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In the Bedroom

4/28/2017

8 Comments

 

B-
​2.81

A New England couple deals with the aftermath of a family tragedy.

Directed by Todd Field
Starring Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, and Marisa Tomei
​ Initial Review by Lane Davis

Picture
Oh, the New England grief film.  With “Manchester By the Sea” garnering all the acclaim it did this year, perhaps this film type deserves its own genre category.  It’s a good bet that if you’re a filmmaker and if the premise of your film is that two parents face the untimely death of their children while living in MA, CT, NH, VT, or ME, you’re going to get funding and maybe even a few nods from Academy members who grew up on the North Shore and are still working through their repressive Yankee childhoods.

​“In the Bedroom” tells the story of Matt and Ruth Fowler (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek) and their son, Frank, who is (spoiler) murdered by the ex-husband of his cougar-esque lover Natalie (Marisa Tomei). Matt and Ruth go through the normal routines of grief, which, honestly, is pretty damn boring. It’s an unspeakable tragedy, and the quiet, repressed nuance is obviously something filmmaker Todd Field knows well. They deal with marital strife and the gears of justice, which mostly just grind against them. Matt finally decides to take justice into his own hands and this is the only reason you could call this a crime or thriller film (as I saw it listed, somewhere). Unless you find watching people deny their feelings and silently rage against the world thrilling, maybe let’s just say it’s a “crime” film since it’s technically true several crimes are committed here.
 
I admit this is a film I liked very much in my early 20’s, when I was still pretty young and figuring out what it’s like to grieve myself. I have this very particular memory of watching this film, at some point in late 2001 or 2002, and seeing Marisa Tomei react to finding Frank’s body and thinking, “Yep, that’s what it feels like.” It’s a credit to Tomei that she got the feeling of immediate grief and ongoing guilt so right in this film. I know that it was generally felt she stole the Academy Award when she won for “My Cousin Vinny,” but she was pretty much the best thing in this film in my opinion and maybe it’s just Hollywood’s fault that she never had the chance to grow into a great talent.
 
This is a film about small towns. It’s about grief and about revenge. It’s about how small towns run the play-by-plays of their local baseball teams over and over again, which is a metaphor for how small towns never forget their own histories. I don’t know if other members of our mediocre club grew up in small towns, but I did and this film gets what it feels like, and I’m pretty sure grief and revenge are universal experiences.
 
Field’s film grasps the small town experience well--of being the topic of conversation amongst everyone you know; of knowing everyone who gets coffee at the convenience store. I’m not even sure what the African choir thing added to the narrative except some sort of weird Ivy League dissonance which inhabits every middle class New England town.
 
These are the things the film gets right, but watching this film 15 years later I couldn’t help but feel there is something missing here. It’s a quiet film about revenge, but it still feels as if that magic malevolent something that would have made this film truly great was missing. It needed a slight seasoning of the macabre; just a pinch more of the grotesque and then we would have been cooking. The great New England story tellers, from Melville to Stephen King, all realize that there’s something particularly horrific and terrifying about groups of people that would choose to live in a land where the temperature doesn’t rise above 25 for a good five months of the year. I liked Tom Wilkinson’s performance for the most part, but just because Sissy Spacek is giving you the stink eye doesn’t mean you murder someone. There should have been something more “off” about his character.
 
I can’t help but imagine that one of the reasons “In the Bedroom” was so well received in 2001 was that it was that quiet film that let indie film goers experience a less brazen form of grief in their post 9/11 America. If this was a 2017 film, I imagine it wouldn’t have made it to the big screen; “In the Bedroom” feels like an HBO original. Although, “Manchester By the Sea” made it, so maybe I’m wrong.
 
Grade: B 
8 Comments
Sean
4/28/2017 01:20:32 am

Why did I pick this movie to finally see something this round? Long, slow, and boring are 3 adjectives I think of about In the Bedroom so I'll be brief in my review. Two great scenes saved the movie from disaster and they waited forever to have them.
First, when Matt and Ruth finally let loose on each other and say all the worst things they could think about each other. Anyone who's been in a relationship long enough has mentally considered launching one of those and held back through a combination of self-preservation and fear.
Second the extended scene of Matt kidnapping and killing Richard was beautifully balanced where part of you believes Matt really is helping Richard jump bail in order get him away and move on, part of you fears Richard is going to get the jump on Matt and it all backfires, part expects it to end how it does, and the last part worries Matt will lose his nerve and walk away and nothing happens.

