 |
| Brie Larson and Jacob Trembly in Room |
Abrahamson begins the film by showing the room mother and son are trapped in as if it were an entire universe. The detailed shots of the bric a brac of the titular room give a world in a grain of sand feel to the space; one the boy has never ventured out of. This emphasizes the humanity of their plight rather than the sadism of their captor, who is introduced well after our sympathy for the boy and his mother has been established. It also underlines how different Room is from the torture porn of a modern horror film like Hostel, in which monsters of the male id bring sheeple to their slaughter.
Room literally demonstrates how the uses of enchantment in fables and stories can ready young minds to deal with the travails of existence. Mom tells stories and reads Lewis Carroll to her son to entertain and enlighten him. This process also enables the mother to conceive an escape plan and for the young son to participate in it as if he were a protagonist in a Brothers Grimm tale.
Room is also willing to show how hard it is for victims to truly escape a legacy of abuse. The difficult transition to normalcy is portrayed as unsparingly as their captivity. It is the mother, whose strength and heroism in the room is a marvel, who is the one who is less pliable in the outside world and comes close to meeting her doom.
It is the lack of a fairy tale ending that makes the conclusion of Room so rewarding. I haven't read the novel, so I don't know how much of the narrative structure was carried over into the film. Regardless, the final crane shot of the mother and son leaving the room after one final visit, provides a sense of how the characters have reached emotional closure with the legacy of their past. The room was everything in the world to them, but now they can, at last, leave it behind. One of the more moving shots in recent cinema. (4/18/16)
No comments:
Post a Comment