by Todd Field, 2001.
Starring: William Mapother, Sissy Spacek, Nick Stahl, Marisa Tomei, and Tom Wilkinson.
Rating: 7.5/10, 9.5/10.
I will not tell you the plot of this movie. I will tell you how it starts: a young man named Frank (Stahl) is having a summerfling with an older, almost-divorced woman named Natalie (Tomei). His parents, Ruth and Matt (Spacek and Wilkinson) look on, vaguely worried for him in a bemused way.
But then, things which a viewer should not know going into the theater but unfortunately probably does start to happen and change this situation drastically. It’s not a surprise ending, cheap-trick Usual Suspects kind of thing; these events begin to unfold very early in the movie. Nonetheless, the less you know about the plot going in, the more impact it will have on you. I knew what was going to happen; I wish so, so much that I hadn’t.
After these events, the film becomes one of the most powerfully moving that I have ever seen. It is not a fun film to watch, but I have given it a seven and a half out of ten for its entertainment value. Why?
Partly because of the intense beauty of it. It is a pleasure of a kind to see all the images we are presented with by the camera and feel our hearts (or souls, or minds, or whatever) soaring and breaking at the same time. So what if I sound tacky? There’s no other way I can think of to express the feeling some of the images gave me.
But most of it is the sheer joy in observing the artistry of the actors. Each and every one of them is perfect in their roles, from the Oscar-nominated Tomei, Spacek, and Wilkinson, to the equally deserving Stahl, all the way to minor characters like Celia Weston as a family friend. Watch her in the scene where she makes an inappropriate comment and only realises too late that she shouldn’t have said it.
So does In The Bedroom have any flaws? Well, yes, but no important ones. At times it is perhaps overly melodramatic. This is the only criticism of the film I can think of (aside from personal preferences, like that I wish I had gotten more of the Spacek character than I did, more of her story, but it’s ok that I didn’t), and even that "criticism" can only melt away in the stunning perfection that is the rest of the film.