Tag: slow burn

In describing quality cinema, it’s often said that a movie ‘knows what it is,’ meaning it works well within its brief and doesn’t feel the need to pile on story elements and cinematic flourishes to keep us entertained. Going one step further, we might say there are ‘no wasted moments’—that everything we see serves a clear narrative and/or thematic purpose. Maybe we can’t break down the significance of every shot on the fly, but as with an exceptionally clear and concise piece of writing, there’s a constant, palpable sense of forward momentum. We feel that it’s not so much the artist pulling us along as the work itself; we want to learn more, and it’s eager to show us. And at a certain point, the two phrases begin to converge, both referring to a degree of focus and confidence that’s rarely reached in filmmaking, or indeed in any medium of storytelling. These are the truly exceptional movies, the ones that stick with you—big famous classics, sure, but also more modest masterworks like Todd Field’s often-overlooked 2001 drama In The Bedroom. It still blows my mind that this was Field’s first feature; the movie is many things—beautiful, understated, devastating, even occasionally funny—but the defining quality is one of assurance.[i] No element is superfluous; everything serves to draw us more deeply into the story and the characters. This is the work of an artist who knows exactly what he’s doing every step of the way; all elements, from camera placement to sound design to minute details of acting, have been carefully considered and impeccably executed by everyone involved. And most remarkable of all, it always feels this way, even as the movie makes not one, but two unexpected turns, revealing itself to be something quite different from what we had previously thought.

Such outstanding cinematic craft is always a joy to behold, particularly when it turns up in such an unassuming work.[ii] In The Bedroom features no stunts, no special effects, no fancy editing, and no flashy camera moves. It takes place almost entirely in one small town, in contemporary times; there are no exotic settings or world-significant events or even any particularly remarkable people (which isn’t the same as saying there are no interesting characters.) A few of the excellent cast are quite well known, but none are A-list movie stars. And there aren’t many of them; you could practically count on two hands the total number of speaking roles. In a story driven mainly by interpersonal relationships, they don’t even say very much. In every sense, the movie is almost forcefully small-scale and intimate—as if Field wants to remind us how much can be achieved with a good script, a well thought-out vision, and not much else.

The answer is, of course: an astonishing amount, and you don’t have to dig deeply into film theory to appreciate it. There’s a great deal going on beneath the surface, but Field ensures that on the level of what is explicitly stated and shown, In The Bedroom remains an engrossing piece of work. It starts out as one kind of movie: a young man, Frank Fowler, is back home after graduating from college, enjoying an idyllic summer romance with a slightly older woman named Natalie. She has two young sons and a volatile ex-husband, but Frank’s parents are more concerned that the relationship is distracting him from his graduate school applications. And his father, Matt, isn’t taking the situation as seriously as his mother, Ruth, would like. It’s all recognizable setup for the kind of impassioned but slightly stuffy drama that the Academy loves to shower with awards, one degree removed from soap opera. (The family of Natalie’s ex-husband, Richard, even owns the cannery that employs half the town.)

Except that impression is violently stripped away at the end of the first act, when Frank is killed in a scuffle with Richard. Suddenly, we see that the movie’s true subject is not so much Frank and Natalie’s romance, but Matt and Ruth’s emotional turmoil after the murder of their only child. Field is hardly the first storyteller to abruptly shift directions in this manner, but unlike many others, he doesn’t treat the pre-twist story merely as filler, hastily sketching out an idyllic context just to blow it up with a shocking murder. Indeed, his narrative misdirection works so well precisely because he does devote an uncommon amount of time and creative attention to the story before the twist. Although there are plenty of subtle hints (especially noticeable on a second viewing) about where things are ultimately headed, the movie engages seriously with the matters at hand; the characters act, realistically, like people who don’t know that disaster is just around the corner. The result is a genuinely involving story to hold our attention as we’re being misled, with interesting character dynamics and story elements that seem set to develop further.

