|
|
IN THE BEDROOM
|
Just what is unforgivable? And who is unworthy of forgiveness? That is the question IN THE BEDROOM finally asks.
Bright only son Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl) is home in Camden, Maine before heading off to architecture school in the fall, dallying with a likable not-yet-divorced lowbrow townie (Marisa Tomei, estimably showing the darker side of her SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS character). We are in a postcard-cliché-Maine of tough lobster fishermen, many of whom have painfully awful Maine accents that sound like Shakespearean actors trying to produce a Southern drawl. Amidst these poor-but-honest folk live the resident shabby-genteel intellectuals, Dr. Matt Fowler (the protean Tom Wilkinson of THE FULL MONTY and others) and his wife Ruth (Sissy Spacek, showing her BADLANDS fragile ferocity), Brown graduate and now high school music teacher. Their own ambitions thwarted -- the trope of the small-town intellectual in indy flicks -- Matt and Ruth rue their past choices by arguing over their son's future … until it is decided for them.
In the New Yorker--short-story style of minimalist moviemaking, action is insignificant (this movie's entire plot movement is covered in about three pages of Macbeth), voices are seldom raised, indeed few issues are ever voiced. Instead the story is shown in tight-focus close-ups: furrowed brows, lips pressed into a thin line, rage in a gesture, grief in a wince. All this is fine -- perhaps even admirable -- but it is not engaging. So closed are the characters that they are as remote from us as from each other. We are embarrassed to find it dull, but dull we find it.
Todd Field's direction pushes his characters further away. Though he wrings beautiful nuanced performances from each actor, most have only one single emotional tone from which he or she never varies. The major violence hinges build with such linear visibility that we are impatiently waiting for them long before they arrive. Few of the key events are staged; instead we have ominous slow obvious buildups, discreet cutaways, reaction shots, then blackouts without resolution. Like a novice show jumper who shies at the fences, Field almost always breaks his scenes just when his characters would truly get down to blood and guts. Indeed, the one strong scene between Matt and Ruth surprises us because it is so out of directorial character (and then it too quickly reconciles and dissolves, leaving us unsatisfied).
This is a pity. When you think about the movie afterwards, you can see that Matt and Ruth are complex personalities, the equal of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, every bit as well acted as George and Martha of WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? -- but these appreciations arrive in reflection, not on screen.
What is unforgivable? Who is unworthy of forgiveness? Five minutes from its finish, IN THE BEDROOM finally asks these questions. In minimalist fashion, it ends without positing an answer -- which is too bad, because where this movies breaks off, Shakespeare or Dostoevsky would be just warming up.
In modern classical music, you may admire the composer's technique or wit, but do you enjoy listening to it? I liked what this movie was trying to be. I didn't like what it was.