Reach for the sky

Rating: 8/10 (13 January 2016)

Adapted by Emma Donoghue from her own novel, this Fritzl-esque tale of brutal long-term abuse may come across as the easier, Hollywoodised alternative to Markus Schleinzer's Michael, but that description misses the point. Room goes beyond the horror of physical incarceration and explores arguably the more challenging issue of the psychological incarceration that follows. It's easy for cinema to show suffering; harder to portray recovery, especially the stuttering kind.
Joy (Brie Larson) and her 5-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) are imprisoned in a tiny room by an abuser known only as "Old Nick" (Sean Bridgers). Jack hides in the closet when Old Nick visits Joy every night. During the day, Joy teaches Jack about the world outside Room (note the lack of definite article). There's wonderful humour and pathos in her struggles to explain reality and fantasy via images on a fuzzy old CRT TV. But for all her efforts, Joy comes to the conclusion that she must help Jack escape and see the world for himself.
I'll plant a minor spoiler alert here.
We have a movie of two halves. The first half takes place entirely in Room. The second follows the escape of Joy and Jack, and their efforts to recover in the brightness and busyness of the wider world. There's no trial for Old Nick. This is not a movie about the all-healing power of justice. It's about a mother and son adjusting to long-term trauma, and how it affects their relationships with the (grand)parents who've been living in their own dreadful dark for the past seven years.
It may be surprising to hear that this comes from Lenny Abrahamson, who last brought us the relatively slight and irreverent Frank. While that movie was distinguished by its irony, the earnestness in Room is almost suffocating. It's not always subtle, proudly wearing its intention to devastate, making it not so much a weepie as a complete and utter bawlie, expertly tailored to tug the heartstrings. In some scenes this can be a curse but overall it's a blessing. It's no small feat to reduce an entire auditorium to a blubbering mess.
As Joy's mother, shattered by her relief, Joan Allen almost steals the show with an amazingly detailed performance. In the middle is Larson, playing Joy as powerful and principled, carrying her hidden brokenness out into the real world. But the movie belongs to Tremblay. Abrahamson has drawn an astonishing performance from the youngster. For a start, the kid really acts like a kid – it's not one of those creepily precocious manchild performances that American cinema sometimes conjures. Through Jack there's a sense of genuine wonder at the world, whether it's within the confines of a sound-proofed shed, or outside where the sky goes on forever. The youngest Best Actor in Oscar history up to this point was almost 30. Just saying.
I can't say I was on board with every filmmaking decision. Stephen Rennicks' soaring, Johann Johannson-style music is frequently grating, seeming to exist to make us the audience feel all fuzzy rather than having any real relationship with the narrative. And there are certain scenes which don't quite ring true. For example, the primetime TV interview – an exercise in awkwardness – is unconvincingly thoughtless. I mean, as if we need any more help sympathising with Joy. Perhaps US TV journalism really is that insensitive, but it felt like low-hanging fruit to me.
There are no answers to the evil of Old Nick, nor for the suffering of those he's abused. But uncertainty and doubt are not the same as hopelessness. I felt manipulated – but that's what good movies do. In its soul-scouring search for truth, inevitably the film dips into sentimentality. But let's applaud Room for bringing to a broad audience an extremely difficult subject and making it as accessible as it can possibly be.