Oscar-worthy film.
Room
Grade: A-
Director: Lenny Abrahamson (Frank)
Screenplay: Emma Donoghue from her novel
Cast: Brie Larson (Short Term 12), Jacob Tremblay
Rating: R
Runtime: 118 min.
by John DeSando
Ma (Brie Larson): You're gonna love it.
Jack (Jacob Tremblay): What?
Ma: The world.
Think of a relationship more powerful than a mother and child, and you’ll be wrong. Room, directed without glamour but with tenderness—many close-ups—by Lenny Abrahamson and written lovingly from book by Emma Donoghue, is the essence of such a relationship: a young woman, Joy (Brie Larson), imprisoned by a wacko for 7 years and bearing a child, Jack ( Jacob Tremblay), who stays with her for 5 years before they escape.
The first half of the film ever so gently shows the creative power of a mother, who does not let her cloistered son want for ideas and perspective about the world they see on TV and through her eyes. Although Larson’s performance is low key and she does nothing spectacular, the reason Jack is so well developed without meeting the world is because of her composed love.
The second half delivers us from the almost idyllic “room” to the outside world, where Jack faces a reality almost blindingly real, filled with germs and a grandfather, Robert (William H. Macy), who can’t talk to him because of Jack’s paternity. Yet there is grandma (Joan Allen), who loves Jack and to whom Jack can say one of his first endearments beyond his mother. The power of this film is its unwillingness to accelerate his acclimation; rather like ripening fruit, that growth takes its own time.
Tremblay is a discovery of an exceptional actor—we should see him again soon and for his lifetime. Larson is already an accomplished actress who brings subtle intelligence to difficult roles (see her in Short Term 12). Besides the other very fine actors is the outstanding Joan Allen as Grandma Nancy-just think about the layers of reaction she must have with a daughter returning from a kidnapping and a grandson who needs the gentlest nurturing.
The cast does what is needed to bring off one of the best films of the year and Oscar nominations aplenty.
“For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.” John Donne
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com
