Everybody processes grief differently, and it is not always predictable how that grief will manifest from person to person. You can go on and on about the five stages of grief, but the fact of the matter is that not one case is the same as the other, and not everyone will go through those stages in total. It’s quite simply not that cut and dry. Grief is not an easy thing to comprehend, especially when it is for the loss of a loved one. Losing a child or a parent, a sibling, to a sudden tragedy is devastating. It’s doubly so when a husband and wife go through it together and find that they are unable to comfort each other because of how all-consuming it is.
In the Bedroom was based on the 1979 short story Killings by the late Andre Dubus. Dubus, himself, lived through several personal tragedies, including the rape of his daughter, which led to several years of paranoia for his loved ones’ safety. This led to him carrying a firearm with him until he nearly killed a man who was having a drunken argument with his son. He channeled his pain into his writings, and reading his prose, you can tell this is a man who understands pain. The short story, Killings, is all about a parent’s emotional struggle as he is forced to confront the killer of his son. We have all heard of stories of grieving parents finding a way to forgive the person who has brought so much sorrow into their lives, and such stories have a cathartic feel to them, meant to invoke a sense of the moral high road that Christ spoke of in the New Testament. Most people, though, cannot overcome that feeling of anger and sadness when a brutal act takes from them a loved one, leaving nothing behind but an empty void. Dubus’ story taps into that primal, bitter truth in a way few authors can.
In 2001, two years after Andre Dubus passed away, a film adaptation of his story was released. This film, In the Bedroom, takes the basic premise of the story and expands on it without losing the heart of the story. The film was nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award but was passed over in favor of the Ron Howard biopic A Beautiful Mind. It was also the first of three years where The Lord of the Rings would be battling it out for awards. An indie drama didn’t stand much of a chance making waves in that pool, but where it did stand out is interesting. This film’s three main cast members would each be nominated for their performances, and rightfully so. This is an actor’s film and showcases them well, giving plenty of opportunity for the cast to show off what they are capable of. That none of them ended up taking home a statue is insane.
The story takes place in Camden, Maine, where our two leads, Matt (Tom Wilkinson) and Ruth Fowler (Sissy Spacek), enjoy a happy marriage. Their adult son, Frank (Nick Stahl), has recently graduated college and has come home for the summer while he decides the next step in his life. He is currently dating an older woman with young children, Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei), who is in the middle of a divorce from her abusive husband, Richard (William Mapother). Matt and Ruth disagree on this relationship, with Ruth not approving of her son’s choice. Matt doesn’t disapprove but feels like it doesn’t really matter, as he believes it is just a fling and his son will move on from it. All of that doesn’t end up mattering in the end as one day Richard shows up at Natalie’s house, trashes it, and leaves. When Frank comes over to help put things back together, Richard returns and shoots him in the face, killing him. The remainder of the film examines how Matt and Ruth process their grief and how they interact with each other over it, each seemingly unable to comfort the other.
I personally live in a rural area where a quadruple homicide happened just a couple of years ago. The suspect in that horrific crime was apprehended and is still in custody awaiting trial. There has been a long time waiting for the court system to get its act together and get the trial going, leaving the parents of these four murdered young adults in limbo awaiting justice that may never come. The thought of this came to my mind as I saw the hearing where, based on the slimmest of testimony, Richard is granted bail and the likelihood of charges reduced to manslaughter and a minimum sentence handed out became a possible reality. Richard is out on bail that very day and Ruth occasionally sees him walking around town, a complete mockery of her pain and anguish. Seeing this, coupled with my indirect experience with the murders in my hometown, makes me angry at the state of the justice system in this country, even though I understand why it is the way that it is. That feeling would be magnified a hundredfold had it been my child killed.
This raw, bitter emotion is what drives the whole second half of the movie and makes it as great as it is. I have heard people describe this movie as slow and methodical, unnecessarily long, but I would argue that the pacing is perfect for what this film is trying to say. Grief is not fleeting; it is slow and throbbing like an open wound, bleeding a little at a time and never quite healing. This is illustrated in the film when Matt is out on a fishing boat trapping lobsters and gets cut by the claws of one of them. After the events in the finale, he rips that bandage off, and the wound on his finger is still open. This isn’t deep symbolism, but it is effective at showing that not all wounds heal.
