‘Room’ is one boy’s view of the world

One of the films playing locally is getting awards-show attention. That would be "Room," which is playing at the Magic Lantern Theater. Following is the review of the film that I wrote for Spokane Public Radio:

Any psychologist will tell you how important the first five years of a child’s life are. If you don’t know any psychologists, go see Lenny Abrahamson’s film “Room.” Five-year-old Jack will show you virtually everything you need to know.

Jack is one of two central characters in “Room,” which writer Emma Donoghue adapted from her own novel. The other character is Joy – known to Jack as “Ma” – the woman who has raised her son in a 12-by-12 room all his short life. How and why they ended up there is gradually revealed over the course of the film’s first half; then, in the second half, we watch as they struggle, individually, to adapt to the larger world.

And through it all, Jack serves as our narrator, naming the parts of his world – the bed, the wardrobe in which he sleeps, the skylight that is their only connection to the outside world. Skylight, that is, and Old Nick, the mysterious male presence who haunts Room, coming in at night – usually after Jack is asleep.

Otherwise, at least at first, that outside world doesn’t really exist to Jack. Ma – fiercely protective Ma – has told him that Room is all there is. That the images he sees on television aren’t real. There is only him, her and the things in Room.

But now Jack is 5, and Ma tells him he’s old enough to know the truth. That the outside world IS real, and that they have to find a way to go out into it. At first, Jack doesn’t believe her. “I don’t like this story,” he screams. He’s understandably afraid. When Ma tells him her plan of escape, he wants to wait. Maybe when he’s 6, he says. No, Ma answers, it has to be now.

The key to the success of Abrahamson’s “Room” and, presumably, Donoghue’s novel, is the contrast between the story’s real situation – a kidnapping and seven-year-long imprisonment of a young woman – and how that woman, now a young mother, is able to make the experience into a magical journey for her son. She contains her own fears so that she can raise Jack in what he perceives as a nurturing world, Room. This serves as a testament to her strength and the power of her love.

It’s only afterward, when both mother and son have to deal with the good and bad of the larger world, that she implodes. But again, Abrahamson conveys that process in a way that allows us to observe while listening to Jack’s precocious perception of it.

Credit Abrahamson’s cast for much of the film’s success. Following a handful of choice roles, such as in 2013’s “Short Term 12,” Brie Larson does double duty, first as a loving mother and then as a woman struggling to deal with her lost childhood. Joan Allen, too, deserves mention.

But young Jacob Tremblay as Jack deserves the spotlight. Never has a pre-teen pulled off a more adult performance. His observation that “There is so much of place in the world,” is both simple and profound.