‘Room‘, the 2015 film made by Lenny Abrahamson based on a script written by Lenny Abrahamson, who adapted her own novel for the screen can be considered as a sequence of two different films, each about an hour long, with the same two characters: a young mother and a little boy who turns 5 at the beginning of the film. In the first part, the two are sequestered in a cabin. The mother had been kidnapped in her late teens and the child was born in captivity. The classic story of prisoners in closed space and their struggle to escape to freedom is combined with the drama of the mother who tries to create a world for her son that will protect him from the evil that holds them captive. In part two, the two break free, but their physical release from captivity does not mean they can easily remove the captivity from their minds and souls. It’s a film with many interesting parts, raising intriguing psychological issues and allowing some of the actors to deliver memorable performances.
I liked the first part of the movie better. Movies that exploit claustrophobia are not my favorite genre, but the script offers an unusual reversal of perspectives. Unlike other cases (real or imagined), the mother not only does not disown her child born out of the violent relationship with her captor, but makes him the purpose of her life, trying to explain to him the world in which she lives with its terrible limits. A wonderful example of exemplary motherhood. The two of them and their captor are the only people alive in this universe. The world seen on the TV screen in the room is not real. The patch of sky seen through a window too high to touch is the only link to the world of aliens who may someday come to visit. In a moment of crossroads, the woman realizes that rescue would only be possible if the boy escaped from captivity, but for that she must explain the truth to him. At first, however, he refuses the change. The universe imagined by the mother explained that absurd world too well for the five-year-old boy. Paradoxically, in the second part of the film, it is the boy who will adapt better to the change. The theme of the child raised in a very different world who returns (here he actually comes for the first time) to civilization is approached, however, a little schematically, and what happened in the mother’s family during her absence is not fully elucidated.
The lack of balance between the two parts of the film is compensated by the outstanding acting performances of the two lead actors. Even if the Academy Award for the leading female role seems like an overshoot, Brie Larson‘s creation as the mother is complex and nuanced, full of dignity in the first part of the film, fragility and struggle with herself in the second part. If there was a category of awards for children, it would undoubtedly have been won by Jacob Tremblay. He was eight years old when he played the five-year-old Jack (and at some points he really seems a little too mature) and has since become a child star and now a teenager star, with 45 roles in his filmography at the age of 17. Also appearing in the cast is William H. Macy, an actor that I like very much, but I confess that I did not understand his role. There is a conflict between the father and his ex-prisoner daughter that the script does not explain. Had the father had any guilt in the kidnapping of his daughter? The book and movie are inspired by a true case where the father kidnapped and held his own daughter captive, but that is not the case here, the kidnapper being a stranger. Anyway, ‘Room‘, despite its imperfections, is an interesting film, proof that fiction inspired by real cases can produce films that mix well realism with emotion.