An Exercise In Nonsense

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Married couple Matt (Tom Wilkinson) and Ruth Fowler (Sissy Spacek) live in a small coastal community in Maine. Their only son Frank (Nick Stahl) returns in love with the older Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei) who has two young sons. Her ex-husband Richard Strout (William Mapother) is angry and shoots Frank at the family home. The Strouts are an important family in the town and Richard gets bail. Natalie didn't actually see the shooting. Marla Keyes (Karen Allen) is the defense attorney.The story is presented quietly. Nevertheless, the acting is overpowering. Tom Wilkinson is a rock crumbling before our eyes. Sissy Spacek is brilliant. Everybody is terrific. Other than a couple big emotions scenes, this movie is a study of quiet desperation. The forced smiles and the meaningless conversations hide the true intensity underneath the surface.

In the Bedroom is a subtle and understated film, but it's also haunting and powerful. Though it's difficult to summarize without giving too much away, it takes place in a small town in New England and is about two murders, and central to the heart of those murders is an idealized concept of the "traditional" family unit. The first occurs because a jealous man can't stand the idea of someone else becoming involved with his ex-lover and mother of his children. The idea of a non-traditional family taking the place of a traditional one, as well as the perceived loss of property, meaning his ex and children, was too much for the murderer to bear. The second murder is revenge for the first, but it's not quite that simple. It happens because of a need for the second murderer to prove the legitimacy of their grief to a spouse after their family had been shattered. In the Bedroom is an examination of the concept of family in America, a meditation on how the garden from which fascism grows can be hidden just beneath the surface of a picturesque neighborhood. Evil can lie at the heart of everything we've been conditioned to see as normal and good and the film warns against the way the "traditional" family teaches people to see each other as property under the current system that governs the society we live in.

"In the Bedroom" is a rather unpleasant and very slow film. I guarantee that many folks will not want to watch this film or will give up partway through it. This is because although the movie is exceptionally well made, it's also incredibly sad and its pace is like lead. Now this isn't really a complaint--just some reasonable observations about the film. So, keep this in mind before you decide to watch.The film begins with a relationship that seems rather irrational and doomed. A married woman with children is getting a divorce. In the meantime, she's having a relationship with a young man who appears to be about 18 or perhaps 19. The woman (Marissa Tomei) is significantly older and the young man is supposed to be going off to college--and his mother (Sissy Spacek) naturally wants the young man to focus on school and not this still-married woman. Soon, the estranged husband returns and begins pressuring the wife to take him back--and he becomes very violent. The wife and the boyfriend are morons--they don't go to the police and the husband's behavior escalates until he murders the young man. All this occurs in the first third of the movie and the rest of the film consists of showing the parents (Spacek and Tom Wilkenson) dealing with their grief. Neither really talks about it and they internalize their pain and become distant from one another. However, rather unexpectedly, the movie takes a very drastic and violent turn at the end--one that is quite satisfying to see but which also is difficult to watch.It's important to point this out, the portrayals of the parents coping with their grief is incredibly well done and realistic. But who wants to see this? Not most folks. In many ways it reminded me of "Rabbit Hole"--another amazingly well acted film about parental grief that is brilliant but difficult to watch. And, since most folks don't want to be THIS depressed, they're movies you should think twice about before you watch. Exceptional....and unpleasant.

There are many things to be said about this film. It's twelve years later. So I'll just say this: Tom Wilkinson's acting performance is the best I have ever seen. I am a die-hard Daniel Day-Lewis fan so that's hard for me to say, in a way. I saw this movie when it came out in 2001 and just watched it again for the first time since. When I first saw it, Tom Wilkinson blew me away, and his performance was just as amazing tonight. How does one capture the subtlety of being a normal human being confronted with the murder of a son? Much consideration is given to actors who portray extreme characters, showing their range. But the most difficult and amazing thing to do as an actor, in my opinion, is play someone who is not so. Not to be average or boring, but to be so real and so believable that it opens up a world of empathetic truth due to the foundation of reality it creates. Watch it. He masterfully embodies the character, in this circumstance, to a level beyond believable. He is so good in it that it speaks volumes beyond the themes of the film. Sissy Spacek is also deserving of high praise. Somehow they both capture, to me, what a marriage really would look like in that situation. High praise of course to Todd Field for his superb direction. If anyone cares about acting, or telling a great story, I recommend this film with all of my being.