This grade goes against all subjective enjoyment feelings, but C+ is the absolute floor for a movie with good acting and 2 near perfect scenes.
I'll go B-

p.s. I hope Shane watched this one to explain how the hell they cant use the fact that Richard just wrecked the house and the day before had beat up Frank to say this was no accident and think you couldn't do better than manslaughter.

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Shane the Lawyer
5/9/2017 05:00:05 pm

Shane the Lawyer here.

They can and will use the fact that he fucked the house up against him. However, that doesn't mean he was there to kill someone with "malice aforethought", which is a traditional element of Murder 1. Basically, Murder 1 is you went somewhere with the intent to murder the fuck out of someone. A lot of times in lover's quarrels, you end up with Manslaughter as it is a highly charged emotional situation.

Now, interestingly enough, this tends to work against women are planners and are not as prone to flying off of the handle. In domestic violence situations, many women end up with murder charges because they'll end up killing their spouse with malice aforethought, even if they legitimately feel threatened.

If a woman catches her partner cheating, she might make revenge plans rather than reacting like a typical man and just fighting. It's a grey area that is open to interpretation and jury opinion.

For instance, there is case law that varies across jurisdictions about the following situation:
Spouse comes home and finds partner in bed with someone else. Spouse leaves room, grabs a gun out of another room, comes back and shoots both. Is that malice aforethought? Would it make a difference if it took him 5 minutes to find the gun? Would it still be malice aforethought if he goes out to the car in the garage? (There's something called a cool-down period for these cases.) It's not exact.

So, rather than trying him for murder and risking losing, the DA would (wisely) offer Manslaughter. Richard doesn't want to risk Murder 1, so Manslaughter is a nice deal. Then, no ridiculous trial.

Instead, Richard is still civilly liable most likely.

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Bryan
5/2/2017 11:37:15 pm

The two best scenes in this movie were learning how fish is canned and the spinning bridge thing. I love inside and/or historical peeks at manufacturing and engineering.

I'll agree with Riley about the "Is he going to kill him?" scene being solid. But one scene does not carry the other 2.5 hours. I enjoyed the beginning dialogue and the kidnapping scene, but otherwise this was pretty dull. Watching people frustrated with criminal law isn't redeeming in any way.

Chelsea asked, "Is there any talking in this movie?" Best quote of the move!

Unlike our dear friend Lane who knocks a movie repeatedly then gives it a B, I'm going C. This was the definition of 'meh'

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Shane
5/9/2017 05:03:04 pm

Finally a movie that shows how the law works! It's boring, but there are rules, damnit.

I'm higher on this movie than anyone else. I loved Wilkinson in this role and his argument with Spacek after Frank's death was great. It does plot a little slow at times, especially if you're watching without noise because you have a newborn in your lap.

Also, I'm a fan of Stahl for no reason in particular other than I loved him in Carnivale.

B+

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Jon
5/10/2017 11:42:39 pm

"Put more than two lobsters in a bedroom and something's going to happen." That's the writerly warning playfully given to young Jason Strout, and the adults that surround him show that it's as applicable to humans as it is to crustaceans in Todd Field's In the Bedroom. Lane is absolutely right to compare this to Manchester By the Sea (which recently got a Side Pieces write-up, btw), and while that more recent coastal weepie is a much better film, both share a New England stoicism and some great acting.

Evenly divided into thirds, In the Bedroom gets better before it gets worse. The film begins with Frank (Nick Stahl) and Natalie (Marisa Tomei) frolicking in the tall grass, easy shorthand for their care-free happiness. Field gradually gets the viewer further and further away from this idyllic intro, introducing Natalie's messy romantic life and Frank's future at a tangible crossroads. Field and Stahl ably sculpt several different futures for Frank, each potentially satisfying. It's not hard to imagine the character as a fisherman, complaining about the depletion of stocks by the big canning plant with his fellows at a bar after a hard day's work, then coming home to Natalie and his two admiring stepsons. A white-collar life for him is also visible, surrendering to the academic goals of his parents and meeting someone his age at architecture school, building a life and family of his own in a Boston brownstone. However, as I recently told my nephew in response to his plans to become a priest, "Men plan, God laughs," and Natalie's ex Richard (William Mapother) reduces Frank's existence to the hole that he shoots in his face.