In a lesser drama, for example, Frank would be treated from the outset as a doomed golden boy, too good for a cruel world. Here, in the screenplay by Field and Robert Festinger and in Nick Stahl’s casually appealing performance, Frank is smart and amiable, but he can also be carefree to a fault, tempted to give up his ambitions in favor of the simple lobstering life that he dabbles in every summer, naive about the danger posed by the hotheaded Richard, and unwilling to admit, even to himself, how genuinely in love he is with Natalie. He is, in other words, a realistically complex young man; like Matt and Ruth, we don’t quite realize what an agreeable and interesting presence he is until he’s gone. Natalie, for her part, isn’t just the beautiful older lover seducing him away from real life, à la Mrs. Robinson. While less educated than Frank, she’s considerably wiser and more clear-eyed about their relationship—when he goes on imaginative flights of fancy about staying together, she pushes back with some of the same counterpoints his mother might make. She’s much more familiar with the ups and downs of adult life (marriage, children, divorce), and Field pays close attention to the way her experience has shaped her personality. So she’s naturally tough and perceptive, but also anxious, uncertain, and easily flustered—we get the sense that she’s still struggling to come to terms with the difficult turns her life has taken, and sees Frank as a wonderful, if necessarily transitory, escape. Even Richard is more than a straightforward monster; the script and Field’s direction inject some real pathos into what could easily have been a fairly one-note character. Richard is still a nightmare ex-husband—short-fused and domineering, probably at least halfway sociopathic—but we also see the source of some of that anger. Having grown up free of struggle—scion of a wealthy family, star athlete in high school, married to the prettiest girl in town—he’s still a spoiled child in many ways, ill-equipped to handle difficulty when it comes and unable to get his life together afterwards.

Most of all, Field takes care to develop the personalities of Matt and Ruth, ensuring that we’re interested in them even before they become the story’s main characters, and thereby making their grief all the more immediate and shattering when it arrives. Matt comes across mostly as a typical affable dad, with the good-natured confidence of a man who has worked hard and been duly rewarded for it. Field subtly telegraphs the broad outlines of Matt’s life story: a local guy who left to pursue his education and satisfy some youthful wanderlust, now comfortably settled into his role as the town’s primary care physician. However, you can understand Ruth’s wish that he’d take things more seriously; he’s possessed of the same easygoing attitude that Frank often exhibits. He’s similarly deaf to concerns about Natalie—partly, one imagines, as a result of his own life having mostly gone well, and partly, although he’d never admit it, out of pride for his son’s conquest of a beautiful older woman. He clearly takes a certain amount of vicarious pleasure in the affair, coming as it does at a time when he might be inclined to think ruefully back on his own marriage, which seems to have been happy, but perhaps not very eventful. Ruth, meanwhile, is much like Matt in many respects: intelligent and well-respected, highly educated but very much at home in a small coastal town, even though the outlet she has found for her refined interests—teaching Eastern European folk music to distracted girls in the high school choir—doesn’t seem to be quite as fulfilling as his. And while she’s better able (or simply more willing) to see the potential pitfalls in Frank’s relationship, it isn’t always in good faith. Without beating us over the head with it, Field makes the dynamic clear: Ruth is right that Frank is being naive and letting the relationship distract him, but her disapproval has at least as much to do with her slightly condescending view of Natalie, reinforced by teachers’ lounge gossip: a nice young woman, but unsophisticated and with suspect morals. Moreover, it’s hard to argue with Matt’s point that Ruth’s harping on the issue won’t accomplish very much, and might even make Frank less inclined to follow her advice, even if it is sound.

These are rich and interesting character dynamics, and the actors explore them with exceptional grace and insight. Without ever saying so, Tom Wilkinson signals both Matt’s vicarious enjoyment of Frank’s relationship and the personality traits underlying it.[iii] William Mapother deftly conveys the nuances of Richard’s belligerence, making him both terrifying and vaguely pathetic, somehow at his most menacing when he’s trying to make things right—I don’t know that I’ve ever seen another actor make a single aggressive twitch-fake so startling and unnerving. Especially impressive is Marisa Tomei, who combines into a single coherent personality both the shock and stress brought on by Natalie’s divorce, and the keen vivaciousness that’s the source of Frank’s attraction and of Richard’s lingering obsession. And all hail the great Sissy Spacek, who delivers one of the most true-to-life performances I’ve ever seen. Through precise line readings and subtle facial expressions, she communicates volumes about Ruth—little, long-percolating resentments; sophistication sliding into snobbery and back again; and formidable, mutually reinforcing intelligence and pride.

