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2002 |
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Great performances lift
a long downer of a movie
By RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Those ads for "In the Bedroom" give us a pretty broad hint of what this film is about, all right: A community after nightfall, seen from a distance, just one light on upstairs in one house. Something is going on in there--and it could be anybody's house. Even yours.
In this case, though, it's the home of Ruth and Matt Fowler, who live in a small New England community where both are pretty much pillars of the community. Bad stuff isn't supposed to happen to them--or to their college student son, Frank. But it does and it very nearly ends up destroying this tight little family.
It begins when Frank (Nick Stahl) starts dating a very pretty young woman named Natalie (Marisa Tomei) who has recently divorced her abusive hothead of a husband, Richard (William R. Mapother). retaining custody of their little boy. Frank is a good-hearted, stable young man with very little experience of the real world, but he's falling in love with Natalie, who also seems to be a gentle, loving woman who simply made a bad choice in marriage and is now trying to get her life back on line.
Frank's mom, Ruth (Sissy
Spacek), is deeply troubled by the love match. She thinks Frank
is taking on too much by dating Natalie, who has no college education,
and fears his passion for her will mess up his college education
and undermine his future.
Frank's dad, Matt (Tom Wilkinson), is less troubled by the relationship,
though he, too, wonders if his son is mature enough to handle
Natalie and all her emotional baggage.
What finally forces the issue is the attitude of Natalie's ex-husband, who's still possessive of her and his little boy, sometimes to the point of violence. Frank is upset by the ex-husband's behavior, so when the ex explodes one day in violence, Frank decides he has to protect Natalie.
Result: A terrible modern tragedy that plunges the Fowler family into the heart of a criminal trial--and a long, miserable ordeal of unwanted public attention and internal bickering over who deserves the most blame for what happened.
The basic situation is a fascinating one and the central actors turn in absolute knockout performances, especially Wilkinson, the big genial English actor from "The Full Monty" and the original "Prime Suspect" TV miniseries. His agony as he watches his wife's personality disintegrate during their ordeal is painfully real. It's a gut-wrenching performance, perhaps the year's best.
Nearly his equal is Sissy Spacek, the 1980 Oscar-winner (for "Coalminer's Daughter"), who has matured into one of America's most versatile and dependable dramatic actors. She's always so good that maybe she suffers by comparison with Wilkinson because we expect her to be at the top of her form all the time while we haven't seen Wilkinson step up to this sort of role before.
But there's a few serious
problems with this film that probably has kept it from becoming
much of a box office performer. For one thing, writer-producer-director
Todd Field sets too slow a pace and lets the film run way too
long. The quiet tone he chooses is fine most of the time, but
he needed ro vary the tempo to keep the film from taking on a
monotony that really begins to hurt it in the final 30 minutes.
His story also pushes the Fowlers to a place we don't want to
see them in as they finally try to resolve their angry feelings
about what has happened to their family. You want to root for
Matt Fowler when he sets out to stabilize his family, but you're
repelled by the way he chooses to do it.
It's hard to explain the dark hole "In the Bedroom"
falls into in its final third without giving away crucial plot
turns. But the result is a terrible downer for the audience.
This isn't a plea for a happy ending--just for a resolution that
doesn't seem so distant from the character of the family we first
met.
For all its strong points--and there are many--"In the Bedroom" isn't the sort of film that ought to be a contender for the Best Picture Oscar this or any other year. It delivers a message most moviegoers aren't going to accept and it leaves a sour taste in the mouth that the brilliantly cynical "American Beauty" avoided, even with all the negative things that Oscar-winning movie threw at us in the final reel.
© 2002 by Ron Miller.
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