In the Bedroom Review
by Jonathan F. Richards (moviecritic AT prodigy DOT net)December 25th, 2001
IN THE BEDROOM
Rated R, 131 minutes
Directed by Todd Field
WHERE, WHEN
Opens today at the UA DeVargas
Sissy Spacek can smile with reasonable conviction, and at the same time reveal another face with X-ray clarity, a face beneath the smile that is taut with anguish and desperate anger. It’s a remarkable achievement, and a remarkable performance in a year that is shaping up as one of surprising strength and competitive balance in the lead actress category. Her “In the Bedroom” costar, Tom Wilkinson (“The Full Monty”, “Shakespeare in Love”) is a match for her, delivering a powerfully controlled performance that should lift him out of the ranks of admired obscurity.
Spacek and Wilkinson play Ruth and Matt Fowler, the parents of Frank (Nick Stahl), a teenager with a keen mind and a bright future until he is murdered in a fit of jealous rage by Richard Strout (William Mapother), the estranged husband of Natalie (Marisa Tomei), an older woman with whom Frank is romantically involved.
The murder is devastating, not only robbing Matt and Ruth of their adored only son, but driving a cold wedge between them. Writer-director Todd Field, adapting a short story by Andre Dubus, sets up with cool understatement the elements that make up the fabric of everyday living in a happy, well-adjusted family until the harsh light of tragedy plunges them into bitterness. Matt is the doctor in a small Maine town, a local boy who has grown up and stayed put (Wilkinson, a Brit, never quite nails the down-east specificity of the character, but it’s a small quibble in an otherwise marvelous performance.) He dotes on Frank, wandering down to the docks to visit with him at his summer lobstering job whenever he can get a break from the office. Ruth, a music teacher at the local school, worries about Frank’s involvement with Natalie, but she’s too much the good sport and hip mother to make too big a deal of it.
But with Frank’s murder, all the suppressed concerns and resentments that went unnoticed when they were happy fester into open sores. And with the realization that his killer, the son of the town’s leading family, will probably walk, the anger grows – an anger at the murderer, at the system, at the town, at Natalie, at each other, and at themselves. Spacek and Wilkinson reveal their growing frustration and tension with superb underplaying, as Matt copes with the tragedy by trying to bounce back to an unattainable normalcy, and Ruth copes by freezing him out, until the explosion comes and the events of the story’s visceral endgame are set in motion. Director Field (an actor best known as the piano player in “Eyes Wide Shut”) paces the story with a subtlety and a build that makes its two hours and ten minutes go by with the tightness of a much shorter film. There is a relentless ordinariness to the setting, a small town America drenched in baseball and picnics and television watching that gives it a solid purchase in the lives of the audience. But there is nothing ordinary about the movie, and the superb work of Spacek and Wilkinson turn it into a sleeper that has come out of nowhere to earn a power position at the Oscar table.
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