Our burgeoning investment in the interplay between these characters makes Frank’s violent death all the more shocking, and the emotional fallout all the more believable and devastating. Richard’s selfishness and sense of victimhood preclude any chance of real remorse, while Natalie’s anxiety, understandably heightened after such a traumatic event, leads to a small but crucial mistake at the trial. Even Matt’s lifelong best friend Willis becomes a quietly wrenching presence as he struggles to help Matt through an ordeal he never thought their friendship would have to face. Most powerfully, though, we see the consequences for the parents. Matt’s laid-back demeanor tragically mutates into an almost aggressive stoicism as he pushes relentlessly forward with his life, burying his emotions and putting on a brave face at all costs. Meanwhile, Ruth’s tendency towards aloofness curdles into a complete withdrawal from the world—there’s a bitterly poignant irony in the images of her smoking and watching crappy TV for hours on end: exactly the sort of behavior she would’ve previously scoffed at—while at the same time, and not so much through overt acting signals as through sheer force of will, Spacek shows her grief and wounded pride settling into a deep-seated, merciless rage. (It’s telling that the two physical displays of that rage, a slap across the face and a smashed plate, land with almost as much force as the two outbreaks of deadly violence elsewhere in the movie.) Field’s deliberate, economical storytelling is especially powerful here; with very little dialogue, he and his cast make palpable not only the crushing emptiness of the weeks after Frank’s death, but the mounting tension as Matt and Ruth stew silently in their toxically contradictory forms of grief. That directorial restraint, and the careful character development that comes before it, pay off beautifully in the remarkable scene when Matt and Ruth’s resentments finally boil over. The movies are full of characters hurling verbal abuse at each other, but it rarely feels so powerfully vicious as it does here. That’s because Field has made sure we know Matt and Ruth more intimately than is typical of characters in a movie—we feel the sting of the insults because we know that they’re grounded in truth. And in a broader sense, even though our own lives may not align with those of the characters, their motivations are understandable, their flaws are relatable, and their struggles—love complicated by family and social pressures, the separate and conflicting ways that parents grieve the loss of a child, what might drive law-abiding citizens to exact violent revenge—are universally compelling, not tethered to any one place or even to a particular era.

Which is especially remarkable, because the setting is highly specific, and thoroughly spliced into the movie’s artistic DNA. I’ll admit I can’t be entirely objective about this; I grew up in Mid-Coast Maine and have spent a great deal of time in the area right around Camden, where In The Bedroom takes place. So it’s distinctly satisfying to see a movie that’s not only set in Maine, but actually filmed there—a much rarer occurrence than you might expect. Largely thanks to Stephen King and his extensive, very film-adaptable body of work, Maine is, if anything, over-represented at the multiplex in proportion to its size, yet for whatever reason, filmmakers almost never shoot within the Pine Tree State.[iv] It’s a distinction that may well be invisible to non-Mainers, but take it from a native: this movie captures Maine—more specifically, the tourist/fishing villages like Camden—like no other that I’ve seen.[v]

