If you read last week’s Book of the Month, you know I’m doing Movie of the Month for the next few weeks.  This week it’s Room and ya gotta go see this movie.  It is not a true story, but it is drawn from true stories.

You won’t recognize the names of the two leads, but get to know them because you’ll see them again.  Brie Larson plays Ma and 7-year-old Jacob Tremblay is 5-year-old Jack.  Ma and Jack live in a 10’ x 10’ room with a skylight, no windows, and a door bolted from the outside.  A man visits every night and brings them what they need.  Ma does what she can to make Jack’s life somewhat normal and happy.  For instance, they play a game that has him sprinting from wall to wall.  Quite ingenious, when you think about it.  Burns off some little-boy energy and keeps him fit.

We soon come to learn Ma was kidnapped as a teen and has been held captive in this tool shed in the kidnapper’s backyard ever since.  Of course, when he comes in the evenings to bring supplies, that’s not all he does.  (Ma hides Jack in the closet when “Old Nick,” as they call him, is there so he doesn’t see what’s going on.)

Long and short of it, they escape.  And you’d think that’s the end of the movie, but that’s just the first half.  Then they deal with reintegrating Ma – whose name turns out to be Joy – into the world and introducing it to Jack.  That’s the brilliant part.  That’s the part they don’t talk about in the news when the kidnap victim is rescued.

I don’t know what goes on in Joy’s mind but Brie Larson does!  She does an amazing job of capturing the conflict in her mind once she’s rescued.  And in the first part of the movie – which maybe did drag just a little – you can see she’s always on the edge.  She is struggling so hard to hold it together for Jack!

Her mother, father, and stepfather come to get her from the hospital and take her and Jack to her mother’s home and Joy sinks into a depression.  Understandable, I’d say, but poor little Jack is lost.  His whole life is Ma.  He wants to go back to Room.  It’s home.  And Ma was always there.  Always.  He’s never been away from her before.  But now that she finally can, she needs time to be alone, to not have to take care of anybody, and Jack doesn’t know how to deal with that.

But Ma does know the world and she will reintegrate into it in time, while for Jack, this is all new territory.  He didn’t even know there was an outside.  There’s a wonderful scene where he’s sitting in a room that is a treasure trove of little boy toys that well-wishers have given him.  Any little boy’s eyes would light up when he saw it!  Not Jack.  I remember once a women who had adopted a Russian orphan talked about a video the orphanage had made of him where they tried to make him look like any other child.  They gave him a bunch of toys, but she said he didn’t know how to play with them.  This is something we don’t think about.  Jack doesn’t know what to do with the toys.  Joy’s mother and stepfather – Joan Allen and Tom McCamus – are the ideal grandparents and do most of the work of helping Jack adjust to the world.

Now, Jack.  Jacob Tremblay.  This little boy is incredible!  There’s already Oscar talk about him.  Sometimes, when a very young child is nominated for an award like that, I think part of it is that it’s so appealing that a child that young is that good.  But Jacob deserves all the kudos he gets.  This child is entirely believable the entire time.  There is never a false note from him.  Your heart constantly breaks for him.

The whole story is entirely believable the way it’s presented.  The were only two things I had any issue with.  Her father flies in for the reunion, but can’t handle it.  He can’t even look at his grandson.  That part I buy, but then he just leaves – and what a waste of William H. Macy! – and we never know what was going on with him.  I would have liked at least a little resolution there.  And the escape itself was believable – if we’re talking about a boy who’s been living in the world.  But it’s hard to imagine Jack being able to cope with all the newness well enough to have succeeded.  But really, that’s nitpicking.

This is a fantastic movie with amazing performances all ‘round and you will really be glad to have seen it.