Room is a harrowing drama that drops you in right away. It’s Jack (Jacob Tremblay)’s fifth birthday, and just from his interactions with Joy (Brie Larson) we know everything. They have been in this room all five years, they have been delivered supplies and they cannot leave. Nick (Sean Bridgers) keeps them in with an electronic door code, but Joy protects Jack from their captor.
In the best of circumstances, this kind of confinement would be tragic for a child, or an adult, but there are bright spots already. We are also quickly introduced to Jack’s loving nature. As an uncle, I can relate to the sincere, primal love young children can exhibit, as Jack wishes inanimate objects good morning.
They have a routine. They exercise. They clean and maintain the room. They have arts and crafts. In just a few opening scenes we are living with them and they never had to explain it to us. Jack’s point of view is effective, with certain camera angles cutting off adults’ heads for example, and unobtrusive. We still hear everything the adults say in an effective sound mix that buries those comments in a single speaker in the theater.
There’s only so much Joy can shield Jack from though, and the older he gets the more he can think for himself. Stories about magic won’t convince him. I’ve always been frustrated by the notion of parents lying to children about things they can’t understand yet, not the least of which when I was a child myself, because the inevitable realization that the adults deceived them seems even more troubling. When it’s time to tell Jack the truth, Joy calls it “unlying.” That’s a constructive way to give kids new information!
Jack is my favorite kind of child. He has insight because he thinks and processes information, so when he’s actually got some wisdom, it doesn’t come out of nowhere. Room deals with the trauma of this situation maturely, without ever spelling out what’s behind the characters’ reactions. The movie might actually be a good test of audience’s empathy. People who can’t understand the characters’ behavior might want to do some introspection.
Room is so fraught with tension that I kept waiting for something worse to happen, because it always could. My mind was racing with further tragedies that could befall poor Joy and Jack, so ultimately I was doing more than the filmmakers. That’s a bit glib, because the truth is it’s the script by author Emma Donoghue and direction of Lenny Abrahamson that triggered me in such a way.
Just like in Short Term 12, the power in Larson’s performance comes from not playing the tragedy of it. Sure, there are some explosive confrontations, but she’s working so we see Joy, the survivor. Tremblay is remarkable. It’s a doubly sensitive part, because if you play too much child abuse the film is exploiting him for a reaction, but if you play too innocent it’s cloying. Maybe walking that fine line increased the tension even further because we can’t hide behind our critical judgments of the presentation. Bridgers is pretty damn scary too.
I hope I haven’t made Room sound like a downer. It’s not. It’s intense, and might even make it hard to sleep after watching it, but that’s exciting. Of course there are real stories of captivity that are no fun and not entertaining, but if a movie can illuminate such a crisis and give us a visceral reaction, that’s what it’s all about.
Image via A24
Fred Topel is a veteran journalist since 1999 and has written for CraveOnline since 2006. See Fred on the ground at Sundance, SXSW, Telluride or in Los Angeles and follow him on Twitter @FredTopel, Instagram @Ftopel.
