Ain’t Them Bodies Saints is a 2013 Southern Gothic crime drama film written and directed by David Lowery. The film stars Casey Affleck as Bob Muldoon, Rooney Mara as Ruth Guthrie, and Ben Foster as Patrick Wheeler. Bob (Affleck) and Ruth (Mara) and the gritty landscape of 1970s Texas Hill Country is the backdrop for this mood-drenched collision of love and crime. After his pregnant wife (Mara) makes one false move during a bloody shootout, a bank robber (Affleck) faces a 25-year sentence that destroys his dreams of a family life. Shot through with the yearning and melancholy of a folk ballad, David Lowery’s directorial breakthrough—one of the most acclaimed films at Sundance and a special Critics’ Week selection at Cannes—extends the Bonnie and Clyde tradition with its breathtaking meditation on the fragility and transience of love.
Lowery began writing the film in 2009 while on the festival circuit promoting his film St. Nick. At the time he was only able to think of a concept of a man breaking out of prison. What attracted him to the story was the thought of writing an action movie after having done a very quiet movie like St. Nick.
Lowery wanted to capture the feeling of the actions and write a script based on that in the vein of 1960s and 1970s movies and folk songs. He said specifically that he wanted to “make a movie that felt like a folk song”. Working on this concept, he thought about American folk mythology dealing with outlaws, developing into an outlaw who broke out of prison, then set in place the reason for the breakout being his wife and living in Texas he decided the setting would be Texas.
The script’s title, which Lowery also chose to evoke the feeling of a folk song, is based on his mishearing the lyrics of a country song a friend played for him, and is unrelated to the plot or characters.
