Searing Rabbit Hole a Heartfelt Drama
It’s been over eight months since a devastating tragedy and Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie Corbett (Aaron Eckhart) are trying to make the best of things, attempting to return to as close to their normal everyday lives as they can. They’re still going to group, still having to listen to the likes of Gabby (Sandra Oh) and her monosyllabic husband who after eight long years still haven’t moved on. But things aren’t getting any easier, and with Becca’s mom Nat (Dianne Wiest) always wanting to equate her loss with their own, and with her younger sister Izzy (Tammy Blanchard) newly pregnant herself putting the past behind and getting on with life is proving far more difficult than either husband or wife ever could have surmised.
Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart in Rabbit Hole © Lionsgate Films
Directed by Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch auteur John Cameron Mitchell and with a screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire (adapting his own Pulitzer Prize-winning play), Rabbit Hole is a wonderfully moving and deeply emotional drama that’s as funny and lively as it is poignant and tragic. The story of two parents trying to pick up the pieces after losing their only child, this is a movie that finds light within the darkness and the beauty in despair. It is bleak but not barren, tough but not uncaring, finding truth in unspeakable hardship connecting in a way that resonates all the way through to the bone.
Not a lot happens here, but not a lot has to in order for things to work. Everything is fairly straightforward. Becca quit her job to raise her child, and now she sits in an empty house day after day reminded of what it is she’s lost. Howie for his part tries to understand, goes out of his way to relate, all while hungering for the sensitive and sensual connection between the two of them that is now maybe gone for good.
Izzy’s pregnancy is the wheel that sets things moving in a somewhat new direction. Howie flirts with the idea of potentially having an affair. Nat tries to ease tensions by talking about the emotions she went through when her own son, and Becca and Izzy’s brother, met with his own tragic end. They talk and they debate and they all try to get one another to understand what it is that they are feeling even though they don’t quite have a grasp on that themselves.
The genius here is that Lindsay-Abaire and Mitchell know how to stand back and watch, understand that even in great tragedy great moments of warmth, light and humor can also be found. This isn’t a movie that revels in pain, doesn’t try to yank on a person’s heartstrings as if they were The Edge strumming an eclectic guitar. The filmmakers let the words and the actions of the characters speak for themselves and in such goes to a place of profound intimacy that touched me beyond measure, and while surprises in and of themselves are few that didn’t make the tears I sometimes shed any less genuine.
To no one’s shock I assume, a film like this is an actor’s showcase and then some. Kidman, Eckhart and especially Wiest shimmer like rays of sunlight splashing against a wet seaside rock on a cloudy summer’s day in this, all of them digging into their characters so completely they almost disappear within them. Also quite excellent is newcomer Miles Teller, his performance of such a raw, sometimes visceral intensity I found my eyes continually drawn to him. He and Kidman have an early scene on a park bench that put lumps in my throat, a singular request to “do this again” leaving me awestruck while I dug furiously for tissues to dab my eyes.
Weeks later Rabbit Hole has kept nagging at me and as the days have passed I’ve discovered that it was full of moments, bits of dialogue and emotional truths that have continued to resonate. I keep pondering it; keep playing in my head the scenes that spoke right to the center of my very soul. In short, I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since first watching it, and I can’t think of a stronger statement of recommendation to go out on than that.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
Additional Links
- Interview with director John Cameron Mitchell by Sara Michelle Fetters
- Rabbit Hole Theatrical Trailer
