In the Bedroom

One of my favorite films of this decade. Todd Field's direction is superb; he seems to have really cared about the story and its ability to develop an idea. I enjoy a film (and its production) that permits unfolding occurrences authenticity.

The set-up, the construct is really quite simple: Son/Young Man has fling with Older, Married Woman whose unstable and scorned Lover/Husband purposefully confronts and assaults but recklessly murders the Son; Resolute Father confronts Lover and avenges his Son's murder.

What a viewer gets with In the Bedroom is the tale. And that encourages the viewer to think about what and how events occur. Field's direction (and Frank Reynolds's editing, for that matter,) creates a space for speculation and reflection as the story progresses. Many films are directed and edited in an insistent and persistent manner. Many narratives call for such insistence. You want a viewer (or reader) to see this event in this manner, and so on. I like the odd films that ask me to become engaged enough to do some work.

When I hear "In the Bedroom", I think about all those private things we all decide are best left in the bedroom. And the title does relate all the events to the sex act. So, we are observing something authentically primal, possibly something repressed.

Watching Frank Fowler's parents struggle to come to terms with his murder is poignant and mysterious. How does his father arrive at the decision to act as he does? How does his mother permit such action? Is she powerless to act? Or, is her silence something much more significant?

A murder is an over-abundant act with the excess often purposefully edited out of any archive, any record, and sometimes memory. The suffering is often not precise, accurate, nor efficient enough to film. It is much simpler to tell the story about what happens after all the major characters in a narrative respond to a traumatic event. In the Bedroom dispenses with the afterwards and dwells in the possibilities in the wake of the trauma. We get, after very little setting, a horrific act and a study of the time before the next horrific act that, in many ways, is in response to the first act. But the question is left, I think, about inevitability.

Upon subsequent screenings, I am shocked that the film doesn't insist on an inevitable outcome. It is inevitable, I suppose, in that the father's retaliation is written and filmed. But the tone and pacing, as well as the acting, all lead me to continue to consider possibility--the possibility that he will not retaliate or that he was always waiting for the moment to retaliate. There is a bit of determinism or, more appropriate, naturalism in this story. Antonio Calvache's photography captures this quite well. There is so much in excess after Frank Fowler's death.

The title of the film insists that the characters are in some manner responsible for everything that occurs. The quiet town. I don't know how to put it exactly, but there is some critique of the pastoral in this film. In the sense that this family has purchased some stake in the romanticized and idealized version of small town life in the United States that is inauthentic and possibly wholly bogus. I use pastoral because the concept contains a sense of spiritual guidance--not only the pasture and the sheep, but a tale about those who lead the sheep through the pasture.

If we examine the Christianity in Pastoralism, maybe we can see In the Bedroom as a story about what happens when the others we exclude and ignore--the scorned lover who seeks retribution, for example--insist on being a part of the scenery. Pastoralism does tend to ignore the outsiders. And William Mapother presents an strong outsider: he looks, thinks, and acts differently. He is an other. A stranger.

Thus the question becomes What are we willing to do to restore the order in our idealized lives? Not so much How far can we go? as much as How long can we endure?


Anyway, the film rewards repeated viewings.