ROOM
Grade: A
Starring: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Sean Bridgers, Joan
Allen, Tom McCamus and William H. Macy
Premise: A young boy and his mother, who have been trapped
in enclosed surroundings for years, are able to again explore and experience
the outside world.
Rated R for thematic material including language, intense
emotional content, some violent/disturbing images, and child endangerment
At this point, Room is
my pick for movie of the year.
Even The Revenant—Alejandro
Gonzalez Inarritu’s frontier survival epic—which comes out in theaters this
weekend and which I’ve been waiting months to see, will have a job being more
affecting and more powerful than this movie. Based on a novel by Emma Donoghue
(who also wrote the screenplay), Room
may star an eight-year-old playing a precocious, sometimes-whiny five-year-old,
but it’s ultimately a mesmerizing, unsettling, superbly-made film about a harrowing
psychological trauma and its aftermath. Fronted by two unforgettable
performances that deserve serious Oscar consideration, and containing a
heart-stopping central premise that is horrific and fascinating at the same
time, director Lenny Abrahamson’s movie left me shaken and entranced, almost
unable to think about anything else. Its effect has proven reminiscent of my
favorite movies from last year—it leaves you agog like Gone Girl and it has the unshakeable intensity of Whiplash…not to mention a
beautifully-played ending that leaves you wanting more.
Plot
Miraculously freed years after a heartless kidnapping,
five-year-old Jack (Vancouer-born Jacob Tremblay) and his Ma (Brie Larson) find
freedom comes at a cost. Gone are the familiar surroundings—including the
garden shed “room” in which they were kept—Jack once believed encompassed the
whole world. Gone is the simple routine they enjoyed, which included taking
baths, making meals, and telling stories. And gone, seemingly, is Ma, who was
longing for freedom but can’t seem to recover the life that was stolen from
her.
What Works?
Room has the same
structural appeal as the 2000 survival epic Cast
Away, in that the early portions are dominated by the extraordinary
circumstances that give the movie its must-see hook, but it’s the latter
portions—once the characters are back in the real world and find that even
regular, everyday freedom offers its own problems—that leave the emotional
mark. The questions here are of selfishness and selflessness, of bitterness and
regret, of a free but uncertain future juxtaposed with confining and unpleasant
but familiar circumstances. The movie’s marketing material focuses on the
characters’ escape and reunion with their families—not to mention Ma and Jack
baking a birthday cake and frolicking in the bath—making Room seem significantly more chipper than it is, but what it is
instead of some happy little children’s fable is a challenging drama
psychologists would love to study.
Just eight when he played Jack during filming, Jacob
Tremblay is a revelation. This might be the most crucial and effective
performance ever by a child in a movie made for adults, and it’s winningly
played by Tremblay, a fine mixture of sensitive and sprightly, of petulant and
curious. I won’t say the role is entirely devoid of cutesy moments, but for a
film focused on a child, it feels very natural and unforced. That said, when
Tremblay cranks up the volume in the moments of high emotion, the force of his
yelling and screaming is almost shocking (yet it’s not the grating,
nails-on-a-chalkboard squealing of the young Dakota Fanning; it has the startling
punch of real children’s fits). As with real kids, Jack’s “cute” can vanish in
an instant. Overall, it’s a pretty remarkable performance, superbly-directed by
Abrahamson—the eight-year-old is instantly convincing as a five-year-old.
It is Jack through whose eyes we see the movie, and who we
follow around the most, but Ma is the catalyst of the story, and Brie Larson’s
performance is sensational and shattering. Ma is a hero, an idol, a comforter, a
shield, a dream-weaver, a rock for her son—at least early on, when they’re
still trapped and she tries to save Jack from the grimness of their predicament
(the film’s title is the name by which Ma advised Jack call their living
quarters, to keep him from realizing there’s a whole outside world they’re
missing out on); yet Larson’s grey-tinged face and piercing gaze make it clear
most of what’s really holding her up is the desperate, fierce, calculated hope
of escape. When they’re freed, though, and Ma is forced to come face-to-face
with the life she once had and can never reclaim, it’s a wrenching portrayal, a
person collapsing under the weight of bitterness, self-doubt, anger, and insecurity. It’s a character and a performance I’ve been mentally going
back to over and over in the past 48 hours, dissecting more and more of the
character’s ordeal and the psychological fallout of that trauma. Best known to
me as the sweet, slightly-goofy love interest from the 21 Jump Street
Jack and Ma are the two crucial characters, but fine support
is offered by Joan Allen as Grandma, Ma’s mom, who can help raise a sweet
little boy but struggles to deal with the suffering creature the ordeal made of
her daughter. Tom McCamus has some very fine moments as the warm, gentle
stepdad who helps draw Jack out of his shell. And Sean Bridgers forces nothing
but packs a wallop as the sickening creeper who keeps them both trapped in a soundproof
shed, mocking their circumstances and casually raping Ma.
It’s difficult to overstate how affecting Room is, with a disturbing central
premise and fascinating psychological consequences and brilliant acting. It’s
fair to say this movie contains as many as five of the ten or fifteen most
arresting sequences on film this year, from an early encounter with Bridgers’
“Old Nick” to Ma’s desperate attempt to make Jack understand the seriousness of
their circumstances to a shy, confused Jack’s interrogation by two curious cops
(the sublime Amanda Brugel and Joe Pingue). It’s got a subtle but effective
musical score, some fine bits of narration from Tremblay that are sometimes
jolting in their matter-of-fact truthfulness despite being explained in a
child’s simple language, and a wonderfully-quiet ending that packs a wallop.
What Doesn’t Work?
Much as I love Room,
I’d be lying if I said there are no slow moments, particularly in the second
act when Ma and Jack aren’t together all the time—thus, with the movie focused
on Jack, we get a few scenes of Jack coloring and jumping on sofas instead of
more scenes with Ma readjusting to the world. There’s also the slight detriment
that the Jack-focused screenplay doesn’t allow us to see Ma’s reaction during
their liberation. And there’s one moment—which I won’t spoil—that might strain
implausibility a little bit, that could’ve been given a bit more time. But
other than that…
Content
Okay, here’s where we get honest. Room deals with some tough subject matter, and while it’s not
graphic in any way, exactly, it’s an extremely intense film overall. There
are several F-words and a few intense arguments, but the content is generally
heavy with desperation and emotion and pain. Mothers with young kids or with
teenage/young-adult daughters may have a hard time dealing with the gritty
realism of the onscreen events, particularly considering some real-life cases
that have been unveiled in the past few years. It’s definitely a film that can
rattle you.
Bottom Line
Not to be confused with the famously-bad independent film The Room (“you’re tearing me apart,
Lisa!”), Room is a harrowing, sublimely-made film. Featuring a performance from 26-year-old
Brie Larson that deserves to win the Best Actress Oscar and a really impressive
performance by eight-year-old Jacob Tremblay—who might also get Oscar
attention—Room is a psychology
major’s dream subject matter and a mother’s worst nightmare. Based on a novel
by Emma Donoghue (who also wrote the screenplay), Room is a haunting and remarkable story of love and selfishness,
survival and freedom. It’s also my favorite movie of the year.
Room (2015)
Directed by Lenny Abrahamson
Screenplay by Emma Donoghue; Based on her novel
Rated R
Length: 118 minutes
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