Somebody give Nicole Kidman the Oscar for Best Actress please.
The Rabbit Hole's poster may not look like much. It invites to mind a plot concerning a romantic thriller esp with the sensual middle portion and the tension-filled images towards the periphery. Its one sentence summary on IMDB does not also seem like much either:
Life for a happy couple is turned upside down after their young son dies in an accident. Based on a play by David Lindsay-Abaire.
Really, how is anybody supposed to get excited about this film based on this description and a poster that looks like any other old romantic, sensational thriller? But therein lies the deception.
Surprisingly, this movie is very, very good. Several factors point to its winning formula:
1. Just the right pace: great story and direction
Perhaps it is wrong to credit merely the director and the writers. But these are the most observable elements for the moment. The film is structured like a snippet into a couple's lives 8 months after tragedy struck the family.
It started with a seemingly normal married couple going about their lives in the suburbs. Before long, cracks in their relationship and individual character begin to appear over the course of time as the audience looks into their everyday lives. It was never once specified in a complete sentence what tragedy the couple went through, it was left to the audience to pick up the pieces like a jigsaw puzzle along the film. This is a very clever structure for a film as it invites the audience to question what was presented to them, and continuously hints that things are not as they seem. It also presents an excellent opportunity for the actors to portray multi-faceted characters to great advantage. This leads to the next point...
2. A relatively nondescript but high performance cast.
Other than Nicole Kidman, and perhaps Aaron Eckhart after his turn in The Dark Knight, the rest of the actors in the cast are not famous in any means. However, they put up an amazing performance. Especially commendable are Nicole Kidman's character's sister and mother, played by Tammy Blanchard and Dianne Wiest respectively. This film is a very strong reminder that you do not need high budgets to get in good actors and actresses that can act. In fact, there are so many talented actors out there in Hollywood just waiting for the right opportunity, whereas so many stars and mega-stars havn't got even half the acting chops of these indie-film actors.
3. Nicole Kidman + Aaron Eckhart
Both Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart are terribly good, veteran actors, with enough star power just to take this film mainstream. The two also have amazing chemistry, and during the scenes together, they built a couple whose love is so tangible that the audience could not help but be awed and yet appalled by what they have to suffer. Separate, they are able to demonstrate so well the agony each of them have to endure for their collective loss.
Most notable, however, would be Nicole Kidman's powerful turn as Becca. I can't describe how good she is, or pretend to write as if I am one of those veteran film reviewers. If I say that I saw her portray a character whose tightly controlled exterior masks a deeply affected psyche, I would be lying. The strength of her performance cannot be accurately described in words. For the first time in my film watching life, I have felt an Oscar-worthy performance.
For ages, I have seen crappy Nicole Kidman films like Cold Mountain and Australia. Australia in bold please, as an emphasize on how bad it was. Well, not to mention The Golden Compass and The Stepford Wives. And countless unmemorable others. Just plain... meh.
My impression of her has always been a plastic surgery frankenstein creation who can't act/pick the wrong script/make the worst movie. A bit harsh, but hey, i'm being honest.
How wrong I was after this film. I discovered Nicole Kidman has some serious acting chops. One particularly memorable scene was her second conversation with the teenage boy who accidentally knocked down her character's son in the movie. As the boy was speaking, the pain that she exudes is so, so real. You see her, you feel her, you hear her. There is no makeup, no special effects, no costumes. It is just a woman who lost her son, and gradually trying to come to terms with it.
Perhaps it is not easy to do comedy, but it is much, much harder to portray grief realistically and believably. This is probably, wait, scratch that, definitely why no actor/actress has ever won an Oscar for a comedic role.
I felt this film was in fact, quite similar to Inception. Not so much that the similarity lie with the effects, the story, or the characters wise. In fact, they are wildly different. But that simplistic story lines of both films mask a truly intriguing movie. As one reviewer of Inception wrote, it is not half as much fun in knowing the conclusion, as knowing the process through which one gets to the conclusion. In this case, no words can do the exact impact of the film justice.
I can only say, please watch it. You will not regret catching this phenomenal performance of actors, director and writers.
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