Room

The title is “Room” not “The Room.” The more general term makes the film about the space in our lives and in our selves and our need to escape whatever walls or restrictions that others — or we ourselves — have imposed on us. So our experience really is reflected in this freakish story. The film is about the vast room we have at our disposal not the small room to which we might accept restriction. 

Unlike most of us, this boy’s first five years are spent in a small enclosed shed with no other outside experience but a usually blank skylight sky and the confusion of realities on the wavering TV. No cable there, no proper connection. His Ma has nurtured his delusion that there is no real world out there, concealing their imprisonment until he is old enough to handle it — i.e., to escape. When they do get out she’s troubled by his slowness to make a “connection” to anything, but he does, first (of course) to Lego, which enables him to start building his own world, then to a neighbour pal. 

Unlike most of us, Ma, nee the lost Joy, had her high school joy and promise smashed by seven years of sexual enslavement. But as she was the anchor on her school relay team she’s the anchor in her Jack’s life. And he becomes her reason to survive. Their (non-umbilical) cord isn’t broken until well into their liberation. Only then does she stop breast-feeding him. 

The film ends with Jack and Ma going back to Room to say goodbye. Of course the past is not the same: the evidence has been removed but mainly, it’s not Room any more with the door removed. Its essence was restriction not space. The two leave restriction behind to embrace the expanse of freedom. 

But psychological restriction remains. Ma’s suicide attempt and the TV interviewer’s insensitive probing show her still scarred. Jack seems stable when he pulls out of his Ma’s embrace to go play with his new/first friend Aaron. This story is a bleak parody of Eden as a parable of our origin. Their captor “Old Nick” evokes Satan. 

Joy’s two “families” curiously contrast. Her relationship with her captor is a bleak parody of marriage. Jobless, Old Nick is a loser who asserts his false authority by enslaving and abusing Joy. Imprisoning Joy gives him a power and potency he lacks in real life. "Thinking is not your strong suit," he advises. Enough families, alas, live like that without the literal imprisonment. 

Joy’s one firm rule is to insist Old Nick will never touch or even see little Jack. She enforces that principle to the point of hysteria. She will save Jack from her contamination by Old Nick, later even denying his paternity. Once reunited, Joy’s father can’t bring himself even to look at Jack. For him, the boy embodies his daughter’s and therefore his shame. The boy’s father’s imposed restriction parallels the grandfather’s self-imposed containment.

In contrast, Joy’s mother Nancy’s new man embraces him in a sensitive, respectful manner. Jack opens up to him: “I had a dog once but he wasn’t real.” Luckily, Leo brings him a real dog, Shamus, a cozier creature than the big black lab who’s Jack’s first contact in the outside world.
     As Nancy admits, Joy’s was not the only life destroyed by her abduction. Obviously the parents’ marriage was another casualty. The father moved away and remains remote. But Nancy immediately accepts Jack. Her first words to him are thanks for saving “our little girl.” Jack saves her again by sending her his “strong” in the hair he lets Nancy cut off and bring her. In a touching irony, Joy’s horrific enslavement has not diminished her adolescent tensions with her mother. Bonding is like that, as restricting and yet as liberating as … the room through which we live.