A mother's "strong"

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 2016)

A mother and her son, which looks like a girl, live in a room that has no windows, a locked door, and no light other than that coming through an overhead skylight. Jack (Jacob Tremblay), a bright five-year old boy with hair down to his shoulders wakes up every morning saying hello to his universe. He does not greet the sun, the grass, the trees outside, where he could run and laugh and play like a normal five-year old but only to the objects he knows for five years as being "the real world", his world: the lamp, the sink, the plant, the refrigerator. His only friend is a mouse that he feeds, thinking that the mouse also lives in that little world, the only one real for him. Sometimes a man comes over, during the night, and then Jack must sleep in the wardrobe, not to be seen. The relationship mother-son appears to be normal: they cook, dance, laugh, stretch out, read about Alice, mother tells the tale of Monte Cristo. The poverty that surrounds them is not painful. The real pain and anger I felt when Jack could not believe that outside "the room" exists a real world, with real people, and trees, grass, leaves, seasons, snow. Then the reality strikes: captivity. A child born in captivity, because of a madman, a rapist. A story of a child whose life started in a cage having as a talisman his mother love and her tooth, thinking that "his strong" is in his long hair. Real world proves to be scarier than "the room". A movie that should be seen, a story that must be known, a boy that deserves all the awards: Jacob Tremblay.