That frank depiction of the finality and messiness of violence gets us into the best part of the film, where Frank's parents deal with the aftermath of their son's death. Matt (Tom Wilkinson) and Ruth (Sissy Spacek) spend the first act in a loving and recognizable marriage, but with their son so abruptly taken from them, things justifiably begin to fray. Field changes his scene transitions to fades, like time is going by as an ordeal without anything notable taking place in it. They get distant with each other and with their friends, who can no longer talk about the grandkids at the center of their lives when the Fowlers are around. Natalie tries to apologize to each of them, but there's no catharsis, as Matt can only politely lie and Ruth just slaps her. Little things remind them of their son's life, bringing the crushing realization that those impermanent memories are as good as it's going to get.

This all culminates in the big centerpiece scene of In the Bedroom, a marital fight to rival all cinematic marital fights. It feels like this has been brewing for years, even before Frank's death, as all the differences in parenting erupt in a giant scab-opening blowout. The resentment they've felt for each other since Frank's death turns into them cruelly analyzing each other and finding the most hurtful reasons why Frank was with Natalie in the first place. Field has gone out of his way to demonstrate that neither party is aimlessly flailing away. Ruth thinks Matt encouraged the relationship because he liked his friends envying his son, which is one of the first scenes in the film. Matt thinks Frank wanted to be with an older woman who wasn't constantly judging him, and sure enough, we saw Ruth at the kitchen table with Frank, quietly needling him. The reactions on Wilkinson's and Spacek's faces are shattering, with Wilkinson slowly turning over what Ruth is accusing him of before slowly spitting it out while Ruth both can't believe what she's hearing and knows that there's some truth to it. To cap it off, Field has a soliciting student interrupt everything, demonstrating that their world has been irrevocably altered but everything else continues as normal. This breaks the spell, and they reconcile as best they can.

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Jon
5/10/2017 11:43:08 pm

Back in unison with his wife, the final act puts Matt on a revenge plot, and the film loses me. The film that was, up to this point, a reflection on grief and loss and the fleeting nature of life, turns into something very different, and it's hard to merge those two parts back together into a coherent whole. If it shifts into a cycle of violence type theme, that doesn't work because we never meet Richard's potential avengers. If it's supposed to be a futile lashing out, or a reclaiming of masculinity, then the film ends on too abrupt a note. I don't think any of this is necessary, as it doesn't add to what we know of the characters or build on what's come before. In the Bedroom is a film in search of an ending. Matt tearing off his band-aid, a fine metaphorical image for an ending, isn't earned.

Field has only made this and Little Children, another dense character piece on people largely incapable of saying what they're feeling, and has been completely off the map for a decade. As puzzlingly as In the Bedroom ends, I do wish he would return to cinema. Films like this are rarer and rarer, and Field clearly knows what he's doing, getting five Oscar acting nominations out of a mere two movies. His debut gets muddled, but I'd still love to see what he's got next. B

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Cooker
5/22/2017 08:56:17 am

My exact words when finishing up this movie were, “Well, that was kind of a dumb movie.”

Most of my thoughts have already been shared. I agree on the two scenes that carry the movie, that the film is well-acted, and the fact that it’s slow and boring. Wikipedia says “halfway” through the movie is when Frank gets killed, but I clocked it around 40 minutes in. I felt that the “grieving” sequences part of the movie made the film drag and that they maybe could’ve had the death happen more toward the middle, with more build-up leading up to the murder, and less "they mourn differently" scenes. It didn't take too long to figure out what was going on.

When I first saw the opening with Frank and Natalie lying in a field making out, all I could hear was Fred Savage in the Princess Bride asking, “Is this a kissing movie?”

I was also waiting for the deer out in the woods, who showed up as they buried the body, to go tell the cops what happened. Of course, that’s just silly.

“Long, slow, and boring” as Riley said. The cons outweigh the few pros on this one, and unlike Riley’s B-/C+ debate, I’m giving this one the C+

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Blair
6/28/2017 10:50:35 pm

Does a great job of capturing grief. Loved the big confrontation scene for the dialogue and the intensity, and for how grief reframes relationships. B+

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