*no spoilers ahead*
Room is that rare breed of movies that is way more than the sum of its parts, that it is hard to comprehend why or how it manages to be as deeply moving as it is.
It follows the lives of Jack (Jacob Tremblay), a five year old boy, and his mother Ma (Brie Larson). Ma a.k.a. Joy was kidnapped by Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) when she was 17 and has spent all of the last seven years in the 'room', a little garden shed. Five of those seven have been spent raising Jack, to whom the 'room' has been the entire world. The movie shows us their life in the room, escape from it and their life afterwards.
Despite the grim circumstances the movie is anything but gloomy. For the most part, the boy's life in the room is joyful. And it is portrayed in a heartwarming way, with the cameras doing great jobs of elevating the room to the boy's whole world, or reducing it to the tiny garden shed that it really is.
Both characters are brought to life by excellent performances by the actors, especially Brie Larson. Ma is a real human with complex emotions. Often she has two sets of thoughts and feelings - ones she wants to let on to her son, and her true ones she tries to hide. She does so with different degrees of convincingness. And Brie Larson has to get it just right, else Jack's belief or disbelief will not ring right. Or at least not as well as it does. That's just one aspect of how good their performances were.
<digression>
I'm reminded of my review of The Imitation Game. There's a scene in which one can easily get the impression that Benedict Cumberbatch is acting really well, except I thought it lacked a layer that would've made the scene actually challenging - instead of just giving off that impression.
</digression>
The screenplay is solid and should keep the plothole nazis fairly happy. It is also really smart in its portrayal of a child who's grown up with his own set of beliefs about the universe. Beliefs that get taken apart, slowly at first and then all together. I don't mean smart by being a self indulgent philosophy exercise, but by being emotional and believable. Not to forget the thrill and suspense of the escape from the room.
But all that's been said are in retrospect - it wasn't the usual wannabe connoisseur in me making mental notes of how good a particular line, scene or piece of acting was that was enjoying the movie. The movie, as I said, rises above and beyond that.
There's nothing in the movie I can think of that explains the effect it has on its viewers. There wasn't enough thrill and suspense to explain the racing of the heart. Not enough pain, suffering, sadness (or subsequent joy) to explain the tears. No otherworldly lines. And I've seen good acting before; good screenplays. It's not them either - I intend that to say a lot about the impact the movie had on me, not the other way around. The soundtrack wasn't memorable. Nor was the movie personally relatable.
At the risk of downplaying the cast and crew, the romantic in me wants to believe that this movie's success isn't just the result of screenplay tricks and techniques. That something truly magical happened to make me lose myself in the room, make me pray for the boy's escape from it as if it was real life, and shed happy tears when Ma hugs Jack. Something that cannot have been foreseen by its creators (at least, not before the shooting began), making the movie that much more unique and harder to recreate.
To wind up and to add a bit of substance to this melodrama of a review, the pacing was good throughout. And the second half, although good, doesn't come close to the first (Oh well!)
To summarize, backed by excellent performances, script and cinematography, Room is a heartwarming drama that will leave the audience with a lasting impact and, if you let it like I did, can make you cry. Easily one of the best movies of 2015, if not the best.
Rating: 9.5/10
To clarify, I do not look down upon 'screenplay tricks and techniques'. I cannot, I'm a Tarantino fan. And to me it's never about the plot - just the screenplay and execution.
If you like Room, you'll probably like Gone Girl, Whiplash, It Follows, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl(?) and vice versa. They have similarly strong impact, though with them you can easily see why.
I should quote this opening line of a review I saw on rotten tomatoes before watching the movie: "Watching Room is essentially the act of barely breathing and nearly crying for two hours."
Room is that rare breed of movies that is way more than the sum of its parts, that it is hard to comprehend why or how it manages to be as deeply moving as it is.
It follows the lives of Jack (Jacob Tremblay), a five year old boy, and his mother Ma (Brie Larson). Ma a.k.a. Joy was kidnapped by Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) when she was 17 and has spent all of the last seven years in the 'room', a little garden shed. Five of those seven have been spent raising Jack, to whom the 'room' has been the entire world. The movie shows us their life in the room, escape from it and their life afterwards.
Despite the grim circumstances the movie is anything but gloomy. For the most part, the boy's life in the room is joyful. And it is portrayed in a heartwarming way, with the cameras doing great jobs of elevating the room to the boy's whole world, or reducing it to the tiny garden shed that it really is.
Both characters are brought to life by excellent performances by the actors, especially Brie Larson. Ma is a real human with complex emotions. Often she has two sets of thoughts and feelings - ones she wants to let on to her son, and her true ones she tries to hide. She does so with different degrees of convincingness. And Brie Larson has to get it just right, else Jack's belief or disbelief will not ring right. Or at least not as well as it does. That's just one aspect of how good their performances were.
<digression>
I'm reminded of my review of The Imitation Game. There's a scene in which one can easily get the impression that Benedict Cumberbatch is acting really well, except I thought it lacked a layer that would've made the scene actually challenging - instead of just giving off that impression.
</digression>
The screenplay is solid and should keep the plothole nazis fairly happy. It is also really smart in its portrayal of a child who's grown up with his own set of beliefs about the universe. Beliefs that get taken apart, slowly at first and then all together. I don't mean smart by being a self indulgent philosophy exercise, but by being emotional and believable. Not to forget the thrill and suspense of the escape from the room.
But all that's been said are in retrospect - it wasn't the usual wannabe connoisseur in me making mental notes of how good a particular line, scene or piece of acting was that was enjoying the movie. The movie, as I said, rises above and beyond that.
There's nothing in the movie I can think of that explains the effect it has on its viewers. There wasn't enough thrill and suspense to explain the racing of the heart. Not enough pain, suffering, sadness (or subsequent joy) to explain the tears. No otherworldly lines. And I've seen good acting before; good screenplays. It's not them either - I intend that to say a lot about the impact the movie had on me, not the other way around. The soundtrack wasn't memorable. Nor was the movie personally relatable.
At the risk of downplaying the cast and crew, the romantic in me wants to believe that this movie's success isn't just the result of screenplay tricks and techniques. That something truly magical happened to make me lose myself in the room, make me pray for the boy's escape from it as if it was real life, and shed happy tears when Ma hugs Jack. Something that cannot have been foreseen by its creators (at least, not before the shooting began), making the movie that much more unique and harder to recreate.
To wind up and to add a bit of substance to this melodrama of a review, the pacing was good throughout. And the second half, although good, doesn't come close to the first (Oh well!)
To summarize, backed by excellent performances, script and cinematography, Room is a heartwarming drama that will leave the audience with a lasting impact and, if you let it like I did, can make you cry. Easily one of the best movies of 2015, if not the best.
Rating: 9.5/10
To clarify, I do not look down upon 'screenplay tricks and techniques'. I cannot, I'm a Tarantino fan. And to me it's never about the plot - just the screenplay and execution.
If you like Room, you'll probably like Gone Girl, Whiplash, It Follows, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl(?) and vice versa. They have similarly strong impact, though with them you can easily see why.
I should quote this opening line of a review I saw on rotten tomatoes before watching the movie: "Watching Room is essentially the act of barely breathing and nearly crying for two hours."
