In the Bedroom is a 2001 American drama film directed by Todd Field from a screenplay written by Field and Robert Festinger, based on the 1979 short story "Killings" by Andre Dubus. It stars Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, Nick Stahl, Marisa Tomei, and William Mapother. The film centers on the inner dynamics of a family in transition. Matt Fowler (Wilkinson) is a doctor practicing in Maine and is married to Ruth Fowler (Spacek), a music teacher. Their son Frank (Stahl) is involved in a love affair with an older single mother, Natalie Strout (Tomei). As the beauty of Maine's brief and fleeting summer comes to an end, these characters find themselves in the midst of an unimaginable tragedy.
The title refers to the rear compartment of a lobster trap known as the "bedroom" and how it can hold only two lobsters before the lobsters begin to turn on each other. In the Bedroom premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. It was theatrically released in limited theatres on November 23, 2001, and grossed $44.8 million against a $1.7 million budget. The film was praised for Field's direction, its screenplay and the performances (particularly those of Spacek, Wilkinson, Stahl and Tomei).
In the Mid-Coast town of Camden, Maine, Matt and Ruth Fowler enjoy a happy marriage and a good relationship with their son Frank, a recent college graduate who has come home for the summer. Frank has fallen in love with a divorced older woman with children, Natalie Strout; Ruth is concerned about the relationship, while Matt thinks it is only a fling.
Frank is about to begin graduate school for architecture but is considering staying in town to continue working as a fisherman and to be near Natalie and her kids. Natalie's ex-husband, Richard Strout, tries to find a way into his ex-wife and children's lives, going to increasingly violent lengths to get his intentions across to Natalie, including assaulting Frank.
Frank rushes to Natalie's home one evening after receiving a frightened phone call from one of her children. He arrives to find the living room trashed and Natalie in distress. She tells him Richard just left, but he returns almost immediately. Natalie takes the boys upstairs, and Frank insists through the locked front door that Richard leave. He feigns doing so, only to break in through the back door with a handgun; in the ensuing scuffle, Frank is shot and killed.
Though equally devastated, Matt and Ruth grieve in different ways, with Matt putting on a brave face while Ruth becomes reclusive and quiet. Richard is set free on bail, and Matt and Ruth are forced to see him around town.
The couple retreat with friends Willis and Katie Grinnel to a secluded cottage for a weekend, but Ruth is distant. The tension between Matt and Ruth increases when their lawyer informs them that Natalie's refusal to say in court that she witnessed Frank's shooting means Richard will instead be charged with accidental manslaughter and will likely only serve five to ten years in prison. Matt and Willis spend the evening drinking and lamenting the injustice.
Natalie approaches Ruth at work and attempts to apologize, but Ruth slaps her before dismissively returning to her papers. Natalie leaves in tears. Later that day, Ruth accidentally runs into Richard again.
When she returns home, an argument erupts between the couple in which each emotionally savages the other; Matt lambastes Ruth for being an overbearing presence in Frank's youth, while Ruth chastises Matt for showing little grief for their deceased son. Matt apologizes to Ruth, who apologizes in turn and, breaking down, tells Matt about seeing Natalie and Richard. The two embrace and find common ground in their grief.
Matt abducts Richard at gunpoint, saying he's arranged for Richard to jump bail and leave the state, so as to spare them the pain of seeing him in Camden. He forces Richard to "pack clothes for warm weather" and plants a train schedule in his apartment. He then makes Richard drive them to the Grinnel cabin, where Willis is waiting with another vehicle. He begins to load Richard's belongings, but Matt hesitates - and then shoots Richard, killing him. Willis admonishes Matt for not following the plan. Matt responds that he couldn't wait. The two bury Richard's body deep in the woods but are stuck unexpectedly at a bridge crossing on their return home. Willis laments that this cost them nearly an hour - meaning they arrive back in town just after sunrise instead of in darkness.
Matt returns home to find Ruth awake. She asks, "Did you do it?" Matt appears troubled and unresponsive. He climbs into bed and turns away from her. She asks if he's okay, and Matt haltingly describes a photo he saw in Richard's apartment of him with Natalie in a loving pose but cannot explain why it affected him. Finally, Ruth gets up to make coffee. She calls from the kitchen, "Matt, do you want coffee?" but he doesn't answer.
