This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The drama "Room" isn't the first movie that centers on the bond between parent and child, but it may be the most concentrated — because for half the movie, the parent and the child are pretty much the only characters onscreen.
"I definitely wanted to tell a story in which the love between parent and child would really shine out," said Emma Donoghue, the Irish-born author who adapted the screenplay of "Room" from her own novel. "The premise, the backstory to 'Room' is very, very grim, and what it does is shine a really sharp spotlight on parent-child love, because it's literally isolated from the world."
"Room" — which opens in Salt Lake City theaters Friday, Nov. 20) — tells the story of a young mother, referred to as Ma (played by Brie Larson), and her 5-year-old son, Jack (played by newcomer Jacob Tremblay). They spend all day every day together, and Jack has grown up learning that everything in their room is the entire world.
Ma has taught him this because, as the movie slowly reveals, she has been held a prisoner in this room, a shed in a suburban Ohio backyard, for seven years. The only other person Jack has ever seen is Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), Ma's kidnapper and rapist — and Jack has only seen this man through the slats in the wardrobe, where he hides whenever Old Nick visits.
Director Lenny Abrahamson was given a copy of Donoghue's novel by a producer. "I started reading and expected to do what I often do, which is just scan through a few pages," Abrahamson said in a phone interview from Los Angeles. "But I was kind of immediately grabbed by it."
Abrahamson said he was struck by "just how clever Emma's choices had been, to use the situation to tell a very universal story about childhood and parental love, instead of what so easily it could have been, which would be just a miserable account of a terrible crime."
Soon he was in contact with Donoghue, who had been working on a screenplay of her book. The writer and the director started working on the adaptation, off and on, for two years.
Abrahamson, Donoghue said over the phone from Nice, France, "was enormously generous with his time. One thing I loved was he didn't blind me with film jargon at all. We just worked together on it, always searching for the story and searching for the best way to show the interaction we wanted to show between the mother and the child."
Donoghue quickly got an education in the difference, in terms of storytelling, between novels and movies.
"A book has time for every little excursion and comment and backstory," she said. "Fiction is a very forgiving form."
Film, on the other hand, "has such a forward thrust, that to suddenly stop and say, 'Let me tell you about something sad that happened,' it just feels all wrong," she said.
"The book can keep what it wants to keep from you, just by not talking about it, which is a great thing about prose," Abrahamson said. "You have to control information in a different way cinematically."
Both the book and the film split the story roughly in half — the beginning as hostages in the shed, followed by Ma and Jack's experiences after they escape.
Abrahamson was determined not to play one half over the other or to emphasize the escape as the end of the story.
"It was about shifting from one sense of jeopardy and danger to another equally compelling sense of concern in the second half," he said. "It was about not letting the catharsis of the escape really fully complete itself. In subtle ways, preserving a sense of ongoing questions to be answered. There's a certain unease, even underneath the moments of what feel like resolution — they never completely resolve."
"The first half goes along at a very good pace, because there's a very clear drive of 'Will they get out?' " Donoghue said. "The second half is more convoluted and subtle, because it can't be solved by an open door. The second half is way trickier in storytelling terms."
The key to making "Room" succeed on film was finding the right actors to play Ma and Jack.
Abrahamson was introduced to Brie Larson when someone in his office recommended he watch the indie film "Short Term 12," in which Larson plays a counselor in a group home for at-risk teens.
"It was important for me that whoever we cast as Ma had warmth as a person, because that would help form the relationship with whatever child we cast as Jack," Abrahamson said, adding that Larson is "such a generous person, and so much fun. I had no doubt that any little boy would just find her wonderful."
Watching Larson on the set, Donoghue — who lives with her partner in London, Ontario, two hours' drive from Toronto, where the movie was shot — was amazed at her range in the role.
"In one scene, she would go from Greek tragedy all the way through to jokey girl-next-door," Donoghue said. "She really captured the fact that Ma is in one sense a very tough, very grown-up mother, and in another sense, she's still the teenager who never got to grow up."
Even more amazing is Tremblay, a 7-year-old Abrahamson found after watching audition tapes from dozens of child actors. The director said Tremblay "has this great presence in front of the camera," and his onscreen bond with Larson was quite evident.
"Jacob's a proper actor," Abrahamson said. "He's learning to control the levers, but whatever those levers are attached to is real and powerful and explosive. He'll just get better, I think."
It was in the editing room, where the pieces of the filmmaking process come together, that Donoghue saw the writer's notion that one must "kill their darlings" for the finished product come full force.
"I began to think about it more and more like a piece of music," she said. "It seemed irrelevant to say to Lenny, 'Oh, I liked that line.' It's not about the individual lines and it's not about the content at this point, it's all about the rhythm of the sequences. …
"I don't understand the magical art of editing, but I could see that the film was getting more and more beautifully shaped," she said. "A lot of darlings got cut at that point, because it's all about the flow."
Abrahamson said the author wasn't too precious about her work. "Emma was really very open to those acts of 'darling killing,' " he said. "In fact, in quite a few cases, I encouraged her to put things back in, because I thought they would work."
Donoghue is keen to write more screenplays and even adapt other writers' works, but she won't give up her day job as a novelist.
"In fiction, my word rules," she said with a laugh. "Film is so collaborative. Also, in film, there's a lot of waiting around for the pieces to come together financially. In fiction, you can just sit down and write your book."
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