Salt in Wound

4.5 stars out of 5

My cousin Nancy sent me a text a couple of days ago: “Seen Room? Best movie of the year.” OK, I was thinking of going to the movies today anyway, so based on Nancy’s recommendation, Room leapfrogged over two other films at the theater that I also want to see: Spotlight and Brooklyn. (Remember when movies had multi-word titles? I digress.)

I knew very little about Room prior to seeing it. I knew that the outstanding young talent Brie Larson was the star. (Have you seen Short Term 12? See Short Term 12.) And I knew it was about a mother and son in a room. If this is all you know as well, let me say this: Don’t read another word of this review; just trust my cousin Nancy: It is, so far, the best movie of the year. So go see Room. Let it unfold, and surprise you, and envelop you.

OK, who’s left still reading this? Because I’m happy to ramble on some more, sure. The basic story: Brie Larson plays a young woman who has been abducted and locked in a shed. She now has a 5-year-old son, Jack, as a result of being raped by her captor. But we don’t deal with the horror of this situation right away. Because people adjust and adapt, and parents take care of their children, and somehow we carry on. So we see mother and son exercising, eating, learning and laughing, playing and sleeping, looking up at the skylight. Jack has a lively imagination — he is 5, after all — and the room that they’re trapped in is, for him, a magical place. It’s all he knows, so his mind tries to make sense of the very limited world around him.

But the more we the viewers know, and the more inquisitive Jack discovers — he is 5, after all — Mom’s carefully constructed fiction starts to crack at the seams. We meet the abductor, played by Sean Bridgers, who is the creepy Trey Willis on TV’sRectify. He’s creepier here, certainly. Mom can’t take very much more; something’s gotta give.

(This would be another fine opportunity to stop reading the review.)

They get out. But then this new chapter of Mom and Jack’s life is very difficult to navigate, for the both of them. You know how Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt took that real-life Ohio abduction story and gave it a light comic twist? Room is a much darker, lonelier version, and who among us is truly unbreakable?

Maybe hand the Oscar to Brie Larson right now? She is that good. Alternately showing remarkable strength, and fear, and utter despair, and so much caring. It’s a remarkable performance. And matching her every step of the way is young Jacob Tremblay as Jack. He’s always believable whether it’s wonder, stubbornness, terror, innocence, or whatever else he needs to convey.

Joan Allen is Mom’s mom, and she’s tremendous too — struggling to hold a family together. I haven’t seen my old favorite William H. Macy in a while — he’s been in that U.S. Shameless guy and I liked the British one — so it’s nice to have him around as dad, now divorced from Joan Allen. (The world keeps spinning.) But I was even more impressed by Canadian actor Tom McCamus as Leo, Joan Allen’s boyfriend and Jack’s surrogate grandpa. Gentle compassion oozes out of this guy.

Like I said, I didn’t know what to expect from Room. Would it be a thriller? And there’s a taste of that here, for sure — a psychological thriller. But Room is so much more. It’s about parents and children, and influence, growing, changing, standing still, coping, the worst and the best of us, and survival in every sense of the word. A serious tip of the cap to everyone involved in the filmmaking process, especially director Lenny Abrahamson and novelist/screenwriter Emma Donoghue. They keep it as real and as stark as can be — totally unflinching. The movie devastated me twice — once in the middle, and again at the end, big time. Ultimately, I feel like Room is about love and caring, which are sometimes all around us, and sometimes in pretty short supply. When you find it, hold on tight.