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List Price: $14.99 | | Label: Miramax
Salesrank: 10369
Released: August 13, 2002 |
| Our Price: $2.50 |
| Used Price: $0.79 |
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MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Nominated for 5 Academy Awards(R) including Best Picture (2001), this universally acclaimed film features Academy Award-winners Sissy Spacek (Best Actress 1980, COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER, 1980) and Marisa Tomei (Best Supporting Actress 1992, MY COUSIN VINNIE), and Academy Award-nominee Tom Wilkinson (Best Actor, IN THE BEDROOM, 2001). When young Frank Fowler (Nick Stahl) becomes romantically involved with an older single mother (Tomei), his parents (Spacek and Wilkinson) are concerned. But when the relationship takes a sudden and tragic turn, the Fowlers are forced to confront the harsh reality of their situation and the inescapable consequences of their actions. An uncommonly suspenseful and disturbing film powered by a remarkable cast, IN THE BEDROOM has been hailed by critics everywhere as one of the year's finest motion pictures.
Description of In the Bedroom:
When a film with such emotional resonance and visual poise as In the Bedroom makes it to the screen, it seems an unexpected gift meant to remind us of the medium's possibility for sensitivity and epiphany. First-time director Todd Field, who adapted the film from a story by Andre Dubus with screenwriter Rob Festinger, quietly observes the loss, rage, and inexorable desire for revenge that follows the murder of a 21-year-old son. The film opens with Frank (Nick Stahl), back from college for the summer, taking up with Natalie (Marisa Tomei), a slightly older, sexually alluring woman with two boys and an estranged husband prone to violence. It is the tender portrayal of love between Frank and his parents, even as Frank and Natalie's relationship reveals the prejudices of all involved, that makes the subsequent anguish of the film so acute. Matt and Ruth Fowler (Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek), middle-class denizens of a Maine lobster town where everyone knows each other, toil through weeks of devastation and blame following Frank's murder before their outrage obliterates all else. Field's exact handling of jealousy, class division, and grief is abetted by career-highlight performances from Wilkinson and Spacek. In the Bedroom is, along with You Can Count On Me, one of the best American dramas to grace the new millennium so far. --Fionn Meade
In the Bedroom Reviews:
A great movie, but not for everyone 
2009-12-24 - "In the Bedroom" was nominated for best picture in 2002 and is clearly one of the best films of the decade. It is a gut wrenching, thought provoking, artistic masterpiece. The direction is superb. You will have a hard time finding a movie with as many great acting performances as this one (it was no surprise to me that this movie was nominated for three acting Oscars).
However, this is not for everyone. It is pure drama. Almost more a play than a movie. It does not rely on formulas for maximizing market share. No sex scenes. No likable "goof ball" injected into the script to lighten things up around the heavy story. Very little action. Very little background music, sometimes nothing at all.....just the dialogue between characters and silence in between. I heard one critic say that the silence itself was a character in this movie. You see warts and flaws in all of the characters.
What this movie does is stay true to the story and characters, making you feel and experience the emotions that the characters are experiencing, and deliberately grinds at a slow pace. And at the end of the movie you understand why the slow pace was necessary. The circumstances are extraordinary, but very plausible and painfully realistic. Too realistic for some.........I am sure some who watch are made a bit uncomfortable to see a reflection of themselves in the flaws of the movies characters.
So if you are interested in a realistic story with great acting, heavy subject matter, and deep conflict, this movie will make you say "Wow". But if that is not your bag, you will not find this film very entertaining.
One more point to many of the online critics of "In the Bedroom".......they need to think outside themselves and understand there is a difference between a "bad movie" and a movie that does not entertain you because it is not the type of movie you enjoy. Look, I like realistic movies (such as "In the Bedroom") but I have little interest in fantasies and science fiction. For example, I do not care for any of the Lord of the Rings flicks. However, I acknowledge that these are Oscar worthy movies, that Jackson is a great director, and that Tolkien was a great writer. "In the Bedroom" is a great movie. Even if you do not like "In the Bedroom", you should respect it as a great work of art.
In the Bedroom dvd 
2009-12-24 - This movie was well written and well acted. It was pretty sad and involved the influence of the death of a young man on his family and friends. The characterizations were well done but it was a little slow moving at times. Pretty depressing idea but I am glad I watched it.
Powerful, Moving, No Easy Answers
2009-11-21 - "In the Bedroom" (2002) is a tragedy that takes place amid a beckoning and idyllic Maine landscape. In the small town of Camden the father, Matt Fowler (Tom Wilkinson), is a medical doctor, the mother, Ruth (Sissy Spacek) is a chorus teacher in the local high school.
Apparently the paternal grandfather had been a lobsterman. Matt and Ruth's son, Frank, has taken up lobstering to make extra money, and because it's in the family blood. He's bought a boat and goes out each day to pull in the traps. Lobstering has skipped a generation, but the father still yearns to go out to sea and be part of the family tradition. The son has a promising future in college, and has architectural talents.
Frank has fallen in love with an older woman, Natalie (Marisa Tomei) separated from her abusive husband, not yet divorced, with two young children. Her husband, Richard Strout, is the scion of the Strout Canning Company, apparently the town's main employer. In the small town it's difficult to get away from the past, and the canning company is a constant presence.
In a fateful scene Frank gets killed. Think of it as a classical tragedy: the prince has been killed. The king and queen are grieving, distraught. The death is driving them further and further apart. They grieve deeply over their dead son, but they grieve separately. They cannot join each other in their sorrow because each blames the other for what has happened.
What they say to each other in their big blow-up has truth on both sides. Has the mother been too strict, too much of a controller? At times is she like Lady Macbeth? Has the father been too indulgent? Has he had a tendency to look the other way when it came to the son? Has he been envious of his son? Has he been weak and capable of being manipulated?
The movie carefully reveals the fault lines in the lives of the Fowlers. Viewers will have a difficult time anticipating where the movie is heading, but the director wants viewers to focus on the characters of the father and mother as determinants of the plot's direction. There are no easy answers, only moral dilemmas.
This film has great cinematography and editing. The acting is superb. It's full of a lot of prosaic details that make it very real and believable. The movie builds meticulously and carefully to a powerful ending. Don't miss the concluding scenes because they'll haunt you.
Messy in a good way
2009-05-19 - Although I wouldn't call this film "realistic" per se, what it does is evoke the complicated and messy nature of emotions and relationships. And it does so by touching on the most absolutely messy and complicated issues in life: family, romance, death, class, revenge, and sex.
With an intense script and a group of absolutely powerhouse actors at his disposal, the director wisely keeps the direction elegant and subtle. By never falling into triteness or heavy-handedness, he let's the actors do what they all do best: create living, breathing, devastating, tragic, and human characters that the audience can relate to.
Refreshingly Satisfying Ending
2009-03-28 - I'm sure this review will get sent to the end of 258 current reviews and no one will read it, BUT, it's a great one to watch if you're in a quiet, unhurried mood as this movie moves at almost real-life speed.
However, if you can get through to the end, anyone who has lost a loved one to homicide will be greatly satisfied by the uncompromising end (won't spoil it here.) In fact, I admantly HATED this movie the first time I saw it, however, it kept calling me back and I came to love it. I especially love the end as it vindicates all departed individuals whose murderers sit breathing for life in prisons instead of eye for an eye punishment being meted out.
I'm sure someone has mentioned the fact that the actor William Mapother who plays Richard must be a Tom Cruise cousin. Looks just like him and that is Cruise's actual surname. He did a very adequate job of making us hate him.
Very adult, but slow, give it a chance.
