Becca goes through the rabbit hole

Rating: 5/10 (12 January 2019)

Becca(Nicole Kidman) fell into a rabbit hole. The young man who ran over her little boy was right about alternate universes. "If space is infinite," he tells the grieving mother, "anything is possible". The title of the film derives from a comic book that Jason(Miles Tenner) created. The plot synopsis goes like this: A boy's father dies. He was a scientist who uncovered a system of interconnected holes to alternate universes. The boy goes looking for him. In one of the panels, from behind a tree, he spies on a man who is indistinguishable from his dad, but it's not dad, interacting with duplicates of mom and himself. He is both here and there, an audience of one watching an actor play the story of his life. The tree is a demarcation; a metaphor for a bunched-up curtain pushed to one side, which separates him from the domestic scene playing out in the front yard. It could be a scene based on real life, his life, from the universe he just departed from. As a passive observer, in a sense, it's like almost being able to touch the movie screen, the filmic world that lies beyond it, a double for the world we live in. To the boy, it's an imitation of life, an adaptation, but in this movie, the screen has no negative space, filled with actors, dopplegangers unaware of their multiplicity, who play the same people from other galaxies. He is an extra; he knows not to walk pass the tree and walk into the "mis-en-scene".
The more you think about it, every film is like an alternate universe. For Kidman. sitting at the Palais in Cannes, or in this case, Comic-Con, she sees her twin, just like that boy watching life unfold and go on without him, objectively...and subjectively. It's still her; it's just another version, a queen from Atlantis. The boy, confronted with seeing himself being played by "himself", an impersonator, he can't be objective. Gestures, delivery of words, comportment; all these actions are second-guessed, as would an actress. Films, being what they are, self-contained worlds where anything can happen, and in theory, interconnected, with the actor in his/her many guises being the linchpin, Kidman, theoretically finds the portal that allows her to be an Irish immigrant("Far and Away"), a sociopathic broadcast journalist("To Die For"), a courtesan("Moulin Rouge"), or a grieving mother("Rabbit Hole"). In "Aquaman", she is a princess who can breathe underwater and kick ass on land.
The lighthouse keeper finds a strange woman splayed out on the rocks. Tom(Tememura Morrison) presumes she washed-up on shore. He is orientated to think horizontally. But for the sake of phantasmagorical thinking, imagine a scenario in which Becca, similar to the waitress from the A-ha music video for "Take On Me", finds passage into the comic book? Furthermore, accepting that hypothetical, imagine again, if "Rabbit Hole", the comic book, not the film(or the play it was based on) was adapted for the screen and was renamed "Aquaman".
She fell from the sky. She landed on her back. She tumbled out of a wormhole. She is on the same mission as Jason's stand-in, the illustrated boy; to be reunited with a loved one. Becca gets her wish. In "Rabbit Hole", she muses aloud, "Somewhere out there, I'm having a good time." Becca is an atheist. It's science that comforts her. Becca wants to see her child, not in heaven, but in another world because in another world, Danny is alive. Becca despises angels. If you think about it, they're not much different from the undead. Angels are like flying zombies. Becca wants to undo what as a parent she feels is a transgression. As Queen Atlanna, she gets to start a family all over again. This time, mother keeps son safe, making up for the day she forgot to latch the gate. The atonement is all the more impressive, owing to the degree of difficulty. It takes more than locking the door to keep King Orm's soldiers from bringing harm to her son. She kicks, punches, and throws these invaders all over the house. In "Rabbit Hole", beyond the white picket fence, beyond the road where Danny was run over, is the ocean. The mother, a transfigured woman, the queen of Atlantis, watches her son emerge from the water. For Becca, it fulfills a wish from her own world; to see Danny walk through the fence door. Redemption, at last. Finally, the long-awaited hug, the clinch from another universe.