In the Bedroom
In the Bedroom
R | 23 November 2001 (USA)
In the Bedroom Trailers

Summertime on the coast of Maine, "In the Bedroom" centers on the inner dynamics of a family in transition. Matt Fowler is a doctor practicing in his native Maine and is married to New York born Ruth Fowler, a music teacher. His son is involved in a love affair with a local single mother. As the beauty of Maine's brief and fleeting summer comes to an end, these characters find themselves in the midst of unimaginable tragedy.

Reviews
Jeanskynebu the audience applauded
Connianatu How wonderful it is to see this fine actress carry a film and carry it so beautifully.
Asad Almond A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.
Ortiz Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.
SnoopyStyle Married couple Matt (Tom Wilkinson) and Ruth Fowler (Sissy Spacek) live in a small coastal community in Maine. Their only son Frank (Nick Stahl) returns in love with the older Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei) who has two young sons. Her ex-husband Richard Strout (William Mapother) is angry and shoots Frank at the family home. The Strouts are an important family in the town and Richard gets bail. Natalie didn't actually see the shooting. Marla Keyes (Karen Allen) is the defense attorney.The story is presented quietly. Nevertheless, the acting is overpowering. Tom Wilkinson is a rock crumbling before our eyes. Sissy Spacek is brilliant. Everybody is terrific. Other than a couple big emotions scenes, this movie is a study of quiet desperation. The forced smiles and the meaningless conversations hide the true intensity underneath the surface.
g-bodyl In the Bedroom is a movie that will instantly connect with lovers of film. To those who can only appreciate special effects and movies with lack of plots, stay away from this film. The movie is undoubtedly hard to watch, but it's a powerful, character-driven movie about unforeseen consequences of a tragedy. The film is powerfully acted by underrated actors like Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek. It is movies like these that make me appreciate the art of cinema and storytelling. Todd Field's film is about a college freshman home for the summer who is dating a soon-to-be-divorced mother many years his senior. This relationship causes a rift between his mother and father, especially after a serious tragedy occurs affecting their lives forever. The film has a good cast of underrated and underused actors and I feel like they all did a good job in particular Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek. Spacek shows an emotional side to herself, which is perfectly normal as any mother would show. Wilkinson however keeps a calm reserve state of mind, but the end of the movie is his show. Nick Stahl also did a decent job, and likewise for Marisa Tomei. Overall, In the Bedroom is a slow-moving, but very effective movie that relies upon its characters more than anything else. The film is emotional, but sometimes the film shows different takes on getting to that state of mind. An incredibly strong script as well as fantastic acting makes this film a worthy watch. But beware of the tepid pace, as only serious film-goers may appreciate this kind of pace. My Grade: A
Maurizio There are two main events in the 2 hours that this movie lasts. Or maybe should I say "thera are BUT 2 events"? Two killings, that's it. One around 40 minutes from the start, one about 15 minutes to the ending.Before, in between and after, there is utter, complete boredom. And no, sorry, the actually wonderful acting alone is not enough to save this yawn of a movie. The first almost 40 minutes are preparatory for what is (rather predictably) going to happen, but there is so little going on that one just wonders why it has to take that long to get to the point. Then it finally happens. In the beginning you start to feel for the characters, for their loss, but after a while it gets so unbearably slow-paced, so redundant, that all tension is released and gives way to what seems to be a never ending humdrum. The film has a sudden flick of emotion when the revenge takes place, but then again, the tension only lasts 10 minutes, and then dead calm again, up to the end. The makers of this movie succeeded in the not easy task of turning a life's tragedy into a slumbery, somnolent confrontation between a few characters, that gets your eyelids heavy sooner than you might like.I see this movie got mostly high grades, I'll rather go upstream and recommend to avoid it. Then again, it's your choice.
