It's been a while since I've done a
retrospective movie review, but after seeing 2015's Room I
just had to. You guys remember this one right? That touching drama
film about a boy and his mom who escape from their creepy captor and
his single windowless room to discover the beauty of the outside
world? It was nominated for tons of awards and received huge amounts
of praise so I decided to check it out for myself.
And I got to admit, I didn't really get
it at first. I had to watch it three times in a row before I finally
understood it, which is something I've never done before... the 3
times in a row part, I mean; I've understood movies before. Shut up!
I'm a reviewer; what kind of fool do you take me for?! So let's get
into it.
After some opening credits showing the
decrepit, uninviting city in which Room takes place, the film
introduces us right off the bat to the dastardly captor paying a
visit to his captive, the mother. Moments later the boy – who for
some reason doesn't look that much younger than his mom – then
enters the room. That really threw me for a loop the first
time I saw this – I mean, it looks as if he's already escaped Room
– but upon repeat viewings I've learned that the title is loosely
applied to include the whole apartment building in which Room is
located. We don't see the boy nor the mother leave the apartment
building, so their “prison” is in fact a bit larger than the
film's marketing led us to believe.
Anyways, the mother at first appears to
be happily in love with her captor but as soon as he's out of the
picture she expresses her disdain with being forced to live with him
and make love to him against her will. We learn that the only reason
she pretends to love him is to avoid provoking his violent side,
which most other people don't seem to believe exists. She tries, to
little avail, to confide in the mishmash of similarly screwed up
miscreants who occupy the same wretched apartment complex where
strangers freely barge into any room they please and drug dealers run
amok. This includes a crazy, middle-aged bag lady who likes to have
the exact same 1-minute conversations over and over again. This woman
loves to pretend she's our heroine's mother (although she shows
nothing but antipathy for the boy) and to tell insane stories that
she made up in her head such as the time her brother stole her
inherited house or the time she found out that she definitely has
breast cancer (which I highly doubt since she never brings it up
again). Ultimately, bag lady is unsympathetic to the mother's pleas
for help because from her warped point of view the standard of living
afforded by the mother's captivity is good enough.
Similarly, the mother reaches out to
Mark, another neighbour, the captor's sleazy, back-stabbing best
friend. She starts up an affair with him in an attempt to win him
over to her side and set her and her son free. Although they bump
uglies multiple times, Mark is reluctant to help her because he too
fears how violently angry the captor might be.
Yes, this captor may seem like an
easygoing (albeit strange) man, but upon closer inspection he's
really a psychotic ex-convict. He lives in a world of hallucinatory
fantasies in which everybody likes him. For example, he's convinced
himself that the woman he's kidnapped is his fiance and that the boy
is his close friend/adopted son, I think (who freakin' knows?). The
captor is a very controlling person. He confronts the mother when he
hears her telling others about his physical abuse and tells her to
either deny their occurrences or just to forget about them. He also
has a tape recorder rigged up and ready to go so that he can record
phone calls when he's feeling suspicious of the people around him.
As one might expect, being born and
growing up in such an inhospitable place has not done wonders for the
boy's mental development. Just like his biological father, the boy
has his own personal fantasies. In his case he believes that he is
headed for university and at some point he stopped believing that his
mother is indeed his mother and he develops romantic feelings for
her. Eww. Even the captor is disturbed by this development, and in a
brief moment of relatable decency he has a heartfelt talk with the
boy and puts a stop to potential incest. It seems that even the
scumbag captor is not without morals. That's what we in the bizz call
a complex, three-dimensional character.
It seems the only ray of hope comes in
the form of Peter, the captor's friend and former psychiatrist from
prison. Peter tries helping the captor with his problems but
unfortunately he believes that the mother is just another figment of
the captor's imagination. Peter later suggests that Mark also lives
in a deluded fantasy world involving the mother fantasy, prompting a violent outburst. This scares Peter away permanently before he's able
to discover that the captor's whole mother fantasy is actually real.
Much of the film is focused on the
whole “love” triangle between the captor, the mother, and Mark,
with Mark having trouble deciding whether to free the mother and son
or remain loyal to his weirdo best friend. This comes to a head
during a failed-intervention-turned-surprise-birthday-party (the
mother mistakenly planned it on the captor's birthday, so all the
sleazebag neighbours she invited just assumed it was a b-day party).
Here the mother flaunts her affair with Mark right in front of the
captor. This makes the captor very angry and a savage fistfight with
Mark ensues, effectively destroying their fragile friendship (but
more importantly, ruining the party). Once everyone has left, the
captor confronts the mother about her “infidelity”. Finally
dropping the act she's kept up for so many years, the mother harshly
tells him off and storms away. After seeing his last fantasy
shattered before his eyes and unable to accept the way life really
is, the captor has lost his reason to live. This makes him rampage
through his apartment, destroy all his things, and then shoot himself
dead.
You'd think that this would be a happy
ending since he was the bad guy, right? But no, the movie treats this
like it was a sad event! Mark, the mother, and the son all
discover the captor's lifeless body (at the same time, conveniently)
and mourn for him. And that right there is the great twist ending of
Room: everybody really did love him all along because they
were in an advanced state of Stockholm syndrome! I never saw it
coming... mostly because it makes no sense whatsoever!
What is with this film? Room was
absolutely nothing like what I thought it was going to be. It wasn't
tense or harrowing enough to do the whole captivity-survival thing
justice. The ending wasn't nearly as uplifting as it was supposed to
be. Hell, the mom and son never even end up escaping! Apart from
that, the film's production quality is so half-baked you'd think it
was filmed in Turkey in the 1980's. The sets look cheap, the dialogue
is very awkward, the acting is amateurish, and the frequent dubbing
couldn't have been more obvious. And yet the film got nominated for 4
Academy Awards including best picture and director, with a win for
best lead actress. What in the name of tarnation happened?!
I'll tell you: Hollywood got drunk. The critics are all wrong about
this one. 2015's Room
is one of the most dishonest and dumbest movies I've ever seen.
Grade: ZERO
STARS!!!
P.S. -- Who is Tommy Wiseau?
No comments:
Post a Comment