This is unusual but not surprising; Field lives just down the road in Rockland. He’s intimately familiar with the look and feel of coastal Maine in the summer, and the movie is full of wonderfully apt details that no substitute location could convincingly replicate. The authenticity is visible in the color palette, which is rich but not stylized, dominated instead by natural hues: the vivid, pervasive green of the vegetation, tinged with a yellowish haze of pollen; the golden fields of long grass drying out after weeks of hot weather; the forbidding yet somehow magnetic darkness of evergreen woods at dawn. It’s visible in the soft sunlight still filtering into a dockland bar long after work; in the hushed, almost ethereal tones of a long evening, with twilight lingering through a whole choir recital; and especially in the blazing sun, amplified by reflections off the white granite shoreline and water vapor in the air, still retaining a hint of the harshness typical of natural light at northern latitudes. It’s visible in the sturdy brick and wood-clapboard buildings, built primarily to withstand wind and cold, looking ever so slightly incongruous amid all that green and sunlight. It’s even audible in the soundscape: the harbor mélange of lapping water, squawking gulls, and distant boat engines; the ubiquitous rustling of leaves in the sea breeze; and the soothing, long-familiar voices of Joe Castiglione and Jerry Trupiano calling the Red Sox game.

Field’s deep understanding of the setting is most apparent in his characters, who, despite being uncommonly relatable, feel so seamlessly rooted in their environment that it’s hard to imagine them anywhere else. This is evident, first and foremost, in the way they speak. Field and Festinger’s script (adapted from, and intelligently expanded upon, a beautifully tense short story by Andre Dubus) is conventionally compelling: eloquently expressive, but also markedly straightforward and concise, lacking in the rhetorical flourishes typical of ‘prestige’ cinema—all of which is perfectly representative of the region, where candor and brevity in speech are still traditionally valued. In The Bedroom even attains that Holy Grail of regional filmmaking: getting the accents right. Although the problem is usually apparent only to residents, New England accents are notoriously difficult for movies to get right; actors have a tendency to bury their Rs under vowels so broad that they stretch the word halfway to a Southern drawl. It makes for fun scenery-chewing, but no one in New England actually talks like that (except perhaps if they’re a lifelong Bostonian, and hammered.) But here, Marisa Tomei doesn’t just nail it, she nails the subtle differences between the Boston brogue and the coastal Maine variant: the slight upward inflection of the dropped Rs, and the vowel sounds broadened but clipped at the ends, carrying the faintest trace of a Canadian twang. Field also understands that the accent varies considerably even within a small town, dependent upon one’s family, personal history, and social class. So Richard, having grown up wealthy, has a less pronounced accent than the thoroughly working-class Natalie. Ruth’s measured, halfway patrician speech patterns reflect her advanced education and cosmopolitan background, while Matt’s time away from town and his pursuit of a medical degree have largely neutralized whatever accent he may have had. Frank’s speech is similarly neutral, with only the occasional dropped R to indicate his birthplace and, perhaps, his growing attraction to the simple life it offers. Willis and his wife Katie have the casual but pronounced accents of people who have spent so much of their lives in one place that they don’t notice the accents anymore.

Still, vocal inflection and body language are only part of it; the actors, none of whom are from Maine, fit seamlessly into the Camden milieu, right down to the clothes they wear. With his slightly lumbering gait and semi-formal attire resting rather awkwardly over his tall, hulking frame, Wilkinson looks so thoroughly local that you might never guess he’s from northern England, trained at elite British acting schools. Stahl’s flowing hair and embroidered jeans are effective, if slightly dated, indications of Frank’s artistic leanings and easygoing confidence, and while no character played by Marisa Tomei could ever be described as ‘plain,’ her unstyled hair and workaday clothes are just right for a busy single mom of the Maine coast. With his thick blue jeans and plain-colored work shirts covering an ample gut, William Wise, whose performance as Willis is in many ways the movie’s secret weapon, could have stepped out of any greasy spoon diner in the state. And Spacek, with her clogs, wool-lined denim jacket, and flowing, vaguely Sixties-ish shirts, is uncanny in her embodiment of the rural, educated New England women of her generation—only a few artsy degrees removed from own mother, and a spitting image of some of her peers. (All that’s missing is the Maine Public Radio tote bag.) I don’t mean to belabor the point, but I can’t emphasize enough how true these people feel, to the place, to the time, and to the story—and that deep sense of authenticity only makes the movie more realistic and emotionally relatable.

