“Are turtles real?”
“Perhaps an odd question for a movie without a conventionally fantastic bone in its body to pose, but the moment when five-year-old Jack (Jacob Tremblay), imprisoned in an 11x11 shed for his entire life, asks it of his Ma (Brie Larson), a young woman who spent two years alone in that same shack before bearing the child of the man who abducted her, Room takes a decided turn toward consideration of the vast expanse of the outside world. The only world Jack has ever known, the only one he really believes exists, is the one contained within the walls of that shed, accompanied only by his Ma and the objects he to an extent personifies in order to combat the reality of their aloneness—Lamp, Plant, Rug, Toilet, Sink and, of course, Wardrobe, where he hides when ‘Old Nick,’ their captor, comes to visit.
“When Jack asks that question about turtles, which he has only seen represented on TV, he signals his openness to the possibility that there might be something tangible outside Room, and Ma almost imperceptibly awakens to the opportunity his curiosity has presented to her as a means of facilitating escape. And up to this point director Lenny Abrahamson (Frank) has taken his cues from Tremblay. The wonderment with which Jack considers those personified objects that adorn his daily routine, or the raindrops and snowflakes that land on the skylight above, or the mysterious origins of a mouse that suddenly appears on their floor, these perceptions and seemingly hundreds more allow Abrahamson to create a movie fueled almost exclusively, through claustrophobic close-ups often shot through tufts of Jack’s long hair, or though the slats of the wardrobe door, or from beneath the safe cover of bed sheets, or eventually a rolled-up carpet, by Jack’s subjective viewpoint.
“One of the marvelous things about Room is how, even when the story moves beyond those walls and back into the world Jack has tried to believe in, one to which his Ma once belonged, the point of view of this young boy remains consistent, understandably tentative and alive. The fear, resistance, frustration and forgiveness in the way Jack processes this alien and seemingly infinite new environment is woven into the very fabric of the experience of the film, as conducted by Abrahamson from Emma Donoghue’s marvelously intuitive script. There isn’t a landscape, object, perspective or new room seen that we don’t at least initially approach with the same blend of curiosity and tension that has thoroughly upended Jack, who continues to wonder at what point they can go back to the comforts of Room. That process of forgiveness that the filmmakers sow extends not only to Jack and Joy (Ma’s given name) but also to the members of the immediate family—her mother, her father, and her mother’s new husband—who all have their own ways of responding to her return, of contemplating the awful reality of what she has endured and survived. (Some do better with it than others, but voices are rarely raised, and when they are it’s from frustration and fear more than anger.)
“But of course it’s the bond between Joy and Jack that is the movie’s most singular point of reference. Their once horrific circumstances have been replaced by certainly less awful, yet more emotionally complex ones on the outside, all of which embody the movie’s convincing portrayal of motherhood, parental responsibility and love, but also the degree to which that bond is both unshakable and frightening for Joy, a method of survival which she struggles to recontextualize outside the walls of captivity.
“And here Room might be considerably less than it is were it not for the sheer, unaffected natural believability as mother and son, which is colored by exasperation and frustration as well as love, that radiates between Larson and Tremblay. The history of American movies is littered with plasticized, see-through portrayals of parent/child relationships, usually lathered with treacle or snark and absent a moment’s resonance with reality. On the other hand, Abrahamson’s movie is far more suited to a looser, more European-style sensibility—Abrahamson is Irish, and the movie was filmed in Toronto. It is no chore for an audience to almost immediately accept that these two are biological kin-- the body language and sense of intimacy with which Ma and Jack interact belie a mother and son who have spent five years in company and confinement, to say nothing of the even more intimate experience of having shared space within the same body. Ma and Jack’s is not a relationship concerned with a lot of chummy banter, and Abrahamson would seem constitutionally incapable of shooting a cute montage meant to sell qualities of familial bonding his actors have failed to suggest themselves.
“Everything you’ve heard about Brie Larson’s work here is true—she conjures emotions and effects and connections with the other actors in Room that are genuinely mysterious and lovely. But her unostentatious brilliance might not have been so vividly realized without Tremblay, who delivers what might be the most realistic, least precocious performance by a child actor I’ve ever seen. For an actor his age (he was seven when the movie was shot), there is tremendous awareness and feeling in the way he brings Jack to life, a sensitivity to his surroundings that is natural but also, because of the demands of the story, intelligently, purposefully applied. However it may have happened, this is not a performance that betrays step-by-step directorial or editorial interference. As much or more than Larson, Jacob Tremblay carries Room and is an integral part of what makes it a movie that is bound to resonate far beyond the range of awards season hosannas. He’s the movie’s tiny, tender, terrified beating heart. He makes Jack as real as the turtles.” ~ Dennis Cozzalio
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