#jacob tremnblay

[filmista]

Room (2015)

“You saved me, again.”

Once upon a time, well in fact only two years ago I saw a little film called 'Brooklyn' in theaters, at the time I was overjoyed by the film after seeing it, it was for me one of those magical experiences in the theatre.

For a brief moment in time I was unaware of time and space, I was so consumed by the film, and Saoirse Ronan's performance instantly charmed me.

I had some idea of the fact that another film was at the same time also a serious contender for the oscars, the film was 'Room' I knew that Miss Brie Larson was competing against Ronan, for best actress. Now I hadn't seen Room, and I've always kept postponing it, at the time I really wanted Miss Ronan to win best actress.

Little did I know however that people were in fact right about Larson, until I finally saw it yesterday. And while if they gave two best actress oscars, I certainly would have let Ronan win, you know in an unlikely universe in which I made the rules.

I can now really see why Larson took home the prize, what a  brave and powerful performance! She really has to be one of the best actresses working, what an elegance, strenght yet at the same time such fragility, such a physical and energetic performance.

Larson when you see her in the film truly looks like she's doing what she's meant to be doing in life, which is act. I love films and I'm sure I will always love them, and I have my all time favorites, that I turn back to time and time again of course.

But sometimes when a while has passed that I haven't seen anything that I really liked, that left me cold and indifferent and unemotional. I lose faith a little for a while and then I don't really feel like writing a review and so it is, that I end up not doing one of the things that I like best in the whole wide world, which is write about films.

But every once in a while, a little gem will come along. A film that restores your faith entirely, that reminds you of why you ever started liking films in the first place and that makes you understand why people started ever making them in the first place.

Sometimes I just want to watch a film, that will make me emotional in a good way, that will leave me breathless and awed and simply saying, what a beautiful film! A film that makes you want to watch it again almost immediately after a film that makes me want to write about it immediately after having seen it.

Room is absolutely such a film. It left me breathless and made me fall in love with it on first watch. ‘Room’ is really the only film in a while that I can say truly fucked me up in the best way, I cried my eyes out I’m not ashamed to say, but I also smile and laughed. 

Now it helped that I had only a quite vague idea of what to expect, I knew it was about a young woman that's been kidnapped that raises her son in the captivity of a shed, a filthy shed. And shields him from that horrible reality in the best way she can.

Now I was initially afraid that I was gonna see either one of two things, A: a depressive drama, that hits you like a brick on the head and that numbs you for half a day one of those films that makes you feel like just locking yourself in the bathroom and saying humanity is disgusting and the world is evil and ugly, I'm never going out into it again.

Or B: a sensationalist drama, with heavy emotional though artificial dialogues, designed with the one goal of getting people to cry, and an excessive presence of talking to police, it's an artificiality that I cannot stand.

Just like I can't stand forced or excessive fake friendliness when talking to someone, few things drive me up the wall but that is one of them. I want to feel for myself, it's ok to be led there a little but if the entire film is doing the work, well I'm not gonna be to big a fan.

Much in the same way that I prefer authenticity in a conversation if it's possible, I prefer to have that in films as well, films that reflect human beings, as exactly that, human beings, in their full glory of flaws and emotions.

And Room delivers on that, it portrays a story that could have been easily sensationalist, they could have easily have made into one of those reality tv shows/ documentaries such as ‘House Of Horrors: Kidnapped’, how do I know this show being European you might ask?

Well I can get a few American channels, there are of course respectable channels, but one is an absolute monstrosity full of reality tv shows of rather questionable quality... 

Yet one time when I was sick I’m ashamed to say it lured me in and I fell for it's sensationalist nature, and so it is that I ended up watching a couple of episodes of ‘House of Horrors’ (sush though, wouldn’t want to tarnish my reputayion as serious film lover) and oh boy am I glad Room is not anything like that...

Room is real and authentic, fictitious of course, but it feels entirely real and rooted in a strong sense of reality (sometimes bleak, dark and horrible) while you're watching it.

