Room

9.5/10. There are times when I feel jaded as a viewer. When it seems like despite the breadth of films out there, that I know most of the tricks, to where while I can appreciate a film's achievements in sort of a detached way, when I can even be engaged and invested in something, it doesn't necessarily reach me in the way that movies did when I first started watching them. The scope of appreciation has widened, but the emotional resonance feels muted, because I can't help but see the strings.

And then a film like Room comes along.

And Jack sees the expanse of sky for the first time. And Joy hugs her parents after not seeing them for seven years. And Robert can't even look at his grandson. And Nancy tells her daughter that she's not the only one whose life was destroyed. And Joy tells her mother that if she hadn't been taught to be nice, she might never have gone with Nick. And there's a supreme, heartbreaking look of guilt on her face when a reporter asks if she should have given her son up while in captivity. And Jack walks in on his mother's suicide attempt. And Nancy hears her grandson say "I love you." And Jack sees a real live dog, and makes a real live friend, and cuts his hair to give his mother his strength.

And I wince and I laugh and I cry and I gasp at this beautiful, devastating, intimate, life-affirming film. This is why we make movies. I love popcorn films, with the fights and flashes and epic feel, and I love the big dramas, with their scope and their sense of grandness and the talent on display, and I love those classic film comedies that mix the absurd and the irreverent and the memorable into a single hilarious package. But the films like Room simultaneously so small and so personal, yet so powerful and affecting, have a special place. These are, as Robert Ebert once put it, the empathy machine that is film working at peak efficiency, taking us into the lives of people who have suffered and been unfathomably wronged, and carries us with them as they carve out a way forward.

I didn't know I wanted a film that feels like a cross between Oldboy, Life Is Beautiful, and Boyhood, and yet the elements Room shares with each--the sense of isolation, the loving way in which a parent tries to distract their child from a continuing tragedy, the slice-of-life, impressionistic depiction of a young boy's innocence--come together to form something absolutely tremendous.

That last facet of the film, the fact that it filters the entire experience through young Jack's eyes, is a stroke of brilliance. There's a matter of factness, a certain directness or even blitheness to the way children experience the world. Using Jack as the lens through which Room tells its story renders those events not only realer, but plainer, imbuing them with the unvarnished perception of childhood. The way the film is able to get into Jack's head, to allow the audience to view these horrors and steps to recovery through his eyes, is its greatest strength and most impressive achievement.

By the same token, Brie Larson as Joy deserves all the accolades she's received for her performance here. While still a prisoner, she carries herself with such an air of both utter resignation and quiet resolve, someone who's been beaten into submission but carries on with whatever she has left. And once she returns home, the guilt that consumes her, the anger that she has for the world that kept turning without her, are palpable in every moment without fading into overwroughtness.

The film can essentially be divided into those two halves. The first is the story of Jack and Joy in Room, of the way that Joy makes unbearable circumstances livable for her son, the way that she copes and shields Jack from the horror around him, and how Jack strains and struggles to understand the idea of the world beyond those four walls, to where he can, eventually, help the two of them escape. The second half is far less intense, but still endlessly intriguing and affecting. It's a quiet domestic story about how people recover from that sort of trauma, both Joy who feels the opposite of survivor's guilt and second guesses herself, and Jack who is exposed to a big scary world, the depth and breadth of which is entirely alien to him.

But throughout both halves, there is such a pure emotional truth in each moment, from the simple joys that Jack enjoys within the home he doesn't realize is a prison, to his anger and resistance at having that fantasy shattered, to Joy's dispirited but resolute attempts to keep him happy and healthy, to the realistic, painful difficulties parents and children face when rebuilding a family seven years after a tragedy, to the wonder and fear a small boy has for what lies beyond the garden gate, and the unmitigated joy at every step taken toward some cobbled-together normalcy. Room is a beautiful, heart-wrenching, intensely personal film, that takes an unflinching yet uplifting look at how people cope and come back from the worst that our world has to offer.

An extraordinarily story, and it will give you chills.
The thing that i loved that the story-line was from the child's eyes.
One of 2015 best movies.

Wow, just wow! Brie Larson is fantastic!

This was hands down my favorite movie of 2015. It's been a very long time since I cried while watching a movie, but this one broke me. Brie Larson deserves every award she gets and Jacob Tremblay is one of the best child actors I've seen in years. This is a difficult movie to watch, but it's one you don't want to miss.

Very emotional movie. I found incredibly interesting how at first Joy was very quick to go back to her old life while Jack had trouble adjusting and the roles reversed and Jack was being strong for Joy...
A masterpiece..

What an amazing film, beautifully directed, written, and performed. It is one of those films that will stay with you for days, weeks, years later. So many touching moments throughout the film, of genuine raw emotion.

The film is so well directed, creating that sense of space in the first half of the film, that a whole world can exist in this room, the decision to have the story told from young Jack's perspective was just inspired. Even a closet seems to be a whole world to this young child. Brie Larson gives an amazing performance. Just cannot speak more highly of this movie......go see it!

The plot of this remarkable film suggests it has been ripped from recent headlines, detailing a young woman's captivity in a shed. This all suggests a deeply unpleasant experience, but the filmmakers make a crucial choice to tell the story from the point of view of the woman's 5 year old son who knows no other world other than the room they are held in. Essentially a two-hander for much of the film between mother and son, it is deeply moving and uplifting despite the nature of the plot, as film portrays their daily existence, the young boy's attempts to make sense of the world around him and his mother's efforts to protect him. Both actors give remarkable performances, with Larson fully deserving the critical praise being thrown her way, yet the film is equally dependent on a wonderfully natural performance from the young Jacob Tremblay. Never exploitative, the film can be quite unsettling and tense at times, but as the story gives way to the aftermath, the focus on the bond between parent and child throughout make for a film that is powerfully affecting.

“There are so many things out here. And sometimes it’s scary. But that’s ok. Because it’s still just you and me.”

I have never been swept up by a movie before. While learning how they lived and Jack's perception of the world, I was enthralled. I was scared during get both the build up to, and the actual escape. The tears started flowing when Jack first saw the world and there was very little time after that where I wasn't crying.

I fell in love with both the characters and the portrayal of their story. Score: 9.5/10. Loses half a star for not showing more of the amazing female police officer who helped him when found.

I expected this to be one of those films where the captives are held for the majority of the film, and right at the end, the door opens to a bright light, with cops outside, and fade to black. That's what most of these kinds of films are. But not Room. Room dealt with the consequences and spent most of its time showing us how they dealt with the world outside. They weren't perfect, it wasn't happily ever after. It was real. Jack was an incredible boy, and following his journey of learning about the world was amazing. Ma was incredibly brave, and though she struggled, the reason Jack is okay today, is because of her. They kept each other alive.

These characters are so incredible and relatable, that here I am still thinking they're real.

Fantastic film, watch it.