Most of all, however, In The Bedroom works because of Field’s superb command of the fundamentals of narrative filmmaking. The actors are all skilled enough to communicate a great deal without speaking, and Field has a gift for getting us on the same wavelength through careful, understated camerawork and editing, priming us to notice non-verbal cues and register the depth of the performances. The clearest example is his highly selective use of the handheld camera, which makes itself apparent on only two occasions when passions boil over and throw the world violently thrown off balance: Frank’s murder, and the moment when Matt and Ruth finally lash out at each other. In both cases, Field switches to handheld several beats before the breaking point, subtly setting us on edge as the situation begins to spiral out of control, and he immediately switches back to static shots as the consequences settle firmly, brutally, and irrevocably into place. Significantly, the camera remains smooth and steady throughout the long, tense sequence when Matt kidnaps and eventually kills Richard—this isn’t a spontaneous crime of passion, but a coldly premeditated murder.

Nor is it just the big, memorable moments; Field’s visual precision enhances every scene, no matter how minor. Early on, Natalie comes home to find Richard in her dining room. The scene is fairly straightforward: two people talking, alternating between static, front-angle views of the actors—the conventional ‘shot/reverse shot’ method. But all the way through, Field’s framing complements the scene. He focuses on one character at a time, but includes both of them in the frame, emphasizing how entwined their lives still are. He frames Richard at the same distance, but moves a few steps closer in on Natalie, reflecting how increasingly threatened she feels. At the point of direct confrontation, when she tells Richard to leave, we see them both in close-up, with Natalie, trying to break free, finally by herself, but her shoulder still in the frame with Richard, who still won’t leave her alone. The framing is similarly, deceptively expressive in the scene at the lawyer’s office. Matt and Ruth are together only when she loses it and shouts at the lawyer; when they’re simply talking, trying to make sense of things, Field isolates them in the frame with conspicuous empty spaces beside them, signaling the bitter divisions that their grief and anger will soon expose. Even the sound design plays into it; Field establishes a contrast between sounds closer to nature (rustling leaves, chopping wood, clipping branches) which are softer and less obtrusive, and noises from man-made sources, which are notably loud and grating—a lawn mower, boat and ATV engines, and especially the grind of the cash register at the mini-mart where Natalie works, which becomes almost unbearably jarring as it interrupts her and Matt’s whispered, tortured attempts to put their emotions into words. A static shot of Matt and Frank down at the harbor that shifts with the motion of the floating dock, indicating the rocky foundations that this normalcy rests on; the last of a wine bottle poured into Matt’s glass in the foreground and Ruth’s veiled disapproval behind it, setting up the stinging remark that will eventually ignite their argument… I could go on, but it would be both tedious and impossible to enumerate every example of Field’s exemplary craft. Indeed, discovering more of these subtle touches is one of the principal pleasures of watching (and re-watching) this movie.

Craft alone doesn’t guarantee quality, though—as demonstrated by the countless mediocre works by skilled directors. In The Bedroom benefits not only from masterful execution, but from an exceptionally well thought-out narrative structure. Every moment reflects Field’s carefully considered vision, lending the movie the ineffable sense of assurance that makes it a masterpiece. Nothing is superfluous; everything circles back and resonates later on, in ways unexpected and often wrenching. For example, we meet the local priest, and he seems to be there mostly to add color to the setting (look at this quaint, laid-back little town, where the priest will drop by a cookout have a beer!) and to deliver a bland eulogy for Frank. Except he turns up again during Ruth’s visit to the cemetery, where he tells a surprisingly weird, borderline trippy story about another mother who lost a child. Frank’s friend Tim starts out as a bit player, there to speak a few lines reinforcing Frank’s popularity and cry at his funeral. But then he shows up much later on at the bar, where a desperate Matt corners him in search of new evidence, and he gets to deliver one of the movie’s most ominously loaded lines: “It’s funny running into you…here, Dr. Fowler…” At first, the background sound of the Red Sox game on the radio adds to the carefree-summer vibe; in tense moments later on, its incongruousness becomes downright eerie. The wistful folk songs performed by Ruth’s choir are pleasantly evocative, then crushingly ironic, and finally (especially in retrospect) horribly portentous of the dark final act. Matt placing an old Navy hat on little Jason’s head, a slow zoom in on a Maine Veteran license plate, a pan across Willis’s old war photos and medals—only in retrospect do we realize that Field is setting up a psychological context for the final act. Both Matt and Willis served in Vietnam; they’re acquainted with violence, and depending on what the war did to their sense of patriotism, perhaps more skeptical than most of the state’s commitment to true justice. My favorite is their friend Carl, a poetry buff who comes across as an amusing eccentric, driving the guys crazy with poetry recitations during their poker games—until after Frank’s death, when he recites (beautifully) a stanza by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that perfectly captures the roiling emotions of the moment.

