Room

As in her book, Emma Donoghue thoroughly sticks to Jack’s perspective. Whatever he doesn’t see and hear, we don’t see and hear. In addition to perceiving all of reality through the boy's eyes, we also hear his off-screen commentary, which, though it helps us to understand what makes the unalluring room magical for him, also betrays the book-based origin of the story. ___ The film does not try to shock us with explicit details of the characters’ suffering. By leaving a lot to the imagination, it puts us in a situation similar to that in which Jack finds himself. Unlike Jack, however, we quickly find out that Nick, for example, is not a kind uncle, but a heartless monster. Besides the limited breadth of our knowledge, which at first is comforting and later disturbing, the intertwining of the camera’s perspective with that of a five-year-old boy is manifested by shooting from the level of Jack’s eyes (we usually see the adults from below). Thanks to that, some of the characters and objects seem more terrifying or more mysterious than they actually are and the sudden “change of scale” in the second half of the film, when the camera level rises for the first time, is as stunning and liberating for us as it is for Jack. ___ The room itself, which seemed like an endless magical kingdom thanks to the editing, music and lively camerawork, becomes just an ordinary room. The second half of the story also has far more dramatic potential and emotional intensity than the first half, which in retrospect comes across as a stiff, needlessly long and perhaps gratuitously cruel prelude. Suddenly there are many more directions that the narrative could have taken. Despite expectations, however, the new sources of tension and conflict do not originate in the crime-thriller genre, but in psychological (melo)drama. ___ However, prioritising emotional conflict over external action is sufficiently justified by the continuous drawing of our attention to the bond between mother and son, or rather the ability to adapt our emotional ties to the environment in which we live. Together with Jack and Joy, we gradually realise that the world that they have created for themselves was not bound to a particular place. They carry it within themselves and are unable to leave it. The question of whether they can handle living outside of their room, or allowing someone else into it, thus becomes crucial.___ Whereas on a basic level Room suggestively evokes, with the aid of the smallest physical details, the situation of a person in captivity, we can approach it on another level as a (Platonic) parable about the (virtual) worlds in which we enclose ourselves. ___ Some viewers may be bothered by the fact that Abrahamson does not handle the sensitive subject matter with the cold-bloodedness of, for example, Michael Haneke and does not completely avoid emotional manipulation. On the other hand, he doesn’t make the situation excessively easy for his characters or offer easy solutions to their traumas. The subtly nuanced acting of Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson significantly contributes to the ambivalent feelings, which ordinary tear-jerkers try to avoid. It is also to their credit that Room works best (and offers the greatest viewing satisfaction) as a maternal melodrama about the fine line between love and hate. 80% (02/28/2016) (less) (more)