Time for yet another entry in the Oscar Film Journal, here at Enuffa.com!
***Here there be SPOILERS***
We're heading back to the early aughts and a year I can't believe was 25 ago, 2001, for a look at the directorial debut of Todd Field. The film is In the Bedroom and stars Tom Wilkinson, Sissy Spacek and Marisa Tomei. Set in a small town in Maine, the story centers around a middle-aged couple whose graduate student son Frank (Nick Stahl) is in the middle of a summer fling with Natalie, a much older, divorced woman with two kids (Tomei). Frank assures his concerned mother and strangely proud father that the affair is just for the season until he goes to graduate school, but it's clear right away that these two have real feelings for each other and that Frank has a strong bond with her kids as well. Complicating things is the fact that Natalie's husband Richard is still trying to win her back, becoming more and more abusive in the process.
Then in a crucial scene about one-third into the film, In the Bedroom changes from a romantic drama about small-town star-crossed lovers to a much deeper story of loss, revenge, and most importantly what happens when two married people who have never learned to properly communicate suffer an unimaginable loss. In the film's most harrowing sequence, Frank gets a phone call from one of Natalie's kids informing him that Richard has burst into Natalie's house and trashed it. Frank runs over to help, Richard breaks in again, Natalie runs upstairs with the kids, and we hear a gunshot. Natalie rushes down to find Frank lying dead on the floor and Richard sits quietly at the dinner table with the gun.
This sudden, shocking turn of events changes the tone of the entire film, and the focus now becomes entirely on Matt and Ruth, Frank's parents, and how they each handle the loss of their son. Matt, who establishes early in the film that dealing with complex feelings is not his strong suit, retreats into his medical practice and self-medicates with alcohol, while Ruth isolates herself from everyone, even while in the company of their friends. Their silence in dealing with their grief becomes an ever-widening gulf threatening to split their house apart, until another crucial scene when neither of them can take it anymore and they each launch a scorched-earth attack. Ruth blames Matt for sitting by as Frank and Natalie's relationship escalated, accusing him of wanting to live vicariously as his son bedded a new, attractive woman, while Matt blames Ruth for being stifling and hyper-critical of Frank throughout his childhood. If you've ever had a long-overdue argument with your spouse after months of mounting silent tension, this scene is in many ways the most painful in the film.
Wilkinson and Spacek spend so much of the film internalizing their feelings and leaving almost everything unsaid, that when the blowup finally arrives it's almost cathartic. I could almost have wished for an even bigger and more savage explosion, but then again, watching these characters one gets the sense that they're so unpracticed - bordering on inept - at discussing emotion, the dialogue needs to be a little sloppy and unsure. The scene is an unusual exercise in restraint by all parties, in a film where most of the important action already happens offscreen.
I found this an interesting repeated choice. At one point Frank is at Natalie's house, cuddling with her in the yard, and Richard arrives unannounced. We then cut away, and only later do we find out Richard has punched Frank in the face, when we see Matt stitching him up. When Richard forces himself into Natalie's house and destroys the living room, we're only shown the aftermath once Frank goes over to help. When Richard shoots Frank, we hear the gunshot offscreen and discover Frank's now-dead body at the same time Natalie does. Todd Field time and again shows us the result of the thing, without showing us the thing itself. I'm sure there's a bit of subtext in these choices but I'm not entirely sure what it is.
Matt and Ruth are finally driven to a breaking point when it becomes clear Richard will not face adequate punishment for what he's done; as a well-connected member of the community Richard easily makes bail, and thanks to Natalie's inconsistent eyewitness testimony all he's likely to be convicted of is manslaughter. The choice for them now becomes whether to trust in the seemingly incompetent legal process or to inflict the punishment Richard so clearly deserves. The third act piles on the suspense in splendidly understated fashion.
Field proved himself a prodigiously talented filmmaker with this debut, and it's strange to me that to date he's only directed two other movies: the bitingly satirical Little Children, and the psychological drama Tàr. Boasting three Academy-nominated performances, In the Bedroom is the work of an already tremendously confident actor-turned-director with a unique take on familiar noir-esque subject matter.
I give the film ***1/2 out of ****.
No comments:
Post a Comment