Jack (Jacob Tremblay) is a soulful boy who is super, super proud to have just turned five, squealing, "When I was small, I only knew small things. But now I'm five, I know everything!" To him, “Room” is a wide-open space of swirly exhilaration and his mother’s deep, deep love. Television is REAL. Functional items (Table, Sink, etc.) are genuine friends. To Jack’s mom, Ma (Brie Larson), this same space is the enclosed shed she’s been trapped in since she was kidnapped at age 17. As little black flies on the wall, we float in a dreamlike blend of Emma Donahue’s constructive narrative and sweet, smart Jack’s eyes.
Oscar-nominated actress Brie Larson is stunning in her dedicated encapsulation of Ma’s behavior. She exhales warmth, sternness, anger, gentleness, strength, fragility, and love in one heavy breath. Ma looks at Jack, her rapist’s creation like he puts the stars in the sky.
Jack’s vibrancy is honest. His garden shed-joy is boundless. When Ma has her “gone” days, his individual, creative contentment and compassion are endearingly evident as he entertains himself. The now 9-years-old Jacob Tremblay is a treasure.
Irish filmmaker, Lenny Abrahamson, illustrates intimate moments between Ma and Jack to divulge the inherent heartbreak of their shared story. Their captor, Old Nick, is not granted the dignity of visual violent glory. Respectfully, melodramatic elements are not brought to this story -- it is already so real, and so horrifying.
Tender and tough, like Ma’s love for Jack, is Abrahamson’s film “Room.” The cinematography’s texture (Danny Cohen) is contrastingly lovely and open. Between moments of motherly light and bright, blue sky coloring is the sincerest darkness in Donahue’s story: the truths and terrors lived by real victims.
When I was six years old, I was mistaken for Danielle van Dam on a balmy day in a suburban Hometown Buffet parking lot. When the confusion subsided, my mother told me the story of the little blonde girl who’d been taken from her San Diego bedroom in February of 2001. We talked about puppy dog tricks and after-school pick-ups. I prayed extra hard that night.
Twelve years later, I was writing a paper on the AMBER Alert system. I thought of the helpless look my mom had on her face that stifling day and Googled, “Danielle, California, kidnapped.” The first word to come up was, “murder.”
I wept for the 258,115 families a year whose reality this is.
I'm counting my stars. Hug your Mas and Jacks.
