Room(2015)

Director: Lenny Abrahamson

Producer: David Gross, Ed Guiney

Cast: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay, Joan Ellen, William H. Macy, Sean Bridgers

Duration: 1 hour 58 minutes

Lenny Abrahamson and Emma Donoghue’s fiercely written psychological and tragic thriller- Room stars a magnificent Brie Larson and takes a shape of an emotional puzzle that is both raw and melancholic. With 3 Oscar nominations, one Oscar award to Brie Larson, 2 golden globes nominations, and one golden globe award to Brie Larson again, Abrahamson’s creative vision has undoubtedly left its mark on the cinematic community.

This film is a combination of subtlety and brutal honesty. It is dark and plays

with one’s mind. The drama is set in Akron, Ohio where twenty-four-year-old Joy

Newsome and her five-year-old son Jack live in an extremely unpleasant shed

called a room. The joy of life was never present throughout the movie. There is a

recurring note of elegiac sadness.

Newsome was abducted by Jack’s father seven years before he was born, the man

who they call old Nick. Jack was the outcome of Nick raping his mother routinely.

They have been in captivity since the time she was abducted and her little one was

born. To him, there is no world outside the room, no world outside the television.

Their only exposure to the outside world was a skylight.

Joy suffers from malnutrition and depression. She constantly has to fight for basic

supplies and tries to stay optimistic for her son. William H. Macy’s acting was

commendable, it made me hate his character with a passion.

Joy is reunited with her family and a lot has changed; it all seems like she was

never a part of her family. Her parents had divorced, and her mom had found a

new partner. As Jack’s father was Old Nick, it breaks his grandfather’s heart to see

him as every time he looked at him, he thought about what his daughter had been

through, he thought of abhorrent Nick. He couldn’t accept Jack as his grandchild.

The mother and son both portray their difficulty when it came to coping with the

real world.

They visit the room one last time and Jack views it as he never has before, with a

door open. They said their last goodbyes and left. The mature overtones of this movie, exploring violence, spiralling depression, assault, can only be understood and appreciated by older minds, and thus the target audience comprises young adults and the older generations. 

Strangeness, Jack's struggle to adapting to the world outside the television and overwhelming emotions is what makes this film both remarkably and miraculously

succeed at being brutal yet beautiful, supercharged by a bold script touching

sensitive topics, and an exceptionally emotional raw lead performance.

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