The Transatlantic delay between
US and UK release windows has intriguingly seen an eruption of Oscar favourites
arrive in British cinemas in the space of a week. While Ryan Cooglar’s Creed has opened to fairly universal
critical and commercial success, its three most notable companions have proved
more divisive. While I’ve yet to see The
Hateful Eight, its quintessentially Tarantinian ultraviolence and abstract
narrative structure has incited widespread debate with some contending that
Tarantino has regressed into self-parody and that the bite of his dialogue has
been blunted. Similarly, The Revenant has
drawn parallels to Inarritu’s preceding film, the Best Picture-winning Birdman; they’re undeniably both masterclasses
in visceral visual filmmaking, but rather it’s their depth and graces which
inflame discussion. Meanwhile Room, despite
festival buzz, is allegedly too
slight, too dissonantly specific to function as the parable of human spirit its
champions portend. In truth I was pessimistic myself, turned off by its
marketing as something more aligned to a high-concept thriller than a grounded
drama, and by the problems inherent in making compelling, two-hour viewing from such a
confined space.
Room usurped my expectations, perhaps because it is in many ways unexpected.
It is a film of two halves, each wholly different but equally significant. To
reveal much more would be to spoil what is one of the most thought-provoking
and subversively comforting films I’ve seen in a long time. Much of its value
comes from Lenny Abrahamson’s curious interplay between naturalism and
impressionism. While Room is unequivocally
rooted in reality, Abrahamson’s intelligent decision to stick rigidly to Jack’s,
the son’s, perspective, allows the Irish director the opportunity to delight in
the mundane. Through the eyes of a brightly imaginative five-year old a blank,
damp wall becomes a canvas of possibility, and Brie Larson’s mother becomes a
benevolent deity. A single room is the entire mode of existence, and Larson’s
mother constructs a native vocabulary to rationalise this conceit as something
tangible to her infant child; to the extent that when she reveals that trees
and leaves are not only a fiction off ‘TV’ – which acts as the portal to an
apparently non-existent, illusory universe – but emblems of the actual world, Jack
finds it incomprehensible. It’s a fascinating, disturbing notion, but one which
is sustained remarkably throughout; it reveals the venerable wonder of our
world without being preachy, or even overtly thematic. All big ideas and
emotional resonances are effectually personal stimulations and projections
rather than conscious narrative intentions, or at the very least it appears
that way. People will feel very strongly about this film, and very
differently, but they’ll at least feel.
Another benefit of restricting
the viewpoint is the generation of palpable tension and breathless claustrophobia.
Objects and character are framed uncomfortably close, with a sense of desolate
unease colliding with abject beauty as he cuts from mouldy wallpaper to the
condensation on their skylight – their solitary link to literally everything
else, beholding not only the promise of freedom but actuality itself. Jack’s
hiding in the wardrobe, peering through the cracks while we hear their captor’s
carnal groans is conceivably more devastating than showing us his mother's rape. The violence is infrequent but abrupt and effective, as Jack’s
infant confusion and terror mirrors our own through rapid-fire editing and
uncompromising staging. The dynamic between triumph and horror is elaborate and
continuous, but never jarring.
Full disclaimer; I’ve been
ostensibly in love with Brie Larson ever since my 16-year old self delighted in
Scott Pilgrim’s blend of comic-book
slapstick and authentic teenage turbulence. Her send-up of the adolescent-romantic
myth of the prototypical Dream Girl (or Manic Pixie Girl) – the surprisingly
perpetual idea that there’s one beautiful outcast whose base prerogatives are
to act quirkily and be attracted to the angsty boy equivalent which was
explicitly confronted in last year’s Paper
Towns - was touching, and her earthquake performance in Short Term 12, easily one of my favourite
films of the decade so far, reinforced her position as a God of independent
cinema. In Room she is awesome.
Flitting from between despair, fear, vulnerability, reckless defiance and
unperturbed bravery, without a whiff of melodrama or hysterics, she is a vessel
we displace ourselves in, yet also a fully formed, achingly real character. Room is as much an experience as it a
story, and it’s testament to her talent that she remains admirably understated
despite moments of sentimentality. Her relationship with Jack is the best
representation of her layered complexity, comprising her understandably primal compulsions of protectiveness and imperious affection, but also the
brilliantly downplayed suggestions of matriarchal resentment, the persistent
and lasting reminder of her agony.
Jacob Tremblay’s Jack is so
convincing that part of me feels that he isn’t acting, that his position is one
of sincerity. This is obviously untrue, but it’s indicative of how believable
he is. For a child actor to play someone his own age whose physical and mental
development has been indefinitely malformed is equivalent to Tom Hanks playing
Forrest Gump as a five-year old; the fact that Tremblay comes across as
naturalistic rather than hammy or kitsch completely defies logic. It doesn’t
make sense how good he is. I’m prone to hyperbole, but I struggle to remember a
better kid performance, with the exception of Quvenzhane Wallis in Beasts of the Southern Wild. He is as
intricate and interesting as his mother, so twisted by his experience that he
cannot be anything else. But then again this shouldn’t be a surprise. Room doesn’t restrain itself to
arbitrary relationships or concepts at any point, and refuses to cast
judgement. Its refined poise is all the more emotionally beguiling, intellectually
challenging, and cinematically engaging. We take the story and almost
unconsciously relate it to our own. Its plot is unambiguous and autonomous, but
its implications for the audience are as expansive as Jack’s imagination.
It’s astonishing that a story as
objectively small and self-contained as Room’s
could prove so deeply fulfilling. This is not only a heartfelt exploration
of trauma and its inscrutable psychological permanence, but an often difficult,
finally uplifting realisation of the redemptive power of human intimacy, something
infinitely relevant to our own experience.
