrie, outlaws in Texas, are caught after a shootout. Bob takes the blame and is jailed; he escapes and goes looking for Ruth and their daughter, Sylvie.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb6.4/1023,770 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes77%
Trailer
Plot summary
Ruth Guthrie and Bob Muldoon are young outlaws in Texas, and their crime spree ends in a shootout with lawmen at a farmhouse. Ruth wounds an officer named Patrick Wheeler, and Bob takes the blame for the shooting and the robbery so that she will not go to jail. Both surrender their weapons, and Bob is imprisoned. Ruth gives birth to their daughter, Sylvie, and raises her in Meridian, where Patrick notices them around town. Bob writes letters promising to come back. When Sylvie is nearly four, Bob escapes from prison and crosses Missouri toward Texas with help from his friend Sweetie, and a detective questions Ruth about where he might be.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Rami Malek had auditioned for the role of Sweetie, which went to Nate Parker, but David Lowery was so impressed by his audition tape that he asked him to play a small role at the end of the film; Malek announced the part on Facebook in November 2012.
- The title does not come from the plot: David Lowery chose it after mishearing the lyrics of a country song a friend played him, picking it because it evoked the feeling of a folk song.
- Lowery and Young wanted to age the negative, but their bond company's agreement would not allow extensive decay. They got the look by underexposing the film at unconventional levels and by sliding an ND9 filter in front of the camera.
- After the Sundance screening, Harvey Weinstein, who had acquired the film's international distribution rights, suggested further edits. Lowery said the changes were not forced on him: he agreed with them, felt the pre-Sundance edit had been too rushed, and said the film was not drastically reshaped.
- Lowery normally edits alone, but the film's scope led him to bring in Craig McKay and Jane Rizzo. He called the experience a negative one, saying: 'If I could go back again, would I edit the movie myself? Yes I would'.
- In the scenes where her character acts as a mother to the two child actresses, Rooney Mara took over the direction of the children herself in order to get more authenticity into the scenes.
- There were no traditional rehearsal times on the shoot: the cast worked from an outline of the script as they filmed, and Ben Foster said nothing was nailed down on paper and that he had to fill in the cracks himself before shooting his scenes.
