REVIEW: Room (2016)

Lenny Abrahamson has often had a fondness for outsiders (excepting his best film, What Richard Did, which focusses on an insider, albeit one who accidentally ousts himself) – indeed, to the level of fetish with his painful Frank. This has continued into his most mainstream film so far, Room, based on the novel by Emma Donoghue (here adapting her own book) itself in turn based on the Josef Fritzl case.

Ma (Brie Larson) and Jack (Jacob Tremblay) lived in Room, a small garden shed fitted as a domestic prison. Ma has been imprisoned in Room for eight years and Jack, who is five, was born there. The film charts their ability to cope and survive.

As off-putting as it is to consider a film, particularly one coming with all the bells and whistles of awards season marketing, based on so specific a case, in which there were real victims and real pain, Room largely manages to feel sincere and respectful. Donoghue and Abrahamson pursue their version through the eyes of a five-year old child who has no knowledge of the real horror of their situation. Any real abuse is seen by misdirection – seen through Jack’s perspective, we know what is going on even if Jack does not. Since the focus is so much on Jack, we can often forget that Ma (we find out her real name later in the film) is also a victim. Again, these scenes come through a degree of misdirection. When Ma, now Joy, comes home and back to her bedroom, untouched for eight years, Abrahamson knows to put the camera on her in this instance, bringing home sharply Joy’s own stolen years. It is a powerful little moment, done without show, but one that reminds us that Abrahamson does have his heart in the right place.

Even in one sequence in which the film slightly starts to lose its way, Abrahamson and Donoghue pull it back. In one extended sequence, Joy’s mother Nancy (Joan Allen) opens the house to a TV crew for an exclusive interview with Joy. The film takes pokes at the media, suggesting that they might be immoral scavengers after any kind of marketable human misery that might give the viewing public a little emotional kick (if not full-on freak show) to mull on over with their dinner. The thought is inescapable: the film itself could be tarred by its own brush. However, the film addresses instead the responses of those disinterested observers, which are often as damaging and traumatic as any kind of media intrusion. The interviewer chastises Joy for keeping Jack with her, suggesting that a better parent would have convinced their captor (Old Nick, played by Sean Bridgers as a very sad and lost human rather than as a monster) to anonymously leave the child in care where it could have a normal life. This, though a morally valid argument, is a cruel and coldly logical view of the situation and is not one that Joy ever considered. What the film is then calling for is not so much a renewed attempt to understand the victims of abuse, but merely that we remain compassionate and accepting. It is, again, a suggestion that the film is not just a shocking, headline grabbing cash-in, but one that actually addresses its subject matter in a constructive and positive way.

The performances are fantastic – Larson and Trembley keep the film feeling human rather than grandstanding. Even the film’s biggest moment – Jack in the back of the police car – is, although pure trailer fodder, sincerely focussed on the characters and the performances. Room feels compassionate as much for their performances as for Abrahamson’s distanced and empathic camera. Room’s greatest success is that it feels like a caring and human film for the majority of its running time, rather than a potentially damaging cash-in. It is a film about a mother’s love and the power and resilience of the human spirit, though one wonders why a version of the Fritzl case was such a necessary angle to address these fairly common themes, if indeed these themes were the primary motivations for writing the book and making the film. That said, Room is a film about the victims, preferring scenes of strength, weakness and recovery over empty histrionics. If one can’t fathom why anyone would make a film like this, it is equally difficult to fathom what cast and what filmmakers could have done it better.

REVIEW: Short Term 12 (2013)

Short Term 12 is a US indie drama about life in a care home for young adults. It can be serious, funny, dramatic and socially conscious and it is full of fantastic performances from a range of professional and non-professional actors. It is also rarely self-important, preferring to represent its characters realistically rather than making heroes out of them or indulging in quick-fix easy answers.

Grace (Brie Larson) works at a foster care facility, taking charge of helping a series of troubled teenagers through various upheavals in their often too-institutionalised lives. One resident, Marcus (Keith Stanfield) is shortly turning eighteen and must leave the facility but doesn’t want to while a new arrival betrays a dark past (Jayden, played by Kaitlyn Dever). Grace is also in a troubled relationship with co-worker Mason (John Gallagher Jr) and is suffering from her own difficult past, one that she finds impossible to disclose fully to Mason. Her relationship with Jayden causes her inhibitions to unravel, though not always constructively.

Short Term 12 is obviously a well-meaning issue film, the kind that is often shot down by critics who like their films more stylistic and nihilistic, often because it is difficult to write about a film that wears its heart on it’s sleeve, especially when its chosen subject is something most of us would prefer not to see. The film presents a series of troubled teenagers, many with histories of abusive parents, and eloquently details their disconnect from society. Marcus performs a rap midway through the film, which forcefully speaks of dark memories and the barriers between him and a normal life. Director Destin Daniel Cretton films this performance in one long, handheld take, falling in and out of focus, powerfully expressing Marcus’ isolation. It is a well thought out scene, put together with tact and heart. There are a few more scenes that are equally affecting, Cretton soberly representing the reality of these kids without cliché or simplistic solutions.

This is where Short Term 12 succeeds, as a truthful look at some uncomfortable facts. However, it can often fall into the very simplicities that its best scenes avoid. The film slowly starts to focus more on the lives of the care workers, rather than the children – showing Grace and Mason’s lives outside of the facility while the children remain inside. Also, Grace’s story develops too much into melodrama, with the third act dramatics becoming much too unbelievable. Another problem is that the film ends – it is neatly bookended with one child’s escape attempt and most of the characters are given happy endings, which do not necessarily suggest an end to their troubles but do allow an audience to leave the cinema without feeling that more needs to be done. As well as this, the two teenagers that get the most attention, Jayden and Marcus, as well as Grace herself all display highly developed artistic talents – as if their troubles have helped them hone their creativity, a rather stereotypical but also audience-friendly way to represent people with such issues.

