In the Bedroom

In the Bedroom is a 2001 American drama film directed by Todd Field from a screenplay by Field and Robert Festinger, based on the 1979 short story "Killings" by Andre Dubus. It stars Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, Nick Stahl, Marisa Tomei, and William Mapother. The film centers on the inner dynamics of a family in transition. Matt Fowler (Wilkinson) is a doctor practicing in Maine and is married to Ruth Fowler (Spacek), a music teacher. Their son Frank (Stahl) is involved in a love affair with an older single mother, Natalie Strout (Tomei). As the beauty of Maine's brief and fleeting summer comes to an end, these characters find themselves in the midst of an unimaginable tragedy.
The title refers to the rear compartment of a lobster trap known as the "bedroom" and how it can hold only two lobsters before the lobsters begin to turn on each other. In the Bedroom premiered at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. It was theatrically released in limited theatres on November 23, 2001, and grossed $44.8 million against a $1.7 million budget. The film was praised for Field's direction, its screenplay and the performances (particularly those of Spacek, Wilkinson, Stahl and Tomei).
In the Bedroom received 5 nominations at the 74th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (for Spacek), Best Actor (for Wilkinson) and Best Supporting Actress (for Tomei). The film also earned Spacek and Wilkinson nominations for Best Actress and Best Actor respectively at the 55th British Academy Film Awards and the 8th Screen Actors Guild Awards. Spacek's performance in the film earned her the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress. Moreover, the film was chosen by the American Film Institute as one of the top ten films of the year while Spacek's performance was named the best female performance of the year.
In coastal Camden, Maine, Matt and Ruth Fowler enjoy a happy marriage and a good relationship with their son Frank, a recent college graduate home for the summer. Frank has fallen in love with a divorced older woman with children, Natalie Strout; Ruth is concerned about the relationship, while Matt thinks it is only a fling. The family struggles to communicate their feelings to one another, especially regarding Frank's relationship and schooling.
Frank is about to begin graduate school for architecture but is considering staying in town to continue working as a fisherman and to be near Natalie and her kids. Natalie's ex-husband, Richard Strout, tries to find a way into his ex-wife and children's lives, going to increasingly violent lengths to get his intentions across to Natalie, including assaulting Frank.
Frank rushes to Natalie's home one evening after receiving a frightened phone call from one of her children. He arrives to find the living room trashed and Natalie in distress. She tells him Richard just left, but he returns almost immediately. Natalie takes the boys upstairs, and Frank insists through the locked front door that Richard leave. He feigns doing so, only to break in through the back door with a handgun; in the ensuing scuffle, Frank is shot and killed.
Though equally devastated, Matt and Ruth grieve in different ways, with Matt putting on a brave face and quickly returning to work, while Ruth becomes reclusive and quiet. The couple retreat with friends Willis and Katie Grinnel to a secluded cottage for a weekend, but Ruth is distant and Matt begins to drink heavily.
At Richard's bail hearing, Natalie is pressed by his lawyer over whether she saw the shooting, as she initially testified when police arrived on the scene, and she tearfully shakes her head, as she only heard what happened. The tension between Matt and Ruth increases when their lawyer informs them that because of the change from Natalie's original testimony, Richard was allowed out on bail, and his defense will argue that Frank's death was an accident, meaning Richard will most likely be charged with accidental manslaughter and only serve five to ten years in prison. The couple begin to see Richard around town.
Matt approaches Natalie at work to check in on her and the two have a well-intentioned but strained conversation. Matt takes the boat out to catch lobsters to feel a connection with Frank, but he struggles with it and is pinched by a lobster, leaving a bleeding wound on one finger which Matt bandages. Natalie approaches Ruth at work and attempts to apologize, but Ruth slaps her before dismissively returning to her work. Natalie leaves in tears. Later that day, Ruth runs into Richard at the grocery store.
When she returns home, an argument erupts between the couple in which they emotionally savage each other; Matt lambastes Ruth for being overbearing in Frank's youth, while Ruth chastises Matt for showing little grief for their deceased son and encouraging his relationship with Natalie because of his own vicarious lust for her. After a young girl selling candy for a fundraiser interrupts them, Matt takes back what he said to Ruth, who apologizes in turn and, breaking down, tells Matt about seeing Natalie and Richard. They embrace and find common ground in their grief. Matt and Willis spend the evening drinking and lamenting the injustice, and Willis asks if the couple have considered moving or doing anything about Richard.
Matt abducts Richard at gunpoint, saying he's arranged for Richard to jump bail and leave the state, so as to spare them the pain of seeing him in Camden. He forces Richard to pack clothes for warm weather and plants a train schedule in his apartment. He then makes Richard drive them to the Grinnel cabin, where Willis is waiting with another vehicle. He begins to load Richard's belongings, but Matt hesitates, then shoots Richard, killing him. Willis admonishes Matt for not following their plan to kill Richard in the woods, and Matt responds that he couldn't wait. They bury Richard's body deep in the woods but are stuck unexpectedly at a bridge crossing on their return home. Willis laments that this cost them nearly an hour, meaning they will arrive back in town just after sunrise instead of in darkness.