Tom Wilkinson is a British actor who first came to my attention in 1997 when he co-starred in The Full Monty, an underdog film running against the unstoppable Titanic at the Oscars. I would go on to see him in a series of films from the mainstream action-comedy Rush Hour to more Oscar-darling films like Michael Clayton. No matter the project, he is always interesting to watch. He is doing a credible, if not amazing, job hiding his British accent with a New England one here. He internalizes his grief, but you can see behind his eyes that there is a rage building up. Tom Wilkinson does an amazing job depicting this, pushing that rage down even during the final act when he has to confront his son’s killer directly.
Ruth interprets Matt’s response to the tragedy as a lack of emotion. As a person that doesn’t often show my emotions, I get this response from others who believe that I am as emotionless as a robot. Ruth’s response to this, therefore, is something I can relate to and understand. She blames Natalie for the tragedy as much as she blames Richard, which leads to a very poignant moment when Natalie comes to visit her and try to smooth out the tension between them. Instead of listening to her, Ruth slaps her and turns away, unable to find forgiveness in her heart. Later, her emotions come to a boil, and she lashes out at Matt, accusing him of supporting their son’s relationship because of his own lustful feelings towards Natalie, using his son as a proxy for his own desires. He lashes back at her, accusing her of driving their son away by always being too hard on him as he grew up. A trifle knock at the door by a girl selling candy for a fundraiser allows the two to step away from each other for a moment and examine what they have just been saying and re-engage on a more understanding level. Both know they need to be there for each other, but it took this outburst, followed by a brief reflection, to get them there.
When Marisa Tomei won the Oscar for her performance in My Cousin Vinny, people were quick to dismiss her as unworthy of that honor. She has since gone on to prove that not only did she deserve that award, she was capable of doing it again. Her role here is muted, practically disappearing from the story in the second half, but all you have to do is watch what she is doing while interacting with her kids to see that she is more than just a throwaway actress. She is solid in a role that could have easily been a disposable part. She makes some interesting choices that make this part unique, too. When Richard shows up with the gun, she is hiding upstairs with her kids, protecting them while Frank tries to keep him out of the house. When she hears the scuffle going on, though, she starts to come downstairs in a vain attempt to intervene. Then she hears the gunshot. Most actresses would pause at this moment, horrified at what they knew was happening downstairs, but Marisa is screaming in horror as she runs downstairs, presumably directly into the danger. This gives us a true sense of her as a character and her feelings towards Frank.
I went into this film knowing only one thing about it, and it wasn’t plot-related. I heard about it from Joe Castiglione, the WEEI Boston Red Sox play-by-play broadcaster. As a lifelong Red Sox fan, I listen to every game all season long, and during one of those broadcasts, Joe mentioned that he recorded fictional game content for this movie called In the Bedroom. He didn’t give away any of the plot, but his involvement piqued my interest, and I tracked down a copy to watch. Going in blind is the best way to see this. The twists it takes in the final act are somewhat jarring, but that is the whole point. It’s meant to catch you off guard yet it feels absolutely right. And the finale when Matt joins Ruth in their shared bedroom caps the whole thing off with one final eye-opening revelation.
 |
This is often a hard film to watch, but it is also a rewarding film to experience. For anyone that has lost a family member to violent crime, it may be one that is too hard to watch. It is deliberately paced, but for me, it was never dull. This was in large part because Silly Spacek, Marisa Tomei, and especially Tom Wilkinson just blew me away with how accurate their depictions of grief were. This is one that resonated heavily with me, and I will never tire of rewatching it. Todd Field has taken an interesting short story and crafted what was to become my favorite movie from 2001. It’s slow and methodical, but it is also riveting and occasionally horrific.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Graham Leader, Ross Katz, and Todd Field
Best Actor: Tom Wilkinson
Best Actress: Sissy Spacek
Best Supporting Actress: Marisa Tomei
Best Adapted Screenplay: Robert Festinger and Todd Field
____________________________________________________
Release Date: November 23, 2001
Running Time: 131 Minutes
Rated R
Starring: Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, Nick Stahl, William Mapother, William Wise, Celia Weston, and Marisa Tomei
Directed By: Todd Field
Comments
Post a Comment