Room

I did not read Emma Donoghue's 2010 best selling novel that inspired Room, and for once, I am glad I did not.  This is a movie that deserves to be seen unspoiled.  It is a small film of tremendous power, wonderful performances and high emotion.  This could not have been an easy story to bring to the screen, and Donoghue (who wrote the screenplay as well) deserves praise for writing such a successful adaptation of her own work.

This is an up close and personal film that brings us into the world of Joy (Brie Larson), a woman in her mid-20s who is raising her five-year-old son Jack (a wonderful Jacob Tremblay) alone.  The movie depicts them leading a fairly normal life of cooking, playing and watching TV together, but something is immediately off about their surroundings.  As we quickly learn, they are both prisoners in a soundproof shed that rests in the backyard of a man known only as "Old Nick" (Sean Bridges).  He kidnapped Joy years ago when she was just 17, and he has kept her prisoner here in a small room with only a skylight, and a door that only opens with a secret numbered passcode.  Joy's only interaction with her captor is when he comes in every night to see if she needs anything, and then rapes her.  This is how Jack came into this world.  He knows nothing of the outside, other than what he sees on the old TV.  He thinks the things he sees are imaginary, and that there is only "Room", where his mom and him live everyday. 

This life of captivity makes up the first hour or so of the film, and we get to see Joy's frustrations with her predicament, and also in trying to make Jack understand that there is a wider world outside of "Room".  She has told him his whole life that there is nothing outside, but now, Joy is starting to become desperate to tell him the truth.  Jack does not believe her, as expected.  For Joy, every day is isolation, dread and fear.  But for Jack, this is normalcy.  He has never actually seen "Old Nick" before, but he hears what his mother and him do late at night in another part of the room from his bed.  This is just an everyday thing, and he has come to accept it.  The film does a great job contrasting how these two main characters view their situation differently.  It's also fascinating how the movie does not depict these people as victims.  Despite the situation, Joy has gone out of her way to give Jack as normal a life as possible, and it is this fact contrasted with the situation we know they are in that makes the first half of the film so dramatically effective.

In captivity, Joy and Jack make toys out of egg shells, and do daily exercise routines together in order to keep each other sane.  But then, something happens, and I'm going to have to be very careful about what I say in order to avoid spoilers.  I will say just this - Joy sees an opportunity for escape, and takes it.  It is at this point that Room becomes a very different movie, but one that is still effective.  It is no longer about Joy trying to create a normal life in captivity, rather the focus turns almost entirely to Jack.  He has served as our narrator for the first part of the film, but when it reaches the second, we see what's happening entirely from his point of view.  A new opportunity and life opens up for both of the characters, and the film becomes a dramatic evaluation of how these two characters handle the change in everything around them.

It is the performances that make Room truly work as well as it does.  Brie Larson has had a rising career for a while now (she was in Trainwreck earlier this summer), but this is the first time I have really stood up and noticed her.  Her portrayal of Joy is made up of protectiveness, a fierce sense of survival, motherly love, and sometimes frustration and rage.  It's one of the great performances I have seen this year.  Matching her every step of the way is Jacob Tremblay as Jack.  His innocent way at how his character sees everything is one of the most powerful aspects of the film, and Tremblay never once betrays this, or comes across as a "movie kid" playing for the camera.  He is completely believable in the way he acts out sometimes, and how he sees the world.  With the confined space of most of the film, we obviously get to be very close to these characters, and both actors create a realistic depiction of these people who are confined physically, but not emotionally.

The only thing that holds this film back from being the very best of the year is that the first half is much stronger than the second.  Once the movie switches gears, it's not quite as dramatically effective.  There are a lot of missed opportunities, and even a character who feels like he should play a major role, but is sold short.  This is the character played by William H. Macy, and yes, again I must be vague in order to avoid spoilers.  His character is set up with a potentially powerful storyline, but the character disappears almost as soon as he is introduced.  It made me wonder if most of his scenes were cut from the film, as the last scene he's in (a powerful one built around Jack) seems to hint that it was supposed to be carried on later in the film, yet we never see him again.  While the second half of the film is still powerful, it lacks the impact that the first half carries.

This really doesn't defer from the fact that Room is still one of the better films to hit the screens this year.  It may sell itself a little bit short, but the first half alone is so unforgettable that it deserves a spot as one of the great films in 2015.  This is ultimately an absolutely fascinating character study, and one that deserves to be seen with as little advanced knowledge as possible.

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