Room
Director: Lenny Abrahamson
Writers: Emma Donoghue (screenplay by), Emma Donoghue (based on the novel by)
Stars: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Sean Bridgers
A room can mean different things to different people. Your room in your house is your personal space where you can be yourself. A certain room can bring up a painful or a joyful memory depending on your personal experience. Sometimes, a room is all you have, and it means the world to you.
In the movie Room, a small room is shared by a mother and her 5-year-old son. For one, it is life changing, a place where she has been kept after being kidnapped as a teenager for seven years and repeatedly raped, tortured and left pregnant. For the other, it is where he was born, brought up and formed all the memories.
The little Jack doesn’t realise his childhood’s most special moments are a nightmare for his mother who’s pining to reunite with her family.
The film begins with Jack turning 5 and getting excited at the prospect of baking cake with his mom. The room where they stay has a commode, a basin, cooking stove, a tiny dining table, wardrobe, two chairs, a bed, a plant, a tv set among other things of daily requirement.
For the child who has never stepped out of his home, he doesn’t feel anything out of place or abnormal. He however has a skewed sense of what’s real and what’s not. He feels the food that he gets is created with magic and pulled out of TV, plants are real but trees are not, animals exist only on TV or his imagination. For him, the world, the people outside the room are fictional while room is the only thing that is real.
After Jack turns 5, Joy, his mother decides that he’s old enough to know about the life outside room and that is not all that rosy. She finally gathers courage to share her traumatic story, but at the same time also devises a plan to get out of the room.
The mommy and son duo are able to escape, but things do not pan out as the mother thought they would be after their escape. The changed dynamics of her family, and being questioned by reporters about her decision of raising the boy in captivity, drives her to the edge.
The boy has a better transition but still misses the room he grew up in and one of the reasons is that there he had undivided attention of his mom. As he makes new friends and the mother starts recovering from her trauma, things start looking up for the two.
Room scores well on most counts barring the unrealistic escape scene where a shrewd kidnapper was fooled so easily by a 5-year-old. The film has a strong emotional connect and not at any point you find a dull moment. You grow attached to the little boy who’s mostly the focus of the story. His dilemmas leave you thinking if he was better off before or after coming of the room. Also how later on when he starts enjoying the process of discovering the world outside his room, you feel relieved that he always had and will have a normal childhood despite the challenges. Full marks to the child artiste for portraying the complex array of emotions and giving a natural performance.
Joy, a rape survivor, a hostage for seven years who bore it all with a smile just to make things normal for her child is a complex character. She has been dreaming about her rescue for years but when it actually happens, she faces her worst emotional crisis. The guilt of not being able to give her son normal childhood consumes. Her father moving away from the family further breaks her heart. Seeing the pictures of her life before kidnapping breaks her apart. The life that was snatched from her.
My favorite scene in the film is where the two revisit the room and look at it differently. The child is looking for his favourite spots in the room while the mother troubled with her trauma wants to get away as fast as she could.
Room will keep you glued to your screens and while the protagonists were rescued from it, viewers will find themselves in its grip for a long time.
Room that released in 2015 is now available on Netflix.