Once again, I could continue like this ad nauseam, and even then, I wouldn’t have fully articulated how wonderfully layered and immersive In The Bedroom is. That’s a sure sign of great filmmaking: that even when you know the twists and understand why the movie works, there’s always more to unpack, more moments of unassuming brilliance waiting to be discovered. Even without a big budget or Hollywood flash, Field made a masterpiece back in 2001, a compelling exploration not only of grief and revenge, but of a region, a culture, and a generation—and it still deserves to be remembered alongside the great dramas of all time.

Here’s hoping he comes back and makes another someday. ◊

© Harrison Swan, 2019

[i] This isn’t the only unusual thing about Field’s biography. Born in the L.A. area but raised mostly in Portland, Oregon, he was well on his way to being a recognizable character actor, playing the lead in a couple of late-90s indie movies and a crucial supporting role in Stanley Kubrick’s flawed but compelling final work Eyes Wide Shut. Then he sidelined all that to try his hand at directing, reportedly encouraged by Kubrick, who allowed Field to observe him behind the camera on off days. After the success of In The Bedroom, Field took his time until 2006, when he directed and co-wrote, with Tom Perrotta, an adaptation of Perotta’s novel Little Children. The movie, also about the dark side of a pleasant New England town, was lauded by critics and showered with Oscar nominations, and Field seemed set to do pretty much whatever he wanted. Instead, he abruptly dropped off the map and hasn’t made a movie since. He lives far from Hollywood, which probably doesn’t help, but it’s still unusual for a filmmaker to disappear so completely after such a promising start.

[ii] The budget, by the way, was $1.7 million: not nothing, but tiny for a feature film with established actors, especially considering that it went on to receive five Oscar nominations. It also ended up earning $43.4 million at the box office—enough to make it, in terms of the expense-to-profit ratio, one of the most financially successful movies of all time.

[iii] It’s interesting to consider that despite being solidly established as a working actor both in the U.K. and increasingly in America, Wilkinson still wasn’t known to a wide audience at the time. In The Bedroom came out in 2001, still a few years before Wilkinson’s meaty supporting role as the gangster Carmine Falcone in Batman Begins. Since then, he’s become one of the more recognizable ‘hey, it’s that guy!’ actors in Hollywood, appearing in all manner of big-budget productions. Likewise, Sissy Spacek, despite being widely recognized as a prodigiously talented actress, had largely (if not completely) retreated from the big screen since starting a family in the 1980s. In The Bedroom was the beginning of her return to a busy acting career.

[iv] In fact, a reliable sign that a movie set in Maine wasn’t filmed there (aside from the IMDb page saying so) is a scarcity of pines and other evergreen trees in the background. Conifers are quite common throughout the Maine woods, while deciduous trees quickly begin to dominate as you move further south.

[v] To nitpick: Field does take one (very) minor bit of dramatic license involving Old Orchard Beach, a bizarre tourist town that, for some reason, openly seeks to replicate the look and feel of Coney Island or Atlantic City. Gaudy, seedy, and party-oriented, it makes perfect sense as the place where Richard would end up tending bar, but the geography is slightly off: O.O.B., as it’s known, is part of a string of beach towns near the New Hampshire border, nearly three hours south of Camden. The timing of Matt and Willis’ plan becomes a bit of a stretch at that distance, and in any case, if Richard were living so far away, it’s unlikely that Ruth would regularly see him around Camden.