Rabbit Hole
Cinema Nova, 17/02/2011
Movie #13 for 2011
Sometimes a play adaptation can feel just like a staging of the play with the cameras rolling, all the action is in one room and the dialogue is all about telling you what’s happening. Lots of plays make really great scripts, but they are not necessarily terribly cinematic films.
Then there’s a film like Rabbit Hole that is both excellent as a play and equally excellent - in a completely different way - as a film. DAVID LINDSAY-ABAIRE’s adaptation of his own Pulitzer Prize-winning play embraces the possibilities of cinema over the constraints of theatre. He has written a beautifully cinematic film that looses nothing of the original power of the play - it just shows it rather than telling it.
Becca (NICOLE KIDMAN) and Howie (AARON ECKHART) are grieving the accidental death of their four-year-old son. This isn’t a death or wallowing grief movie, though - it’s eight months on and they have settled back into normalcy. But, in the way that mended things are somehow less robust than before they were broken, they are struggling. They cope and find comfort where they can - Howie in an ineffectual support group and Becca in conversation with the young driver who accidentally killed her son.
The imagery is beautiful and, at a brief 90 minute running time, the story-telling is succinct and disciplined. The dialogue is beautifully crafted but the actors’ performances are naturalistic and compelling. JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL’s direction is assured and accomplished in a way that is effortless to watch.
Rabbit Hole is both cinematic and theatrical all at once, and that’s a major achievement of writing, direction and performance.
