Review of In the Bedroom (2001) by Tiffany F — 26 Aug 2009

Whose Pain Is Worse?

I read Sue Grafton novels. In fact, it's this thing with my mother where she gives me the new one every other year (that's the schedule she's on, it seems) for Christmas or my birthday. When the last one came out, she gave me a signed copy within weeks of the release date. At any rate, my favourite, still, came out before we did this. In [i]"K" is for Killer,[/i] a woman comes to see Kinsey Millhone on her way to a parents' group--for the parents of children who have been murdered. She tells Kinsey that the parents all think their pain is the worst. How old was the child? (Hers was in her twenties.) Has the person been caught? Have they been convicted? No matter what the answer is, the parent providing it has the worse pain, and no one else truly understands that. In fact, she hires Kinsey because she believes finding the killer will bring her closure, let her know the worst, finally, so that she won't spend the rest of her life wondering. The ending, I suspect, is not terribly satisfying for her, but Kinsey doesn't really go into that.

Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl) is dating Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei). He's making plans to go to college, probably, and she's the mother of two who is in the process of ending a messy marriage to Richard (William Mapother). His parents, Matt (Tom Wilkinson) and Ruth (Sissy Spacek), are not sure they're okay with this. She's older, and she has kids, and then there's that not-quite-ex-husband. We don't know the full extent of how not-good he is, but he's awfully not good. We know he's abusive, and I'm pretty sure he's not allowed to see his kids. At the very least, Natalie doesn't want him to. And he does not take at all kindly to Frank's seeing her. You see, he really genuinely thinks he and Natalie are going to get back together, that this is just a thing she's going through, and it's all Frank's fault that it isn't working out. First, he beats Frank up. Later, he comes over to the house to "talk" to Natalie. Frank sends Natalie and the kids upstairs so he can deal with Richard, only Richard ends the situation by killing Frank.

What follows, for most of the rest of the movie, is a portrait of grief. Worse, these people don't know how to talk to one another. Even worse, each blames the other for the circumstances leading up to their son's death. And, worst of all, it's entirely possible that the man who killed him will get off with five years, because his attorney (Karen Allen, best known as Marion Ravenwood) is working to establish that it was manslaughter, that the death had been in the course of a struggle. Indeed, it's not entirely certain to us, as we don't see the shot. However, we know that Richard was coming into the house obviously intending violence. And this is what Matt and Ruth are left facing. Their boy is dead, and justice is far from certain. Even if they get something, what they won't get is their boy back. Ruth blames Natalie, too, and that only makes things that much the worse for all of them.

This is a very slow movie. The lengthy second act--arguably, the third act is about ten minutes long--is mostly about Matt and Ruth trying to come to terms with their loss and failing quite badly. Ruth becomes bright and brittle in public and lethargic in private. She shows no interest in anything, really, except when she feels she has to, and she cannot cope with Matt's throwing himself into his work. She says at one point that they've never talked, and that's quite clear. If you are not prepared to watch two people go about their day-to-day lives while suffering dreadfully underneath it, this is not the film for you. It's only because it's so early in the day that it's the film for me--it's supposed to hit nearly ninety here today, and there's a lot more thought involved here than I'm able to in great heat. (Though since it's only seventy-four right now, I'm not sure it's actually going to get that hot.) There's quite a lot of quiet going from place to place, or in Ruth's case, not even always that. Matt tries to talk through what he's dealing with, but there simply isn't anyone to talk about it too, and that makes things all the harder, too. This film is assuredly Not For Everyone.

I do think the film could have stood a trimming. It's over two hours long, and I don't think it needed to be. I think it is battling between showing the glacial slowness of coming to terms with everything and showing the earlier relationships between Frank and the rest of the cast. I'm also not entirely sure that the ending works. Some of the performances are great, but a lot of the others are not. I'm often torn by Marisa Tomei; I've seen some good performances from her, but not great ones. (Yes, I know, but I haven't seen [i]The Wrestler[/i] yet. And [i]My Cousin Vinnie[/i] is one of the oddest wins in Oscar history.) Here, I'm not sure she's even trying as hard as Wilkinson, who gives the same kind of steady, thoughtful performance on which he's made his career. He's not terribly flashy, but he's quietly good. The same can be said of the film, even if it isn't as good as it thinks it is.