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Tom
Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek
Photo: John Clifford
Marisa
Tomei and Nick Stahl
Photo: John Clifford
Photos courtesy of Miramax Films
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By
Simma Park
NEW YORK, 17 January 2002 -
In The Bedroom is a skillful directorial debut from actor
Todd Field (Ruby in Paradise, Eyes Wide Shut) that bodes well
for his development into a director of note. This account of violence,
loss, and revenge in a moody New England seaside town focuses on the
emotional life of the Fowlers, one of the more genteel, well-to-do
families in a largely working-class community, as they cope with
death, injustice and grief.
Matt Fowler (Tom
Wilkinson of The Full Monty and The Patriot) is the
town doctor, and his wife, Ruth (Sissy Spacek), is a choir teacher at
a local high school who is currently teaching a repertoire of Eastern
European folk songs. Both of them are concerned about an affair that
develops one summer between their son Frank (Nick Stahl) and an older
woman named Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei). Although Frank is due to
attend graduate school in the fall, it is evident that he is
developing a strong attachment to Natalie, who is not only a mother of
two with blue-collar roots, but also separated from her husband
Richard Strout (William Mapother), a member of the town's wealthiest
family and a man of violent temper.
The Fowlers' fears for
their son's future, it turns out, fall far short of the affair's
brutal outcome: Frank is shot and killed by the jealous Richard,
leaving Matt and Ruth churning in the emotional wake of their son's
murder. Unable to accept that Richard will spend far less time in
prison than his crime demands, Matt Fowler decides that he and his
loved ones must take the justice they have been denied.
The
film is based on Killings, a story by André Dubus, for
whom Field has professed great admiration. Killings is told
solely from the viewpoint of the father, Matt Fowler and is a pure
revenge tale—albeit one that avoids being complete pulp through
its thorough and nuanced exploration of Matt Fowler's thoughts and
emotions. Luckily for us, Field is less than loyal to his source
material. In The Bedroom is a far more complex work than Killings,
with generous and fruitful interpolations into the histories,
motivations, and desires of not only the Fowlers but also each
character that plays a role in their lives. To an originally spare and
single-minded story, Field adds a wealth of information about the
town's social classes and their interactions, as well as its changing
moral climate. For most of the movie, in fact, such details are the
main substance of what occurs on screen, and their fascination
eclipses the need for a traditional plot.
Field has an
uncanny instinct for the kinds of visual information and dialogue that
produce cohesive and realistic characters, and an acute grasp of how
to stir an audience's feelings. He can arouse overwhelming emotion
with even the most frugal and commonplace image—a simple close-up
of a box of beach souvenirs, or a scene in which Matt Fowler purchases
chocolate bars from a local elementary school student. His deft
direction of a uniformly wonderful cast—with Wilkinson as the
standout among standouts—rounds out his display of directorial
prowess. If In The Bedroom can be compared to any recent film,
it would be Atom Egoyan's heart-rending The Sweet Hereafter
(1997), another film in which tragedy strikes a small town.
Field
distinguishes himself, however, in the innovative methods he uses to
transmit every emotional and social nuance. Field's frame compositions
quote heavily from the work of popular American painter Andrew Wyeth—an
apt choice, as Wyeth's stark, ultra-realistic still-lifes and
landscapes, at first seeming to depict conservative, wholesome scenes
of country life, resemble ominous snapshots in a sinister narrative
which provoke profound disquiet in the viewer. (In what is surely a
sly nod to the painter, Field gives Ruth Fowler a Wyeth biography for
bedtime reading.) The use of Ruth Fowler's eerie, melancholy eastern
European folk songs as an intermittent soundtrack effectively enhances
the mood established by the film's visuals.
And if the
film's visuals find precedents in painting, its structure—the key
to its ability to handle with such depth the subtle details and
delicate moments bypassed in more plot-driven films—may owe much
to Imagist poetry. Stringing together still images, scene snippets,
and moments of conversation like lines of verse, Field encourages us
to build our own logic and feel out our own emotional continuity
between one moment and the next. (And again, as though to tip his hat
to his poetic inspiration, Field gives Matt Fowler a poker buddy
notorious for his penchant for quoting poetry—something he does
throughout the film.) Wyeth and Pound may represent the arrière
garde in their respective arts, but Field, borrowing from them,
produces a film of great daring.
For all his originality and
skill, however, Field's movie is ultimately torn apart by a too-strong
adherence to its source. Ironically, In The Bedroom's great
flaw lies in Field's ultimate insistence on remaining true to his
original intention of rendering Killings as a film. Late in
the film, the tone and narrative rhythm abruptly shifts from "stately"
to "scramble," as though Field, panicked at finding himself
so far from Dubus' original plot, crams in all that he can in the
little time left to him. Even to viewers unfamiliar with the original
story, it's all too evident that Field grafts a narrative and pacing
alien to his own impulses onto his film's slow intensity. A torrent of
plot clichés from courtroom drama and Jacobean made-for-TV
movies dispel the audience's profound empathic engagement in the
characters' lives that Field cultivates so painstakingly through most
of the film—the achievement which gives the film its great claim
to distinction. (Fortunately, the bulk of the movie lies before the
pivotal moment.) By the end, the Fowlers have degenerated into
allegorical cut-outs from a morality play, with none of the depth or
complexity they develop in the real meat of the film.
In a
future project, Field may find the resolve to follow his formidable
creative instincts onto an unplanned course more fertile than his
original intent—or the courage to take on wholly original
material and escape the straitjacket imposed by literary adaptation.
But In The Bedroom is a respectable three-star effort from a
director with four-star potential.
Three stars.
Simma Park is a writer and
designer living in New York. She writes regularly on film for
Culturekiosque.
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Cinema Reviews
