MovieChat Forums > Room (2016) Discussion > One my larger disappointments this year.

One my larger disappointments this year.

posted 8 years ago by tempmail1974
3 replies | jump to latest

I had looked forward to this a great deal, and was really disappointed with how far-fetched this film was, and it's overall direction, given it's rating.

It carries a really strong current of misandry, not just with "Old Nick", but with the absurd dialog given to the male police officer juxtaposed with the amazingly empathetic and effective female officer, and the general manner of the grandfather's treatment of Jack versus the grandmother, and not being around for his daughter. The speech about "what a real father is". It's one long soapbox about how awful so many men are, like something produced by the Lifetime channel in the 1990's.

Anyone who believed for an instant they could find his mother, in the same night (!) based upon what was told to them by a 5-year old child who had only seen a house once, has obviously never spent much time with children that age. Let's not mention there are procedures for dealing with children in these situations ... they don't just drive around with a couple beat cops.

The woman who had been kept as a sex-slave for a quarter of her life has only a single symptom of PTSD, or similar, while in captivity ... she occasionally sleeps in a day, but is otherwise a near-perfect mother and handles everything with aplomb.

No social workers, no therapist, no counselors.

Absolute waste of a great opportunity to explore some issues that are seldom-to-never examined by films.

[–] famouserik 8 years ago

The misandry claim doesn't hold water. Balancing out the negative men in the movie are at least an equal number of positive men.

I'll admit the finding of Ma from an interrogation of Jack isn't the best, but its also a bit of short hand for the sake of the movies audience. Making the scenes with jack in the police car another 10 minutes longer just to show us the investigation progress doesn't add anything to the movie.
But it does make sense how it was handled after they learned that his Ma was being held captive.
Its no different than the hacker in the computer movie cracking the code in 20 seconds, instead of the 12 hours it might really take. It adds nothing to moving the plot forward.

Ma copes with her captivity by raising Jack. It gives her purpose, and its the central theme of the movie.
We also have to remember that in many ways, we are seeing Room and the story from Jacks perspective. Ma appears to have her stuff together because thats how Jack sees her. Perfect Ma.

Dr. Mittal recommends Ma stay at the hospital. When she refuses, he makes house calls for several weeks but she declines most of the time to meet with him.

[–] tempmail1974 8 years ago

I think you are applying the wrong test for misandry, and even then I think your interpretation of results are extremely questionable. 50% would still be making a very strong statement about men.

How many women do you see portrayed in a negative role? In particular, how does each woman perform compared to her male counterpart in the story?

Ex.

Ma vs. Old Nick
Grandmother vs. Grandfather
Female Cop vs. Male Cop

Clearly, the bias is presented, and written far too ham-fisted to be an effective commentary on men and women in modern western society.

The narrative of the boy is violated at several places in the film. Which, again, is too bad, as the story would be more interesting from that angle.

Police procedure does not work that way, I'm sorry. Under no circumstances would two random cops drive around with a boy they just found. Feel free to utilize suspension of disbelief, but that is what it is.

P.S. Medical Doctors are neither counselors, nor social workers. Dr. Mittal can not fulfill all the roles we are discussing in the real-world.

[–] famouserik 8 years ago

And we also have Leo and Jack himself as positive male roles.
And we also have the nasty interviewer woman.
The male cop is, if anything, being the good guy and trying to follow procedure more than the female cop.
I don't see how one gender being portrayed in a more negative light automatically makes it misandry or mysogny.
The gender roles of Nick and Ma are required for the story. The interviewer could have been a man if they wanted to portray men in an evil light.
Joy's speech about fathers is a speech more broadly about parents, but in the case of this story, is about Nick as 'father'. If she had framed the speech talking about 'a parent is someone who cares about their child' it would have been confusing and strange.

The problem from such analysis is it creates the problem where no matter how you assign the genders, someone will bitch about it. If the cop genders were reversed, someone would be bitching about 'the woman cop being stupid and uncaring'
If the grandparents roles were reversed, someone would bitch about it. Some of the characters had to be bad guys...so you have to assign an actor to play it.

As for the rest?

Movies never portray police procedure correctly. Because its extremely slow and boring.
Accurate police procedure would completely derail the movie. As it would for almost any movie involving the police.

Dr, Mittal is portrayed as some sort of therapist/councelo and not a medical doctor
. Again: Having the movie show us 4 different social workers, therapists and councillors simply bogs down the story and does nothing to help it move forward. We see Dr. Mittal taking that role. Its not the real world. Its a movie.