johnnyboyz In the Bedroom twists and turns delightfully, pulling the proverbial carpet from out under the viewer on at least two occasions and leaving us rather shaken at what plays out on screen a good few times other than this. To say it's about love and coming of age as hormonal rushes vie with a parent's want for their youngster to branch out into greater, more grandeur things in the form of studies would be true. To say it's about the grieving process would additionally be true, to say why would be a gross spoiler of an item that only hits us about a half of the way through, and to say it was about normal, everyday people whom are placed in extraordinary circumstances before opting to elevate their position into an even more extraordinarily circumstantial situation, as clashes with deeply routed morals come-about, would also be true. Todd Field takes delight in manoeuvring his characters down shady alleys of internal conflict and desire, equally so with the narrative which is wonderfully pitched and thoroughly engaging.Field's gear changes are near effortless, shifting tones and impressively taking the story down different paths; successfully dragging the story along with it as things brood. His film revolves around the Fowler family of Maine in America, their existence seeing them contribute to society in an upstanding and generally sociable manner; the father and husband of whom is Matt (Wilkinson), a local doctor, his and his sons' fondness of baseball so strong that listening to repeat broadcasts on the radio of games of old is the norm as they spend their spare time fishing for lobsters out at sea. The wife and mother is Ruth (Spacek), a key component to the film is their eldest son Frank (Stahl) whom hovers around the meaning to go off to study architecture but is distracted by his love for local girl Natalie (Tomei) who's ex-husband Richard (Mapother) remains as much a pest as he does a volatile threat.Frank lovingly spends his days with Natalie full of all things good; the ex-husband Richard looming ominously in the background as he seemingly refuses to let Natalie go. Frank's attitudes to life at this stage in his life clash with mother Ruth's ideas, his want to stay where he is and perhaps work on one of the many aforementioned lobster boats the local community run, just so as to be closer to Natalie, is winning the battle over going away to study. Frank sits alone at night in the family's house debating over the scenario he finds himself in and struggling over some architectural work linked to his education, his mother coming downstairs offering the binary opposition to what Frank is apparently leaning towards and they clash in a profile shot.After a jolting twist in the tale happens, and the resulting frustrations born out of the aftermath of this do not tie up the loose ends of pain that still flail, things shift and we head down a different direction. Field hits us effectively enough with this U-turn reveal but the true wonder of his direction is his keeping of the impact of the event seemingly fresh well into the rest of the film. Where character and decisions and the relationships numerous characters had with one another drove the film, for In the Bedroom to take on such a minimalist tone thereafter following all this activity helps resonate the impact of the event. The edits between takes are longer for the second third; we don't seem to revolve around much else except for the aftermath of the event; whatever dialogue from a flurry of characters before, has gone: replaced only by two people speaking or arguing in grim tones about what to do and there's less an emphasis on narrative, as if the proverbial spanner has been wedged into the cogs that turn the action-reaction formula resulting in the machine being stuck on 'reaction'. When tensions and emotions reach a boiling point, the film will peel off down another road and lead us onto an agonising conclusion.Sliced up into three distinct thirds, In the Bedroom delivers an intriguing love story between two young and attractive people as a son bids to move away from his parents; a somewhat harrowingly progressive and deliberately trudging segment in which the director slows everything right down to compliment the material before concluding on a pulpy revenge infused thriller tone, all the while with a constant eye on studious and refreshing attention to character. The film opens with a series of machines going through a predisposed process of canning seafood at a local plant; the film will later go onto revolve around the process of number of things all linked to human nature, jealousy; guilt; rage; grief and how they affect individual people and those around them whom they hold dear or otherwise.In what is a decidedly bleak ending, the grim reality of the new existence these people inhabit is metaphorically observed in the removing of a plaster which covered a thumb wound for most of the film; said injury now apparently healed over thus pointing out grazes, be they physical or otherwise, do heal. The new order a particular set of characters find themselves in after agreeing to do what they did suggests a newfound sense of solace with their living, an ending which suggests more-so a temporal healing of certain psychological wounds than it does an entire healing; but the use of violence and death as a means for an answer challenges the viewer in where they stand in desiring two central character winding up, not happy, but as happy as humanely possible following the tragic events that happened. The film is bold, rather daring and quite the intrinsic drama.