Room (2015, R)

I’ve never read Room, and I’ve never been sure it’s one I need to read.  I’m still on the fence as far as the book goes, but the film, while intense, is gripping and incredibly well-done.  It paints a tight, unflinching portrait of two people facing up against an impossible prison (premise spoilers.)

5-year-old Jack has always known the world as he’s known it.  The world is a Room, with a bed, a wardrobe, a toilet, a sink, a bathtub, a table, two chairs, a TV, a door, and a skylight.  He, his Ma, and the things within Room are real.  Everything else is “just TV” – except perhaps Old Nick, who comes at night while Jack hides in the wardrobe, bringing them food and other necessities by magic.  This is life as he understands it, and it’s what Ma has always told him.  But not anymore.  Now, Ma tells him the truth.  Outside Room, there’s an entire real world filled with the real things that TV depicts, not invents, and Ma used to be one of them.  Until Old Nick took her and trapped her inside Room.  Now, Ma needs Jack’s help so he can escape and see that world.

We’ll start with the acting.  Brie Larson, as Ma, is the leading actress frontrunner (sure thing?) at the Oscars, for obvious reasons.  Her portrayal of Ma’s desperation, exhaustion, resourcefulness, love, rage, depression, reassurance, courage, and terror is masterful.  She’s so magnificent, but at the same time, so subtle.  Even though Ma’s circumstances are massively extreme, she doesn’t feel like a “big, Oscary role.”  She feels like a person, doing what she can to get her and her son through extreme circumstances alive.  Young Jacob Tremblay brings as easy artlessness to Jack, always coming across as genuine despite his environment.

Any time you see such great work from a really young actor, you look to the director, and Oscar-nominated Lenny Abrahamson does his job admirably.  In addition to bringing out Tremblay’s performance, he skillfully conveys just how small and claustrophobic Room is, while at the same time making the single, limited space feel cinematic.  Just as we can see how horrific Room is, we can understand why Jack doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it.

Emma Donoghue (also nominated) adapts her own novel.  Again, I haven’t read the book, but since the author and screenwriter are the same person, I assume it’s at least a reasonably faithful adaptation.  The story is riveting, the subject terrible yet engrossing; by focusing so much on Jack and Ma as people, Donoghue generally keeps the film from feeling like shock-value torture porn.  I will say that some of Jack’s dialogue, the way he words things with obvious capital letters and no articles – like Room, Wardrobe, and Skylight – feels off to me.  I get that his language for and understanding of things, like the rest of him, hasn’t had a chance to develop in the usual way, but his dialogue (and Tremblay’s delivery) is otherwise so fluent that it doesn’t quite work.  I think he maybe needed to be just a little more ungrammatical, and then the Room/Wardrobe/Skylight stuff wouldn’t feel so conspicuous.

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, abuse (physical, sexual (not shown onscreen,) verbal, and psychological,) violence (including self-harm,) and language.