Room:
Ways of Knowing and Seeing in Tight Spaces
My wife and I recently watched the recent film Room,
a story about a young woman and her son that are trapped in an 11x11 shed. The movie begins in the shed as Ma, played by
Brie Larson, and Jack, played by Jacob Tremblay are doing life in the shed,
from brushing teeth, cooking, to playing with a toy car. Old Nick as they call him, kidnapped Ma when
she was 17, and now they are under lock and key for some seven years at this,
point, Jack being 5 at this point. The
movie chronicles the escape that Ma plans as she plays it off to Nick that
their son is dead, all rolled up in a very large rug. Upon escaping, the authorities find Ma and
the two are reunited, yet all is not as it seems due to Jack’s entire life being
lived in this 11x11 shed.
Before the
escape, Ma tries to explain to Jack about the outside world, a hammock at
Grandma’s and ice cream, yet Jack cannot venture with her to these ideas, in
part, because he knows no other life than in the shed. The scene makes you get under the skin of Jack’s
character, for someone who is literally sheltered all their life, the outside
world is something of fairy tales or bewildering stories. Yet, through the tears of Ma’s character, her
words and her heart reach into Jack’s life and begin to make sense to him, not
in fully ways but in partial glimpses of a greater reality than he is
experiencing right now. He glimpses of a
world outside the shed, but he knows not when this vision will meet reality. It is not until he begins to unroll himself
out of the large rug in the back of Old Nick’s pickup that he catches a glimpse
of the sunlight, the radiance of the outside world.
Jack struggles in the home of his grandparents to
relate to anyone outside of his mother, yet, through time, he learns to let
people into his world. Yet, you don’t
really get to see the blossoming of Jack until two events happen, one, his
step-father’s dog Seamus comes back home and he begins to forge friendships
with other boys. Jack engages the world
through a series of close knit relationships that help sustain his growth as a
young boy. Yet, it is not the initial
relationships outside the shed that solidify his close connections but it is in
the time in the shed with his Ma that deepen his ties to people, people who
care about him. There is a real sense in
the movie that Ma played by Brie Larson sought to create as much as a routine
each day as she could, for both the well-being and sanity of her and Jack.
Room is a beautiful movie about a mother’s love for
her son, survival, what it means to make it in small shed, and most of all, the
connections people forge with each other amidst a cruel world.
Here is a few clips of the movie with a brilliant
discussion with the director.
Comments
Post a Comment