Ugh. I’m so depressed now 3.5 readers.
BQB here with a review of the Oscar nominated sadness fest that is Room.
SPOILER ALERT – That it will make you sad is just one of the many spoilers ahead.
I may be a movie buff but that doesn’t mean I watch everything.
I have a general rule about movies. My life is already depressing enough that I don’t need to add to it with a story about other people being sad. Ergo, I gravitate toward movies that are fun, action packed, adventurous, funny…situations that I can imagine myself in to escape the hum drum nature of my own existence.
But then again, movies like this one remind me and maybe all of us that as bad as we think we might have it…there’s always someone who has it way worse.
Rejoice and be happy with what you have.
Room, an Irish/Canadian film, stars Brie Larson as “Ma.” Literally, that’s the only name you get for her character in the entire movie. That’s the only name her five year old son, Jack (Jacob Tremblay), knows her by.
At the start of the film, Ma is a young woman who has obviously been kidnapped and held captive in a room for a long, long time. It has been so long, in fact, that she has even given birth to Jack, a son she has with her captor, and has been raising him inside the room for years.
“Old Nick” (Sean Bridgers) aka the captor, enters room once in awhile, drops off some food, demands acknowledgement from Ma about how lucky she is to have him (which sadly, she’s learned over the years to feign in order to avoid a beating).
Without giving too much away, the first half of the film surrounds an escape attempt and the second half deals with…well, the aftermath. If I tell you much more you might as well not watch it.
Jack has never known life outside of the room so needless to say, he’s had a less than usual upbringing. Inanimate objects i.e. “plant” and “chair” and “lamp” are his friends. He gets to watch TV but he thinks its magic. He doesn’t believe Ma’s stories about life outside of the place he calls “room.”
There are a lot of themes. Mother’s love triumphs over all, life is short so when shitty tragedies derail our plans it totally sucks, as bad as you think you have it, there’s someone else who has it worse so appreciate what you have.
Oh and then it obviously sheds light on the plight of people who have been kidnapped and held hostage. A shitty situation to be in for sure. Viewers might watch it and instantly be reminded of the terrible Cleveland kidnapping case in which a man held three women hostage for years. It is actually based on a novel by the same name written by Emma Donoghue.
Not sure what else to say. Brie Larson earned her best actress win in this one for convincing me as a viewer that it really sucked to live in that room. It’s not a feel good flick by any means and you’ll end up feeling depressed. Here’s where someone will tell me that I shouldn’t feel depressed about it, that it is a story about how a person stuck in a hopeless situation found hope or whatever but yeah, it made me sad.
Maybe I’m just a glass half empty kind of guy. I’m not knocking it of course. It is an emotional premise and it punches you in the gut.
I guess I just prefer movies with CGI and crude humor because I prefer my gut to remain unscathed.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 