ROOM: The Film Babble Blog Review

Now playing at both multiplexes and indie art houses:

ROOM (Dir. Lenny Abrahamson, 2015)

Brie Larson’s sturdy performance in SHORT TERM 12 is considered by critics to be her breakthrough, but it’s her powerful work in ROOM, Lenny Abrahamson’s adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s award-winning 2010 novel, that should make the actress a household name.

Larson plays Joy Newsome, a young woman living under horrifying conditions. For the last seven years Joy has been trapped in a sound-proofed, concrete garden shed in the backyard of the house of her abductor only known as Old Nick (Sean Bridges).

With Joy is her son, five-year-old Jack (first-time child actor Jacob Tremblay), the result of one of many rapes that Joy has suffered over the years. To Jack, the small, filthy space they live in is their entire world. Joy has maintained this illusion by telling Jack that there is nothing beyond the four walls of “room” except outer space, and that what he sees on their crappy beat-up TV is make believe.

However, the day has come for Joy to tell Jack the truth, because she’s devised a desperate plan for escape. Joy fakes Jack’s death, and rolls him up in a rug for Old Nick to take away in his pick-up truck. Joy instructs Jack to wriggle out, jump from the bed of the truck and run for help.

The plan is successful and Jack is able to direct the police to the shed, and mother and son are finally free. Jack is astounded at how big and limitless the real world outside the room is, while Joy struggles with rehabilitation.

Joy discovers that her parents (Joan Allen and William H. Macy) have divorced, and that her mother has a new boyfriend (Tom McCamus). Without spelling it out, Macy conveys how uncomfortable he is with having a grandson who is a product of rape.

Needing financial help, Joy agrees to do a prime time interview, but it doesn’t go well because of the glibly insensitive questions posed by the show’s host (Wendy Crewson).

This leads to Joy spiraling down into depression, and attempting suicide. Jack, still wide-eyed at his surroundings, gets his long hair, which he calls his “strong,” cut by his grandmother, and sends his ponytail to his mother in the hospital. This gesture helps in Joy’s recovery, and we see that once again Jack has saved his mother.

Abrahamson, whose film FRANK (the one with Michael Fassbender as a musician who wears a giant papier-mache head) was one of my favorite films of last year, handles this material with great poise. Every scene seems to have profound purpose, especially one late in the film where Joy and Jack revisit room for closure, though composer Stephen Rennick’s score lays it on a bit too thick at times.

I was incredibly moved by ROOM. It’s a durable drama that has moments of gripping suspense - i.e. the escape sequence – but it is its tender concern for its characters that will stay with me the most. It’s largely due to the stellar acting of the mother-son duo.

Tremblay puts in an impressive naturalistic performance for a 5-year old, although his voice-over narration, a totally unnecessary device here, gets a little icky.

Larson, who may be best known to mainstream movie-goers as Amy Schumer’s sister in TRAINWRECK, excels as Joy. One can feel her strained pain in her every expression, and all of her interactions with Tremblay shine with authenticity.

It’s flawless work, a career best, and if she doesn’t get nominated for a Best Actress Oscar, I’ll be very offended.

ROOM’s dark disturbing first half is exceedingly effective, but it’s the way that its second half earns its uplift that makes it a fully rounded, and satisfying emotional experience.

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Blu Ray/DVD Review: Michael Fassbender Under The Mask As FRANK

Out today on Blu ray and DVD:

FRANK

(Dir. Lenny Abrahamson, 2014)

For a movie about a front man for an underground indie rock band who wears a large papier-mâché head at all times, Lenny Abrahamson’s fourth feature FRANK is actually pretty grounded.

Michael Fassbender plays the title role loosely based on British singer/comedian Chris Sievey, who wore a similar fake head for his stage character, Frank Sidebottom.

Now, I won’t say whether or not the film’s Frank ever takes off the head, but I will venture that this wouldn’t be Mindy Kaling’s favorite Fassbender movie.

The real protagonist of the piece is Domhnall Gleeson as a somewhat awkward aspiring songwriter/keyboardist who joins “the Soronprfbs,” the unpronounceable name of Frank’s avant garde band project. Gleeson was recruited by the band’s manager (Scoot McNairy) after the previous keyboard player attempted suicide by drowning, so he may have bitten off more than he can chew.

Especially when Gleeson finds himself travelling with the band, that includes a deliciously surly Maggie Gyllenhaal on theremin, to a cabin out in the Irish countryside to record a album – a process that may take years. When Gleeson asks about the head, McNairy tells him that he’s “just gonna have to go with this.”

The experimental quintet, which also consists of Autolux/Jack White drummer Carla Azar, and French actor François Civil, spends their days finding inspiration in odd ways, designing new instruments out of household items, and adhering to a “strict regime of physical exercise” while Gleeson documents their activity via Twitter and YouTube videos.

This, of course, like in so many films from THE ROCKER to CHEF, leads to the band becoming an internet sensation and garnering an invite to play South By Southwest. Sure, the social media marketing angle may be in danger of becoming a cliché, but it still works well enough here.

Unfortunately it loses some of its steam in the aftermath of their disastrous appearance at the popular music festival in Austin, Texas, in which Fassbender’s Frank goes missing, but the film’s thematic arc about whether mental illness can equate creative genius brings itself back home satisfyingly.

It’s weird to say that this may be the Fassbender role that appeals to me the most, you know, because he’s wearing that weird big head with the creepy painted-on fake face. Yet when he, speaking in a sharp American accent, states his facial expressions (“flattered grin, followed by a bashful half smile”), and performs his music, which sounds like a mixture of Daniel Johnston and Magnetic Fields, with a bit of the Flaming Lips thrown in, his surprisingly punchy presence is something I can relate to more than, well, SHAME for one. 

Gleeson, best known for playing Bill Weasley in the last couple of Harry Potter movies, isn’t as strong as Fassbender or Gyllenhaal, but is a likable enough bloke who does a decent job carrying us through the thread of the film. McNairy also puts in good work, but, you know, when Frank's around, everybody else just fade into the background.

FRANK was written by Peter Straughan and Jon Ronson, who had played keyboards with the film’s main inspiration (the aforementioned Chris Sievey, who you can see in this 1985 clip doing his thing), and it’s a much stronger collaboration than their previous work, THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS.

I was surprised by several things about FRANK. Surprised by Fassbender’s performance, surprised by how thoughtful and thought-out its screenplay is, surprised by its likably catchy soundtrack, and, most of all, surprised that it’s become one of my favorite films of 2014.

Special Features: Feature commentary with Lenny Abrahamson, Domhnall Gleeson and composer Stephen Rennicks (composer), Feature commentary with writers Jon Ronson and Peter Straughan, Behind the Scenes featurette, Sound promo. Deleted scenes, and theatrical trailer.

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