Via the graces of A24, Wit PR, and Allied Marketing, The Reel Spirituality Institute sponsored advanced screenings of Room on Monday, October 19, 2015 at the Arclight theater in Pasadena near Fuller Seminary’s campus and on Monday, October 26, 2015 at the UA Colorado Center theater in Denver. (If you would like to be notified of similar screenings in your area in the future, click here.) Students, faculty and friends came out in large numbers for the showings and discussions that followed.
As a story, the movie packs a wallop, one that stays with you long after the movie ends. Prior to the movie’s story’s beginning, a young woman has already been kidnapped, raped, and held captive for seven years in a small shed with only a single skylight. As viewers pick up the story, she is now the parent of a five-year-old boy, Jack. Their home Jack calls “Room.” “Room” is his total, known universe; it is not “a room” or “the room,” it is “ROOM.” There is not yet for this five-year-old boy any other reality, for he has no concept of their being anything outside the shed where he lives.
“Ma,” as Jack calls her, draws strength from her child as she pours her imagination and love into her son. It is amazing to watch as they read, cook, wash, play, talk about life, and love one another. In such extreme circumstances, it is a wonder to behold their life together. But there is also terror. Jack is put to bed in a small closet each night so he is not subjected to the abductor’s continuing sexual assaults on his mother. Ma begins to realize that it is no longer safe for her and her son to stay in this alternate universe that she has made so believable to her son. Jack is beginning to ask too many questions, and “Old Nick,” the captor, is both unpredictable and threatening.
Though based on a novel, the story reminds viewers of similar horrific stories that have appeared in our newspapers – of abductions in Lake Tahoe, Cleveland, and Salt Lake City. Though hard to imagine that such cruelty and inhumanity could be real, the movie takes on a seriousness for the viewer, because we are all too aware that “things like this” do happen. The nightmare is all too real. And yet, there is also joy. How is this possible?
The narrative draws us in for other reasons as well. Chief among these is the decision of the screenwriter to tell the story largely from young Jack’s point of view. How does a five year old understand the events as they unfold? We hear his thoughts in voiceovers; the camera sometime tracks his line of sight; we see him try to understand that there is a world outside Room – spiders are real, cartoons are only on TV. Jack’s fears and hopes, his questions and answers, his courage and love, his humor and trust are simply captivating. We fear the worst for him, even while hoping for the best. The boy’s plasticity as a five year old to form new ideas, as well as his resilience given the adversity he experiences will bring tears of both pain and promise to your eyes.
The power of this film story thus depends on the amazing performance of eight-year-old Jacob Tremblay as Jack. But equally important is the breakout performance of Brie Larson. You may have seen her first in Short Term 12, a film by Destin Cretton, who was a student at the Windrider Forum which Fuller co-sponsors at the Sundance Film Festival each year, Larson is again riveting as an abused young woman who musters both courage and imagination to raise her son against all odds. Her performance will remind some of Jennifer Lawrence’s similar career-defining role in the movie Winter’s Bone, another Sundance winner.
As “Ma,” Larson is like a mother bear fiercely protective of her cub. She can play with Jack, snuggle with him, and teach him when there is no threat. She can try to protect him from harm. When she grows weary and expects more from him than Jack is able, she can even apologize and seek to make amends. And when she senses that Jack might be in danger, she also can turn feral. She becomes a force to reckon with. The range of Larson’s emotion is breathtaking. Parents who watch the movie will find themselves reflecting on our own hopes and fears as parents, on our own dreams and anxieties, given our love for our children.
The film story is, thus, not only Jack’s but Ma’s (the only name he knows for his mother). But the movie does something more as well. For the movie story also suggests the importance of all such stories. Almost the first words in the movie are “Once upon a time,” as we eavesdrop on Ma reading a story to young Jack. The movie makes several allusions to Grimm’s fairy tales and we see a copy of Alice in Wonderland on the table in Room. As Kutter Callaway, one of the panelists for the discussion after the movie, reminded those at the screening, this movie story is not unlike Disney’s Tangled – where another girl is abducted and kept in a small room for years (and of course, “Rapunzel,” one of the stories in the Brothers Grimm, on which the movie was based). In fact such stories of pain and horror have a long history in Western culture, providing a controlled environment in which to experience the horror can be turned into hope, however slight.
But there is still one more level of meaning to this film story. Room invites us to consider that our falsely bounded universes actually are more spacious than we can imagine. Though empirically all we can see is one side of the wall and it is bleak, there is actually something more that lies both within and beyond our empirical universe. While Ma is able to help Jack transcend the limitations of Room in the first half of the movie, Jack is able in the second half to reciprocate, helping his mom see there are yet more possibilities in life. It is a wonderful revelation, one that reverberates far beyond Ma.
Despite the chaos of life, there simply is something more. Room understands this. Despite its darkness, there is also in life reason for genuine hope, one most viewers of Room will experience by the time the story ends. As the writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us, though the vanity of life is often all too real, so too is the possibility of joy. Though the wrong people often win, and though answers to life’s mystery elude us, we can eat and drink and take pleasure in our work and our families, for this is our portion in life; it is God’s gift.
Kutter Callaway also wrote about the film for Huffington Post. You can read his thoughts on the movie here.
WIT PR, a public relations firm working to promote the film, provided us with this very good study guide for Room that we are glad to make available to you.
Also, we recorded the post-screening discussion at our screening in Pasadena. The audio is embedded below for your listening pleasure.