Because of the subject matter, a movie like Lenny Abrahamson‘s Room, adapted from Emma Donoghue‘s bestselling 2010 novel by the author herself, will not be readily received by everyone. Critics like Rex Reed, New York Observer, however, encourage you to try: “Too grim and heartbreaking for some viewers, Room is nevertheless an extraordinary film so powerful and unforgettable that it must be seen.”
The gist: Jack (Jacob Tremblay), now five years old, has always lived in a small garden shed, imprisoned, with his Ma (Brie Larson). Why are they there? Who’s doing this to them?
The Trailer
Basically, the first “act”of the film is their Room experience, the second their escape toward Joy’s (Ma’s) parents (Joan Allen, William H. Macy).
The First Act
Susan Wloszczyna, rogerebert.com: “[Ma’s] whole focus is on Jack’s well-being and rarely her own. She ignores a painful rotting tooth in her mouth until it falls out and it immediately becomes one of her son’s most prized possessions. She is endlessly resourceful, turning cardboard toilet paper rolls and egg shells connected by string into playthings. For her, Jack is her anchor and her reason to carry on.”
The Second Act
Justin Chang, Variety:
…Abrahamson and Donoghue invite and achieve an uncommon level of audience identification as they give due weight to their characters’ post-traumatic stress disorder. Their story implores us to consider the normal or expected passages to adulthood — the gradual separation from one’s parents, the growing sense of self-sufficiency, the ability to put away childish things, the understanding that what we are losing is (hopefully) being matched by what we are gaining — and to realize the impossible situation that now confronts Jack. Yet a subtle, provocative question also rises to the surface, slyly articulated in a scene where his mother wistfully scans the photos of her former classmates in a high-school yearbook: With their comparably blessed, sheltered, mundane lives, were they really that much better off?
Susan Wloszczyna, rogerebert.com:
Jack especially thrives in the company of his grandmother (Joan Allen, whose smile alone gives a boost to the film’s last third). She got divorced in the wake of her daughter’s disappearance and has a new man in her life, the good-natured Leo (Tom McCamus) who patiently guides and encourages Jack. If there is a weak link in ‘Room,’ it is William H. Macy, who is too predictably cast as Joy’s father, ill-equipped to handle her reappearance, let alone the news that he now has a grandson.
An Apt Conclusion
Dana Stevens, Slate: “Though it goes to places as dark as any you could imagine, Room carries at its heart a message of hope: Two people in four walls can create a world worth surviving for, if they love each other enough.”