Room could have been as I said sensationalist, more about shocking, gruesome, brutal images  it could have been a film that fed on society’s sick fascination with absued and kidnapped women.

Along with an atmosphere that's so depressive that it's supposed to make you say well if it makes me feel that bloody awful, it's a brilliant film right?!

I am of course the first to admit that a film is not always supposed to be happy, or uplifting, sometimes it's good to be harsh and confronting. But when a film is all those things over the course of one film well that's when I'm truly in.

The reality that the main character, her name is Joy Newsome (Ma as Jack calls her), is in, is gruesome there is no doubt about that. She is a woman in what should be one of the most beautiful times in her life, her twenties.

But instead she has been locked up for 7 years in the same little square space, each day is as repetitive as the next. It sounds horribly boring but it really isn't, Joy fitting with her name has days of joy inside that sad reality.

She finds joy in raising her son and in coming up with activities to entertain him and shield him from that world, she doesn't want him to know about the evil and brutality in the world. Wants to desperately create beauty in a place that is in fact ugly and could be their personal hell on earth.

And it's this that makes Room beautiful, and what it could be described to be about, motherly love, the love a mother feels for her child and how it is a love strong like very few things on earth. Her son is in fact the one that saved her, that kept her alive, the one she kept on fighting her, that kept her mentally stable.

Like anyone that would be aware that they are locked up and may never get out again, she struggles with that reality, and some days she loses the battle. Her son calls these her ‘gone days’, we the adults understand that these are the days in which her depression wins over her, in which she would rather die. 

This is because she is unlike her son incredibly aware of her situation, she's incredibly strong holding onto her sanity for the sake of her son. But as her son gets older she starts to question how long she can keep that up, how long the two of them can go on living like that. 

And on his 5th birthday, she decides that her son is old enough to grasp the concept of a world existing outside of room, that there is a whole universe, full of real things.

And she feels that he needs and deserves a real childhood, so she tries to get him to grasp that she has been held captive, and of course here is the thing, for years she has she has shielded him for reality.

And has attempted to make reality more pleasant than it is, for instance she tells him that the food they get from the captor is brought into the room through magic.

It's the love Joy feels for her son that makes the film so touching and so beautiful. There have been films about mother and sons relationships before of course, but this one is something special.

Joy's son of course was born out of rape, it's painful: the one good thing in her life, was also brought to her through her totmentor, through the man that took 7 years from her life.

7 years that she will never get back. But she loves her son, sees no part of the man she hates in him, and makes it a responsibility to raise him well and give him as good a life as she can.

And that's what I loved so much about it, in any other film, we might have seen the rape take place in brutal fashion, in Room we never do, it's tactful, yet at the same time perhaps more horrible:

from Jack's point of view, we see his mother go from playing with him, to drastically shutting up, as soon as she hears footsteps arrive, there is no doubt that she is afraid of this man.

The next instance we hear someone getting into bed with Joy, there's the traditional breathing and creaking noises of sex, but no sounds of true pleasure... her son turns his head into the other direction, and starts counting in order to fall asleep, it's a truly horribly subtle scene, in fact I didn’t even fully register it on first watch. 

But while Joy is afraid, the truly great thing about her character is her fierce love for her son, her courage and braveness, in an instance, the man tries to touch her son, she goes into an absolute frenzy, and is willing to take aggression to protect her son.

It’s this particular scene, that reall made me say Wow! She’s so fragile yet fierce at the same time, it’s horrible though so be warned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9bWK_rqYG0&index=5&list=PLiTEyAnq54GTSRKq66rDJmG4Di2JlaAQM

Anything to keep him safe, she dares to clearly protest against him, even if she knows it might lead to a hit, or worse, a punishment like no electricity, and sleeping in the cold... It's probably partly this situation, that is what makes it more and more clear that they have to escape, or that at least he has.

Brie Larson's performance, is remarkable, I dare say that without her the film would have failed. It is a truly stunning performance, she truly deserved the oscar. She constantly steers the film along with Jacob Tremblay, their chemistry is so warm, genuine, so heartfelt that you could believe the fact that they are real life mother and son.