However, these criticisms do feel unfair, especially since the film is clearly heartfelt and worthy of praise for tackling a subject that is too easily ignored or avoided in mainstream cinema. Short Term 12’s primary success is in the quality of its performances, particularly Brie Larson (so wasted in 21 Jump Street and Don Jon) and Keith Stanfield (who also appeared in the 2008 short of the same name from which this film was adapted). The film may not display the willingness to fully explore the pain and anguish of such an institution – and Joel P West’s score is certainly too light – but these two actors are fully able to present their troubled characters with a refreshingly honest intensity. Short Term 12 may avoid showing the pain that can surely be all pervasive in such a place but the actors ably pick up the slack.

Short Term 12 is, hence, an indie that is a little too folksy and a little too positive to give a true representation of it’s subject matter – the foster care facility depicted is remarkably free of truly damaged, unreachable children – but it is nonetheless a heartfelt and honest depiction. Free of politics (somewhat disappointingly), Short Term 12 is about care, the sacrifices that are required and what those affected have lost. Though it often doesn’t go much further beyond the surface, it remains a moving addition to socially conscious cinema, examples of which are too rarely seen.

REVIEW: Don Jon (2013)

Don Jon is Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s feature debut as both a writer and a director, an odd romantic comedy about a young womaniser from Brooklyn who tries to wean himself off porn after he gets a real, flesh and blood girlfriend. It has things to say about how men use pornography but how deep into this difficult subject is Gordon-Levitt willing to go?

Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) goes to clubs and takes a woman, never less than an 8 out of 10, home every time. However, sexual intercourse is always unfulfilling to him since he has developed an addiction to porn. As a result of this addiction, his ideas about sex are grossly unrealistic if not selfish and misogynistic. To his friends (Rob Brown and Jeremy Luke), however, he is a god and he likes the way they think. Until he spots Barbara Sugarman (Scarlett Johansson), a 10 or ‘dime’, who doesn’t fall for his practised, over-confident advances. It may well be love but how does their relationship compare with his porn habit?

Early on, the film offers a fast-paced introduction to Jon’s lifestyle, full of editing and camera tricks. It is also surprisingly fearless in its representation of porn, which is not used for easy laughs, but tackled with a degree of realism and seriousness. Nor is it immediately represented as particularly damaging, though one’s level of scepticism towards Jon’s self-justifying voiceover will probably depend on one’s own feelings about pornography. Don Jon is about what men use porn for, rather than the nature of porn itself, and as a result it may be queasily recognisable to some men.

The film also offers, albeit briefly, an alternative reading of romantic Hollywood films, suggesting that they are a kind of porn as well. Instead of offering instant sexual gratification, Hollywood films offer an idealised version of love and self-sacrifice which, as Don Jon suggests, may be just as damaging to one’s sense of reality. Barbara loves cheesy films but cannot come to terms with the fact that Jon likes porn – or that he does his own housework - suggesting that one idealised form is just as incompatible as the other. Hence, while Jon is disappointed with sexual intercourse, Barbara is disappointed by their relationship. However, if realism and an emotional openness are advocated as the best way towards a healthy relationship – as they are in Cassavetes’ similarly themed Minnie and Moskowitz - there is little hint of this in the film, which ends somewhere close to the romantic Hollywood standard.

Don Jon has ideas that make sense but it does not look at them in any depth. The idea of pornography having a Hollywood equivalent is vaguely drawn and left inconclusive. Similarly, the film ends very quickly and easily; making Jon’s problem seem like one that was very easy to shrug off and, hence, not really a problem. Jon finds happiness in a “real” relationship – a real relationship in movie terms rather than in terms of reality – too suddenly, without difficultly or jeopardy and without any long-term effects. It ends up being just as convincing as Jon’s feeble attempts to justify his porn habit at the beginning of the film. Also, Jon’s misogyny, very clear in the early part of the film, is left unaddressed. Ultimately, Don Jon comes to resemble a morality tale – one that has something valid to say about the effects of pornography but which uses the conservative language of true love to advocate something equally unrealistic.

Undercutting the film’s serious intentions further is Gordon-Levitt’s use of caricature. His family (Tony Danza, Glenne Headly and Brie Larson) seems like something out of an outrageous sitcom, constantly shouting, swearing excessively and always close to fistfights. Meanwhile Jon’s antics while on a night-out or his aggressive driving are far from subtly drawn and often simply played for laughs. Nearly every actor overacts, clearly with the impression that the film was supposed to be more flamboyant and silly than Gordon-Levitt really intended. The only serious performance comes from Julianne Moore, and feels, like the character, out of place. As a drama, it is exaggerated, which makes the happy but serious pro-romance ending all the more ill fitting, especially since it looks as light and insubstantial as the pointedly light and insubstantial beginning. Heartfelt drama isn’t really part of this film’s repertoire. And though the film is funny, it is not funny enough throughout to make up for the underdeveloped dramatics.

Don Jon is a surprisingly confident debut from Joseph Gordon-Levitt and his choice of subject matter displays a bravery and wealth of ideas. It is very possible that his next film will be much better, and much more concentrated. As it stands, Don Jon is a diverting entertainment but rather feeble as a warning about the effects of pornography or as a drama about unrealistic expectations.

See also: Lovelace