Hello, it’s me. I’ve been wondering…okay I’m done with the Adele jokes.
It’s been such a long time since you’ve heard from me, Write Readers! If this is your first year tuning in, I’m Rebecca, the resident Write Teacher film critic. Every year I review all of the Academy Awards Best Picture nominees, and this year is no exception. By the end of this series, you should have a solid grasp on who will take home Best Picture for 2016. (Hint- I don’t think I ever officially predict who wins.) 
We start Oscar season with a film so wonderful it only needs one word, similar to other wonderful things like Prince, or Beyonce: Room. Room has been nominated for four Oscars this season, including Best Actress, and Best Director. Starring Brie Larson as “Ma” and Jacob Tremblay as “Jack”, Room is the story of a boy and his mother who have lived all of Jack’s five years in the same room. Through a series of very fortunate events, Jack and Ma gain their freedom, and Jack begins adjusting to life in “world”, which is very different from living inside “room.” The film Room is based on the book Room, both of which are written by Emma Donoghue.
(Warning: Spoiler Alert!)
(To avoid, jump forward three spaces…er…two paragraphs)
Once upon a time, in a horrible, cruel world identical to the one we live in, a 17-year old girl named Joy was snatched by a man we only ever know as “Old Nick” (Sean Bridgers). Because Old Nick resembles a regular guy, no one suspects that he is a horrible woman abductor, and he manages to hold Joy aka Ma captive in his shed for SEVEN years. Because the world isn’t cruel enough, Old Nick impregnates Joy, and a beautiful son is born, named Jack. We meet them in “room”, on the morning of Jack’s fifth birthday. Because Jack is now five, and also probably because she literally can’t take it anymore, Ma decides that five is the year at which Jack is allowed to know that the world is cruel, and that there is a lot more of it outside the four walls they live in. In the beginning, Jack doesn’t believe that anything outside their spacious, New York City studio apartment could possibly be real, but eventually he comes around to it. This is when the plan is concocted: Jack will pretend to be dead, and when Old Nick comes to take his body away and bury it somewhere with trees, Jack will jump out of the moving vehicle and yell for help at the nearest person he sees. It is at this point Jack sagely says he wishes he were four again, and hopes that perhaps this plan can wait until he’s six and slightly better equipped to handle it. But Ma decides for both of them, and poof, they do it. Somehow, Jack manages to get out of the moving truck, although he is spotted by Old Nick. Luckily, Jack looks sufficiently kidnapped to alert the kind man walking his dog, and Old Nick gives up the fight to avoid attracting more attention. Here’s the willing suspension of disbelief part: Jack somehow manages to communicate that he’s been living in a shed for his whole life to the police officer who picks him up, and also somehow says enough things in his terrified six-word sentences to clue the officer in to the exact location of said shed. Mom is rescued, and we all party!
Just kidding. Life outside room is hard! There are lawyers, reporters, doctors, parents, and best of all, depression! As Jack is getting used to the fact that the world is big and the fact that there are always doors with more things outside of them, Ma is attempting to cope with the fact that she spent seven years in a shed. Everyone’s life has continued, and she’s been sexually assaulted enough times that it’s a miracle she didn’t have 6 children. The tv interview she agrees to do is the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and she attempts to commit suicide. Thank goodness Jack wakes up in the middle of the night, and saves her for the second time. As she moves on the road to healing, we see Jack adjusting, learning, making friends, and assimilating all of these new things into his life outside of room.
You’d think a movie like this couldn’t get more depressing, but you’d be wrong! It’s handled extraordinarily well. If you’ve read anything I’ve written, you know that I end up turning on the water works in every single movie I see, no matter the topic. (Yes, I know there’s a space movie this year, I don’t want to discuss it.) But I am proud to say that my eyes remained solidly dry throughout the whole movie! I didn’t even choke a solitary, Sinead O’Connor tear back. This isn’t a testament to my new nerves of steel, but instead to the incredible way that Emma Donoghue wrote this film. (Also, hooray for a female writer!) It’s not overly precious or self-indulgent. Jack’s perfect five year old musings keep the horrific subject remarkably light. He is the most five year old child imaginable, which is harder than it seems from a writer’s perspective, and he makes eggshell snakes and feeds a mouse that gets in, and we believe every single second of his extremely confused first moments outside room. The film couldn’t have been written better, and I’d actually like to see it again, just to hear some of his wonderful sound bites.
Then there is the acting. Sometimes, when you watch a film, you notice all of the minute acting choices. And you think about how well the actors are doing, and what’s working and what isn’t…Birdman was like that to me. I was thinking really hard about it while it was happening. Room is subtle. Probably, you’re just so overwhelmed by the subject matter that you wouldn’t notice anything else, unless it were a terrible choice. However, it goes without saying that Brie Larson does an incredible job. (Maybe it doesn’t go without saying, because I just said it?) I felt her terror and hysteria when Old Nick left room with Jack. I felt her love for her son all over the place, and I felt that dead, hollow sort of place she went to at night, when Jack was asleep in the wardrobe and Old Nick would come in. Jacob Tremblay is wonderful as Jack, although it’s always difficult to look at child actors. Are they innately doing what they do and the director was just really good at accessing their best work? Or are they just that good? Either way, Jack and his voiceovers were a delight. It reminded me of Beasts of the Southern Wild.
I apologize, my first review of the season is always long, but stay with me here. The direction. I have to mention Lenny Abrahamson, who gets the nom for Best Direction, and rightly so, because it’s so well done. I don’t quite understand the logistics of squeezing a lot of equipment into that tiny space (the walls come off?). I also don’t understand what happens when a writer looks at you and says, “Okay, so we’re making this movie that’s going to be really hard for the audience, so I want you to capture this inner life and make it accessible and not terrifying or overtly wildly depressing. Best of luck.” But somehow this movie comes to life. My favorite parts of the movie are actually when they’re in “room.” The moments when Jack wakes up and says good morning to all of the bits of the room, including “egg snake” and “sink”. It’s so great. Or when he’s running track by running back and forth between the walls so he can get exercise, and then he does yoga with Ma. The conversations they have about what’s real… I could go on for days. It’s all so RICH and lovely and wonderful and yes you’re aware that they’re trapped in a garden shed, but you’re also aware that they’re LIVING just the same. It’s delicious.
I think Room has an excellent shot of taking home Best Picture, and all the rest of the films on the list have a lot to live up to. If they’re all this good, then this may be the most difficult choice ever.
Live, Love, Learn,
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