But the remarkable thing is that Tremblay is at the same level of emotional intensity as Larson, while still conserving the naivety of a child, a child with a curious wondering, with the wondering of someone that is seeing the world for the first time, it's scary and exciting. 

And the way the film uses Jack’s voice to narrate, is especially effective; we see him shift from incomprehension and denial, to acceptance, curiosity and love for the world around him.

And in this sense the film is also a love story: Joy and Jack fall in love with life and the world again, everything is perceived as beautiful, as a gem in time to be savoured, one of the most beautiful moments is after Joy and Jack have escaped and they are having a hamburger in a restaurant.

The enthusiasm and genuine happiness with which Joy bites into the hamburger, as you realize she hasn’t in a long time tasted one is one of indescribable beauty. And Room is even before Joy and Jack escape full of these small gems, but especially once they escape.

But again to return to what I was saying before, what makes the film is the strenght of Larson's perfromance and the equal strenght of her character, Joy is a victim that refuses to be a victim of her situation, as I said earlier anything to save her son, so she devices a plan to save him that might endanger her.

The film really illustrates as cliche as it sounds that few things are stronger than a mother's love, the way she snaps against her captor if he even would so much as get it into his head to touch her son, it’s truly comparable to the fierceness with which a lioness protects her cub, so remember don't mess with momma bear! You'll rue the day...

Brie Larson's intenisty here is astonishing, a tour de force, quite literally! But Room while beautiful and highly interesting the entire time, gets especially interesting once they escape room.

Her son has an easier time adapting, Joy struggles, everyone is concerned and worried, but she also realises that no one will ever understand the hell she went through.

and no one really respects that she will be scarred forever, she is thrust onto national television for an interview, in which the interviewer adresses her in a tone oozing with disrespect and more interested in the sensationalism, I quite literally thought: You horrible bitch! Where is your basic human compassion?

I just want to include the interview scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV2rrUQZy9Q&list=PLiTEyAnq54GTSRKq66rDJmG4Di2JlaAQM&index=21

Joy is so frustrated by the incomprehension and she is numb and dulled by what surrounds her,  feels like a freakshow, a tourist attraction, that she tries to take her own life, it is again her son, the one that she decides to stay and fight for.

Ultimately the days slowly get brighter, sunshine slowly pours back in again, and she falls back in love with life again, and realises that life isn't meaningless, there is more than a room of a few square feet.

That is why it's also a love story, a love story in the sense that it is about a mother's love for her son, but also a love of life, this is one of those films that will really make one say: My god how lucky I am to be alive! How beautiful everything is!

It seems to say: next time you go out, look at that tree or the sky a little longer than you usually would, and really see it, really appreciate it, savour it. Room is undoubtedly a gorgeous film in all of it's aspects, but visually it is especially astonishing.

It's not a film that cost much, in fact its budget is surprising low, it's visually simple, no fancy special effects, no over excessive use of music, everything is distilled, pure, natural, unglamourous, real, simple but because of that beautiful as well.

It seems unlikley that a film that takes place largely in one room, then in a house, and at at times nature could be so pretty, but it is, just because of how it infuses the way it captures everything, with a mix of at times horribly gritty realism, accopamied by closeups.

While at others it infuses warmth in the way it captures things, bringing out the perhaps natural poetical quality in what surrounds us.

the colors and lighting are intense throughout, though never overly so, Room is not a documentary and yet it feels that palpable that real, a true achievement! I'd say everything that I said about this, doesn't nearly do it the justice it deserves.

This is one of those films that almost make me feel inadequate as a reviewer, because there's not enough words in the English language, or in mine for that matter. It's one of the most beautiful, emotional, humane, and life affirming films I've seen. Bravo Miss Larson!

���I'm sorry that I'm not nice anymore! But you know what? Maybe if your voice saying "be nice" hadn't been in my head, then maybe I wouldn't have helped the guy with the fucking sick dog!”