Room, Review: Psychopathos

24-year-old Joy (Brie Larson) and her five-year-old son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) live in a squalid shed they call “Room”. They share a bed, toilet, bathtub, a rickety old television, and a rudimentary kitchen; the only window is a skylight. They are captives of a man they call ‘Old Nick’ (also an old Christian nickname for the Devil), Jack's father (Sean Bridgers), who abducted Joy seven years ago, and routinely rapes her, while Jack appears to be sleeping in the wardrobe. She tries to stay optimistic for her son, but is sometimes overcome with depression, and is suffering from malnutrition. She allows Jack to believe that only Room and its contents are "real," and that the rest of the world exists only on television.

One day, Old Nick tells Joy that he may not be able to afford their supplies in the future, having lost his job six months ago. She decides it’s time to tell Jack about the outside world; he reacts with disbelief and incomprehension. She trains him to fake a fever, hoping that Old Nick will take him to a hospital, but Old Nick says he will return with antibiotics instead. Joy wraps Jack in a carpet and has him play dead, in the hope that Old Nick will remove him from Room and bury him outside. Falling for the ruse, Old Nick places Jack in the back of his pick-up truck and drives through a residential neighbourhood. Although stunned by his first exposure to the outside world, Jack jumps from the truck and attracts the attention of a passer-by.

Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue’s 2010 bestselling novel, Room, was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes and sold over two million copies. The story is told from the point of view of 5-year-old Jack, which is carried forward in the screen version too, with a voice-over. She has written the screenplay too, her film-writing debut. It has some appreciable detailing but suffers from a dual climax. Having reached a kind of climax around the halfway mark, the film then shifts focus on Joy and Jack’s reality checks. Though well captured, the proceedings fail to cast the same spell that the first half did. Donoghue still manages to balance the tale, mixing eternal optimism and love with rapacious sadism.

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson (Adam and Paul, Garage, Frank, What Richard Did), Room unfolds quite like a book, with the angles and framing capturing the ambience from the right perspectives. It could well sink into abject melodrama or a heroic rescue tale, with familiar trappings, in lesser hands. A crime thriller was another option. Instead, he chooses to retain the suspenseful unfolding, with a touch of ‘psychopathos’. The first few minutes really draw you in. Irishman Abrahamson has a gifted cast to assist him, and it would never have worked otherwise. Even the cameo length parts are earnestly executed. For some reason, though, Joy comes out a shade less convincing than Jack.

Why are the makers keen on de-linking the film--or the novel--from the infamous Elizabeth Fritzl case? Legal issues? I wonder. If the case had not shaken the world in 2008 (read below), one might have thought that the plot of Room is similar to a couple of films of the late 80s. That not being the case, and the numerous undeniable similarities in the Austrian real-life incident and the fiction-pretender film, set in America, that stare you in the face, it will take some suspension of disbelief to deny the common plot points.

Brie Larson (Sleepover, Short Term 12, Hoot) has her $800 earning role in Short Term 12 to thank for bagging this highly coveted casting. That is what convinced Abrahamson and Donoghue. Born Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers, 26 year-old Larson is the daughter of homoeopathic doctors/chiropractors, and would have been a librarian, had she not made it in showbiz. What a waste that would have been. Sorry, libraries, she is doing quite well on the screen and in video libraries. It’s an extremely difficult and complex role, and the Oscar nomination is the icing. Such eyes, such natural skin tones, such quiet intensity! See the film for her performance alone. And wait for a film called Basmati Blues, which will find her in India, a country where she finds it very strange that taxi-drivers cannot find an address, and go round in circles, unless they are told that the place where you wants to go is “…near…”.

Watch it also for Jacob Tremblay (Before I Wake, The Smurfs 2), now all of 9. Abrahamson had reservations about him, finding him too cute and correct to pull off a character like Jack. One scene, where he yells at Larson, took some enacting, is a highlight. He’s made to look like a girl for most of the film, and you half expect him to turn out to be one, but that is just the way the looks are designed. Sean Bridgers (The Woman, Jug Face, Dark Places) manages to convince you that he is a maniac, and yet no devil. Difficult to have any sympathy for such a brute, nevertheless, it is a persona that Bridgers carries well. Canadian Amanda Brugel (Vendetta, Jason X, Category Six, Splice, Sex After Kids, The Calling, Maps To The Stars) impresses you as the just the right kind of cop.

Joan Allen (Nixon, The Crucible, Face/Off, The Ice Storm, The Contender), 59, has a highly expressive face. Canadian, Tom McCamus (The Sweet Hereafter), aged 60, is seen playing his age, as Joy’s father. Another negative character, he blends well with the goings on. Playing an Indian medico, Dr. Mittal, is Cas Anvar (Argo, Diana, Source Code, The Factory, The Terminal, Miss India America), an Iranian-Canadian actor, who has Asian features that can pass off as Indian, Pakistani or Iranian. He lends good support.

Joy and Jack survived against all odds. There is no way, however, of even guessing the number of real-life Joys/Jacks who might be living their nightmare here, there, everywhere. Pathos of the most intense kind surfaces even at the thought of such possibilities. Psychopaths are not just the stuff of movies. Mental ill-health is not as uncommon as we might think. Good health for all is a utopian dream that is something we all want to realise. Good mental health, too, is something we cannot ignore.

Room is a bit too long to sustain the initial impact and the two-layered story makes it difficult. Certainly watchable, though there was room for improvement.

Rating: ***

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQpnyb3k3Eg

The terrible tragedy of Elizabeth Fritzl

Josef Fritzl, a property developer and multi-millionaire, imprisoned/held his captive daughter Elizabeth, as a sex slave, for 24 years, in a windowless bunker, beneath the grey, three-storey town-house at Yppsstrasse 40, Amstetten, Austria. Each of the basement's eight rooms was separated by a locked door. The final room, in which Elisabeth was mainly confined, was accessible only through a three-foot sold steel door, hidden by rows of shelves. There was a cooker, washing machine, freezer, TV, video and radio.

How Elizabeth was saved, and her children rescued, is an incredible story, of fact being stranger than fiction. Realising that her daughter Kerstin was seriously ill, she asked her father to take the girl to a hospital. But sensing an opportunity to communicate with the outside world, she slipped a note into her daughter's pocket. Luckily, doctors found it and read it. They immediately made an appeal on television for her to come forward. When Elisabeth saw it, she literally ordered Josef to take her to there. Surprisingly, he did, and it resulted in his arrest, at the hospital. Elisabeth was 18 when she was lured to the cellar by her father one day. He gagged her with ether, and handcuffed her to a pole. Thus began her torment.

Josef was sent to prison for the rest of his life for the heinous crimes he committed, which included murdering one of the children, and disposing of the body in his furnace. Josef Fritzl, is imprisoned for life. Now, Elizabeth and her six surviving children live in a secluded village, away from the media. Though Josef Fritzl was found to be bankrupt, the Fritzls have all been given new identities. Elizabeth, was given the house, a large lump-sum and a decent pension.