Matt returns home to find Ruth awake. She asks, "Did you do it?" Matt appears troubled and unresponsive. He climbs into bed and turns away from her. She asks if he's okay, and Matt haltingly describes a photo he saw in Richard's apartment of him with Natalie in a loving embrace, but cannot explain why it affected him. At length Ruth gets up to make coffee, calling "Matt, do you want coffee?" from the kitchen, but he doesn't answer. Matt removes the bandage from his finger and finds the wound still there.
Principal photography began on 1 June 2000 and completed on 6 July 2000.
In the Bedroom made its debut at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. In a 2022 The New Yorker profile, director Todd Field recalled that when the film was acquired by Miramax Films, he was devastated, concerned that his film would be heavily re-edited by Harvey Weinstein. Field called Tom Cruise, a personal friend (and cousin of In the Bedroom actor William Mapother), who advised him not to give Weinstein any pushback, allow him to extensively re-edit, wait until the film tested poorly, then remind Weinstein of how well the film was initially received at Sundance. Field followed Cruise's advice and it worked.
Critic Dennis Lim wrote in Village Voice:
In the Bedroom was the first film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. It also received nominations for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted screenplay, more nominations than any film to premiere at Sundance until Precious in 2009.
In the Bedroom was the second highest-grossing film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival from 2000 to 2009, after Napoleon Dynamite. The film grossed a worldwide total of $44.8 million. It went on to become, at the time, the highest-grossing non-IMAX film in history never to reach the top 10 in a given week, and also one of the most successful films in history, with an expense-to-profit ratio of 1:25.
Upon its release, the film received critical acclaim for its direction, script, and performances, notably from Wilkinson and Spacek. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 93% based on 139 reviews, with an average score of 7.90/10. The site's consensus states "Expertly crafted and performed, In the Bedroom is a quietly wrenching portrayal of grief."Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100 based on reviews from 31 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
David Edelstein of Slate Magazine in his review of the film wrote that "it is the best movie of the last several years" and described it "the most evocative, the most mysterious, the most inconsolably devastating" film. He further mentioned that the effect of the film "isn't over when you leave the theater" and that it's "always going to be there". He also called In the Bedroom a "masterpiece".
Neil Norman of The Evening Standard stated "It is apparent that Field has not only studied the masters of cinematic understatement, such as Ozu and Bergman, but that he fully understands their processes... Field's achievement is such a perfectly consummated marriage of intent and execution that he need never make another movie. I would not be alone, I think, in hoping he will make many more."
William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer compared Field's direction to Kubrick's, saying that it "manages to feel both highly controlled and effortlessly spontaneous at the same time; and his lifting of the facade of this picturesque, Norman Rockwell setting is carried out with surgical precision". He further mentioned that "like Kubrick, Field doesn't make any moral judgments about his characters, and his film remains stubbornly enigmatic. It can be read as a high-class revenge thriller, an ode to the futility of vengeance or almost anything in between."
Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote, "In the Bedroom leaves us with the happy knowledge that with Field the American film scene, continually deplored as scraggly, can boast another admirable directing talent.
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated in his review that it is "one of the best-directed films of the year" and that "every performance has a perfect tone". He listed In the Bedroom as his third best film of the year 2001.
Rolling Stone's Peter Travers called the film "an uncommonly good movie" that "will hit you hard." He also mentioned that "Oscar would be a fool" if it ignores Spacek and Wilkinson's "career-crowning performances".
Among the negative reviews of the film include Paul Tatara of CNN mentioning that the film "flounders" despite the good performances. Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post said "it opens brilliantly" but goes on to "self-negating absurdity."
A. O. Scott included the film in his New York Times essay "The most important films of the past decade—and why they mattered."
In the Bedroom was also chosen by the New York Times Film Critics for their "Best 1,000 Films of All Time" list.
The March 2023 issue of New York magazine listed In the Bedroom alongside Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, Dr. Strangelove, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Conversation, Nashville, Taxi Driver, The Elephant Man, Pulp Fiction, There Will Be Blood, Roma, and Tár, also directed by Field, as "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars".
The March 2024 issue of IndieWire listed In the Bedroom and Tár, also directed by Field, as two of the "Best Picture Nominees that Deserved to win the Oscar."
The film was released on DVD in 2002 in a bare-bones edition containing no extras or director's commentary. When Field was asked by the New York Times why this was the case, he said, "Once a film is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the viewer. Unless it's something historical—like Citizen Kane or Raging Bull—it seems really silly to have that kind of thing."
A 35mm safety print is housed in the permanent collection of the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
During season four (episode eight, "Mergers and Acquisitions") of The Sopranos, Tony shows Carmela the new media center he has installed in the pool house, and she replies that she will pick up In the Bedroom for them to watch.