Awards:
2002 Academy Awards: Best Actor in a Leading Role: Tom Wilkinson
2002 Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role: Sissy Spacek
2002 Academy Awards: Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Marisa Tomei
2002 Academy Awards: Best Picture
2002 Academy Awards: Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published

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Review by Frank Wilkins

A lobster trap is made up of several heads or chambers. The innermost head of a lobster trap is called the bedroom. Quite often, when lobstering, a lobsterman will reel the trap to the surface to find two males in the bedroom head accompanied by a large female. This is a very dangerous situation to the males, especially if the female is laden with berries or eggs. The males, in an instinctual fight for survival, will often maim each other in their attempts to garner attention from the female, sometimes losing a claw or even their life. According to the State of Maine fishing laws, the female with berries must be returned to the sea to bear her young ones, thus completing the circle of life. The males, if they meet minimum size requirements, will be thrown in the onboard holding tank and kept for processing. We learn this in an opening scene and it becomes just one of the many subtle creative devices that are woven into the fabric of this wonderful story. More on this later.

We are drawn into the lives of the Fowler family as we join them at their BBQs, little league baseball games, and friendly poker matches in Camden, Maine, a small, close-knit community where lobstering and the sea play a very vital role in the everyday lives of its inhabitants. Lacy white curtains rustle gently in the open windows of the stately white clapboard house. Beautiful New England summer imagery tickles our senses as we learn that Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl), an architecture student on summer leave, has fallen in love with Natalie (Marisa Tomei), a local married woman who has separated from her abusive husband, Richard Strout (William Mapother). "It's just a summer thing", he tells his mother. Frank's mother is worried that the relationship might become more than that.

In his directorial debut, Todd Field masterfully paints a peaceful, pastoral New England canvas, dotted with local color that slowly, but deliberately, introduces us to the story's characters and then launches us into a spiraling tale of darkness. Dr. Matt Fowler runs a successful General Practice in the town and his wife Ruth Fowler (Sissy Spacek) teaches Croatian chorale music at the local high school. Everyone knows each other, and we get a real, genuine sense of community.

Uneasiness begins to descend upon the scene as we learn that Natalie's husband becomes angry that another male lobster has become entrapped in Natalie's bedroom. A terrible tragedy happens to the Fowlers that not only rocks the town, but sends the family into an unrecoverable tailspin. Director Todd Field refuses to rush into the family's grief; instead, through several scenes of gradual, deliberate character development, he lets the pain fester into a reeking boil of constrained resentment. And through the performances of Spacek and Wilkinson, we the audience, are left to concoct our own ideas of what it must be like to go through the loss of a loved one. As in Ordinary People (1980), a seemingly perfect family is thrust under the microscope, forcing us to witness the self-destruction as their pain tears them apart.

In the Bedroom rides that perfect balance between engaging character development and gripping story, and along the way we are witness to beautiful imagery, subtle metaphors and a surprise ending that leaves us wanting more.

In the Bedroom deserves the maximum rating in the Of Mice and Men factor. The plot twist and the ending give it the maximum score in the Wrap-up factor. I can't get the horror of this story out of my mind so I give it the maximum score in the Se7en factor.

Frank Wilkins


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