A Series of Plodding Events

Rating: 6/10 (30 September 2015)

At the start of Room, a young woman and her five-year-old son are living in the titular edifice, a backyard shed. The woman (Brie Larson) has always told Jack (Jacob Tremblay) that "outer space" is all that exists outside Room; as far as Jack is concerned, this is the gospel truth and the universe consists of Room and Room alone.
It is not giving anything away to note that Ma and Jack escape Room, as the movie is more about the ability of each to cope with the outside world. For Jack, every step and every breath outside is a wholly new experience. Ma, despite having lived for 17 years before coming to Room, encounters different obstacles – the world has moved on, and she doubts her own ability as a mother to Jack.
I had been expecting a suspenseful drama-thriller about a daring escape, given the various synopses I'd read. (The movie is based on a novel by Emma Donoghue, which is itself loosely based on real events.) Much of the first half of the film, though, concentrates on life inside Room for Ma and Jack. Ma uses her strong will and infinite patience to convince Jack for five years that all is well and that what they have is a normal life, that what they see on television is not real, but everything from the single bed to the lidless toilet tank is definitely real. Ma sacrifices as much as she can to keep Jack happy and (relatively) safe, even to the point of giving herself over to her captor on a regular basis in exchange for food and other items for Jack and herself.
To say that this first half moves slowly would be to understate things. We don't just get a slice of the life that the duo leads; we get the entire pie, and most of it just isn't all that exciting or intriguing. We do get to see a little into the characters of the characters, pardon the phrasing. We see that Jack doesn't like to not get his way or to have his worldview challenged. Then again, who does at age 5? We see that Ma is often calm but firm with her young charge. It's a small Room, after all; no need to go nuclear when there's really no point to it. In any event, much time is spent watching their everyday sheltered lives. Because the general plot involved their lives beyond Room, I began to grow impatient: Were they going to spend the entire movie in Room, only to escape in the final minutes? Why wouldn't anything happen? The fact that Ma and Jack would eventually escape left the first half of the movie perfectly devoid of suspense. Although still waters do often run deep, I didn't really feel like I was getting a lot out of watching a whole lot of nothing.
Once they do escape, though, things pick up. The focus quickly shifts from a struggle for survival to a struggle to understand. Ma's parents, played by Joan Allen and William H. Macy, have different reactions to the return of their daughter and the arrival of their new (to them) grandson. In the five years since Ma's abduction, her parents have separated; her dad lives on the other side of the country now, and her mom lives with her friend Leo (Tom McCamus). With Ma's return, there's a lot of media hype, and lawyers, atop a potent array of stress factors. Escaping may have been the easy part.
The acting is uniformly terrific. Larson's work is powerful, evocative, and heart-wrenching, and it's definitely award worthy. Allen and Macy also excel with perhaps the best work in their respective careers, and that's saying something. Young Tremblay is also very good – as is his character, a plucky, long-haired cherub who's more at home in Room than in the outside world (and with good reason).
But the acting cannot overcome what's basically a very turgid script. Room is punchless at its core, and it would be a total waste if it weren't for the Herculean efforts of its talented cast. When there is no action, I look for meaning. When there is no meaning or action, I look for the exit. Room suffers from spending too much time contemplating things and not enough time doing them – or at least discussing them. Forget the action, I wouldn't have minded seeing more reaction. The first half of the movie could have been subtitled "A Series of Plodding Events." The second half goes a long way toward saving the first, thanks in part to additional characters and a fresh setting, but it's not enough to save the entire movie.