a review by Jeffrey Overstreet
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Matt and Ruth Fowler live in a small coastal town in Maine. When you first see their neighborhood you’ll be making vacation plans. By the end of the film, though, director Todd Field will have given you a new perspective on life behind the curtains of this cozy little paradise, not unlike the way David Lynch unearthed sickening evil behind the white picket fences of Twin Peaks.
In the Bedroom, Field’s first feature, is another one of these finely crafted works that shoves our face into the smelly corner of a neighborhood and burdens us with a vision of despair. It portrays a world that is like a joke, a trap, with no way out.
Unfortunately, the movie doesn’t point the way to any kind of hope or healing. September 11th was not the beginning of human evil, but it has wounded all of us and left us pondering questions about evil and justice with renewed vigor. Thus, art about evil and the proper response to it is crucial during this time.
In the Bedroom looks at an act of great evil, and how it affects the victim’s loved ones and the crime-rocked community. Critics are applauding it as a profound work about justice and love. Well… no. Instead, it’s a shocking and painful portrait about injustice and the power of hate. And above all, it’s a story about the emptiness of revenge. Thus, what distinguishes In the Bedroom as an important film is that it disagrees with the premise of so many American films. It dares to suggest that striking back at the enemy will not do us any good.
The title might suggest that the film is about sex. But it’s actually about a marriage. Matt and Ruth Fowler are a long-married couple; he’s a doctor, she directs a community choir. But they’ve still got one hand in the business that has been a Fowler tradition-lobster fishing.
We watch the Fowler familiy at work, at play, even teasing each other with a playfully mature married affection that we rarely see on the big screen. We also see the believably rough edges of their relationship, those brief but barbed exchanges that come when both spouses are tired and stressed. They’re not often contentious, but they’re not very communicative with each other either. During times of trial you can see the hairline fractures in their relationship.
The flaws are especially visible when they discuss their son’s love life. Matt likes to let the boy make his own decisions, and he refrains from comment as he watches the boy go from one girlfriend to the next without any sort of commitment or seriousness. Mom, however, isn’t so lenient. She’s afraid the boy will make a mistake. And so she takes a domineering approach, stifling him with advice.
When tragedy strikes, cracks in the Fowler’s foundation spread and broaden. (I’m being carefully vague to avoid spoiling surprises.) Matt and Ruth grope for comfort and consolation, but friends and legal advisors fail them. A great injustice looks like it will remain an irresolvable problem in their lives. Matt (Tom Wilkinson of The Patriot in an astonishing performance) keeps his grief turned inward, nagging his lawyers to get things done. Ruth (the great Sissy Spacek, living up to her reputation) shouts and complains and weeps, her rage intensified by her husband’s stony silence. Both characters are remarkably believable, both actors worthy of Oscar nominations.
The toll taken on their marriage is nowhere clearer than “in the bedroom”, where conversations end in uncomfortable scowls. But we also learn that the “bedroom” is the innermost part of a lobster trap. Matt explains to an apprentice that lobsters in traps can become so tightly packed together that they hurt each other. We’re treated to realistic footage of the actors reeling in lobsters, many of whom have clawed each others limbs off in attempts to survive. A lovely metaphor for marriage, isn’t it? Will Matt and Ruth destroy each other as they fail to mourn cooperatively? Or will they unite and become decisive in dealing with trials? If they do unite, will they find healing or only increase the damage?
William Mapother brings believable menace to the situation as a chauvinistic, arrogant, dangerous man who manifests the worst in these married men; he’s only different in that he flaunts his lust, selfishness, and anger like a flag. Marisa Tomei does some of her best work yet as Natalie, his abused, lonely, and terrified wife and the mother of his two frightened boys. The disintegration of this marriage shows the worst-case-scenario, what happens when lovers stop getting to know each other and start falling out of intimacy.
Like several other critics, I feel that the film loses its sensitive touch in the last act. The cinematography loses the lyrical feel that evoked Terrence Malick in the opening scenes, and it becomes conventional. The conclusion seems too abrupt and the film’s exploration of justice and healthy relationships remains incomplete.
But days later I am still haunted by it. As I watched the film, I focused on its tragic and violent turns. Now I am wondering if the specifics of the tragedy are perhaps unimportant. The real story is in how the marriage is strengthened or harmed by the way each spouse responds to what’s happening. If this particular tragedy hadn’t occurred, surely something else would, and the marriage would have been tested in the end. I’ve been having better conversations with my wife all week. This film has exhorted me to vigilance.
The film also demonstrates how our built-in sense of human “justice” can lead to empty and unsatisfying resolutions in the real world. In most movies, it is the proper duty of heroes to respond to violence with violence. Here, justice through violence may eliminate an immediate problem, but there’s now a new and perhaps more troubling problem in its place. The movie’s last images will drive this point home.
The justice and peace Matt and Ruth desire probably cannot be found on this earth, in this lifetime. And unfortunately, this story offers Matt and Ruth no source of consolation. In the Bedroom raises all the right questions and points to love by effectively portraying its absence. I was reminded of Robert Duvall’s great film The Apostle, in which another realistic man finds he cannot heal things on his own, but must depend on God. Indeed, circumstances didn’t improve for him, but his faith gave him hope.
Sometimes, art seems intent on discouraging us. In the song “Private Storm”, Sam Phillips sings, “Time doesn’t heal, the scars turn into wounds.” This is true. Time doesn’t heal, and neither does human vengeance. But grace has offered us the hope of eventual consolation. If we seize grace, we have the hope that made Robert Duvall’s The Apostle sing even in his incarceration. If we ignore God’s promises to make all things right and try to control the situation on our own, we will end up like the Fowlers… bitter, divided, despairing.