[yasr_overall_rating]
After 5-year old Jack and his Ma escape from the enclosed surroundings that Jack has known his entire life, the boy makes a thrilling discovery: the outside world.
The subject matter in “Room” would shake any reasonable person. In it, a mother (Brie Larson) and her 5 year old son, Jack (Jacob Tremblay), are held in a room, small and claustrophobic with no windows save one lone skylight, by a man they call Old Nick (Sean Bridgers). He visits occasionally to bring supplies, just enough food to survive, and do what captors do when they hold pretty young women. Jack has never known any place but Room. His captivity has been total to the point that he has never set foot or even seen a space outside his confinement. His only view of the outside world is a small skylight in the roof of Room. When Old Nick comes, Ma puts him in Wardrobe to protect him. Finally, though, Ma has had enough and concocts a scheme to escape, one which requires extreme bravery from Jack.
“Room” tells a horrific story of captivity and recovery, but does so in a deceptively simple way. The themes of motherhood, childhood, divorce, safety, and choice all get twisted around its central characters as they cope with the circumstances they’re faced with. Larson shows deft maturity as the woman kidnapped at 17, now in her mid twenties, who lives solely to protect the child wrought from the repeated abuse of her captor. The normal frustrations a mother feels become magnified by solitude. Larson easily handles the changes in mood her character goes through, as though they come naturally. She resigns herself to her own fate, but fiercely protects her child. Every moment she’s on screen is a moment of wonder at how flawlessly she carries the weight of her character and the grave responsibility she takes on.
The real star is the child Tremblay, who narrates the film and through whose eyes we see much of what takes place. Like Larson, nothing about his performance feels artificial. He inhabits the frightened imagination Jack creates to cope with the confines of Room and the initial terror of the outside world. He gives voice to the anger and fear his mother has become incapable of expressing. While much of his time in Room allows a sense of innocence to pervade moments, the specter of Old Nick always waits just around the corner to kill the mood.
For all its themes and ideas, “Room” moves slowly, lingering around weighty moments whether for reflection or impact. Once such moment around the dinner table involving Larsen’s father (William H. Macy) distills the heartbreak and permanence of change conveyed by the film into one scene. Joan Allen plays Jack’s grandmother, like most of the characters here, with great sadness, yet a tender compassion lacking in the boy’s life. Providing a male figure to bond with is Leo (Tom McCamus), Grandmother’s new husband. The supporting cast works well as an ensemble, playing off Jack as a central figure around which each must find his or her way.
Director Lenny Abrahamson works from a screenplay written by Emma Donaghue, who also wrote the film’s source novel. The screenplay itself gives the audience lots to think on. Some of the questions it asks are impossible to answer. They seem, in fact, heart-wrenching to ask. But “Room” crosses a philosophical horizon few venture toward and none have approached in quite this way. It is this uniqueness, the peculiar way Donoghue examines its horror, which sets “Room” apart from other similar films such as 2013’s “Prisoners.” On some levels, it works. The story draws us in from the first frame. What we learn about our two subjects, we learn slowly, through a series of subtle hints. As the truth of their situation sinks in, we begin to feel their desperation and fear. Once the moment of emotional tension reaches its climax at the end of the first third, “Room” becomes too clinical a study and its tension slowly oozes from it. The film doesn’t end with a revelation, but a cloying platitude from a 5 year old boy.
Abrahamson gives us so much promise and much to explore, but leaves many of the larger issues alone. I suppose the idea was to create a more intimate film, and in that sense he succeeds. “Room” feels intimate, relatable. We know the characters and feel great empathy for them. I shed a few tears, as I’m sure many in the screening did as well. But I wanted more than to have my heart strings tugged. Where the film began as an interesting, taut psychological study of captivity, it ended in predictable emotional manipulation. I felt like a child given a room full of toys to play with and not enough time to even inspect each toy.
All of this leaves an assessment of this film a conundrum in itself. “Room” remains an intelligent, thought provoking and unique film. Donoghue and Abrahamson fill it full of sublime moments that will leave you thinking long after you go home. But then it falls flat and sentimentally cloying. For some reason, they stop digging into their subject, leaving the really golden parts for someone else to find.
Playing at the Landmark Magnolia in Dallas and the Angelika Film Center in Plano October 30th
