An incredible fusion of all elements working in harmony, Lenny Abrahamson’s Room rises above audience trepidations of grimness to craft a triumphant human narrative. Adapted by Emma Donoghue from her own novel, the film begins on the fifth birthday of Jack, who lives with his Ma in a 10×10 shed where she has been held as a sex slave for seven years. Expect less some less punishing than this sounds, for this is a film more interested in our ability to overcome than ruminating on the gruesome. Room is a film of healing.
Observational enough about their everyday lives to satisfy our fascinations, but never dipping into the obscene or grotesque, Room doesn’t shy away from the unpleasant aspects. It’s been made sufficiently clear by the film’s marketing that Ma and Jack indeed escape their confines, so that’s no spoiler here. The angle Abrahamson and Donoghue take to engage the audience is favoring the personal over the sensational – Jack has been led to believe that “Room” is the total universe, so everything on the outside is a terrifying revelation. Things are not so easy for Ma, either, as escape unexpectedly denies the comfort and mental respite life away from her captor had promised. For the protagonists as well as the audience, the world of Room is never that simple.
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