Principal photography began on 22 June 2000 and completed on 6 July 2000.[2]
Sundance
Todd Field & Tom Wilkinson Deauville Film Festival September 2001
In the Bedroom made its debut at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. In a 2022 The New Yorker profile, Field recalled that when the film was acquired by Miramax Films, he was devastated, concerned his film would be heavily re-edited by Harvey Weinstein. Field called Tom Cruise, a personal friend (and cousin of William Mapother), who advised him not to give Weinstein any pushback, allow him to extensively re-edit, wait until the film tested poorly, then remind Weinstein of how well the film was initially received at Sundance. Field followed Cruise's advice and it worked.[3][4]
Todd Field's debut feature, In the Bedroom, alighted on the snowy peaks of Sundance last January as if from another universe. Here was a small miracle of patience and composure, so starkly removed from everything the festival had come to represent that it seemed almost to herald the overdue coming-of-age of American independent film.[5]
In the Bedroom was the first film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. It also received nominations for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Adapted screenplay, more nominations than any film to premiere at Sundance until Precious in 2009.[6]
Release
Box office
In the Bedroom was the second highest-grossing film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival from 2000 to 2009, after Napoleon Dynamite.[7] The film grossed a worldwide total of $44.8 million.[8] It went on to become, at the time, the highest-grossing non-IMAX film in history never to reach the top 10 in a given week, and also one of the most successful films in history, with an expense-to-profit ratio of 1:25.[9]
Upon its release, the film received critical acclaim for its direction, script, and performances, notably from Wilkinson and Spacek. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 93% based on 139 reviews, with an average score of 7.90/10. The site's consensus states "Expertly crafted and performed, In the Bedroom is a quietly wrenching portrayal of grief."[10]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100 based on reviews from 31 critics, indicating "universal acclaim."[11]
David Edelstein of Slate Magazine in his review of the film wrote that "it is the best movie of the last several years" and described it "the most evocative, the most mysterious, the most inconsolably devastating" film. He further mentioned that the effect of the film "isn't over when you leave the theater" and that it's "always going to be there". He also called In the Bedroom a "masterpiece".[12]
Neil Norman of The Evening Standard stated "It is apparent that Field has not only studied the masters of cinematic understatement, such as Ozu and Bergman, but that he fully understands their processes... Field's achievement is such a perfectly consummated marriage of intent and execution that he need never make another movie. I would not be alone, I think, in hoping he will make many more."[13]
William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer compared Field's direction to Kubrick's, saying that it "manages to feel both highly controlled and effortlessly spontaneous at the same time; and his lifting of the facade of this picturesque, Norman Rockwell setting is carried out with surgical precision". He further mentioned that "like Kubrick, Field doesn't make any moral judgments about his characters, and his film remains stubbornly enigmatic. It can be read as a high-class revenge thriller, an ode to the futility of vengeance or almost anything in between."[14]
Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic wrote, "In the Bedroom leaves us with the happy knowledge that with Field the American film scene, continually deplored as scraggly, can boast another admirable directing talent.[15]
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times stated in his review that it is "one of the best-directed films of the year" and that "every performance has a perfect tone".[16] He listed In the Bedroom as his third best film of the year 2001.[17]
Rolling Stone's Peter Travers called the film "an uncommonly good movie" that "will hit you hard."[18] He also mentioned that "Oscar would be a fool" if it ignores Spacek and Wilkinson's "career-crowning performances".[18]
Among the negative reviews of the film include Paul Tatara of CNN mentioning that the film "flounders" despite the good performances.[19]Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post said "it opens brilliantly" but goes on to "self-negating absurdity."[20]
Retrospective lists
A. O. Scott included the film in his New York Times essay "The most important films of the past decade—and why they mattered."[21]
In the Bedroom was also chosen by the New York Times Film Critics for their "Best 1,000 Films of All Time" list.[22]
The March 2024 issue of indiewire listed In the Bedroom and Tár, also directed by Field, as two of the "Best Picture Nominees that Deserved to win the Oscar."[24]
The film was released on DVD in 2002 in a bare-bones edition containing no extras or director's commentary. When Field was asked by the New York Times why this was the case, he said, "Once a film is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the viewer. Unless it's something historical—like Citizen Kane or Raging Bull—it seems really silly to have that kind of thing."[42]
During season four (episode eight, "Mergers and Acquisitions") of The Sopranos, Tony shows Carmela the new media center he has installed in the pool house, and she replies that she will pick up In the Bedroom for them to watch.[44]
^Turitz, Neil (January 21, 2014). "Sundance at the Oscars". Studio System News. Archived from the original on January 26, 2014. Retrieved February 18, 2014.
