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Room - film review

Directed by an Irish guy with a lead cast never before seen (at least I was clueless about them) the mother and son drama about being trapped in a shed for five years was an amazing take on the phrase 'paradigm shift'.

Protagonists are a mother and her son, introduced to us in the opening sequence, living in a closed box of some sort with their only view of the outside world and sunshine being a skylight in the roof.  There are some parallels to a number of stories in the real world most prominent being a woman in Ohio that was kidnapped and held captive over a decade till she was found.

As the movie unfolds we learn that the mother was a teen that got abducted from close to her home by a psycho who has stored her in a shed behind his home.  He is a sick and demented person that has since raped her multiple times. A child is born (we assume in the same confines) that we get to meet as a five year old learning to survive in the only space he knows as real.

The woman as distraught and torn as she is about her fate appears conflicted about being selfless and selfish in raising that child in that confined space and not negotiating with her captor to let him live and go out in the world.

It is complex, slow yet engaging and finally a climactic breakthrough where the child that only knows of the world in compartments like Room, World, Outer Space learns about the dimensions of real things and what things actually look like including what is and is Not real.

The child actor also shows emotion far ahead of his age where he experiences what is the reverse of claustrophobia as he figures out the larger world around him.  The film reminds me of the film 'Truman Show' in terms of its plot, where the human mind merely accepts the stimulus it repeatedly receives and forms opinions in the absence of other points of view.

Brie Larson, a Californian, for her role as the mother won the Oscar for leading female role.

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