Tweet

Comments (8)

 1 of 3

Rabbit Hole Our rating: Your rating: 1 2 3 4 Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (mature thematic material, some drug use and language) Genre: Drama Theater release: January 20, 2011 by Lionsgate Directed by: John Cameron Mitchell Runtime: 1 hour 31 minutes Cast: Nicole Kidman (Becca), Aaron Eckhart (Howie), Dianne Wiest (Nat), Tammy Blanchard (Izzy), Sandra Oh (Gaby) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

As a nurse in a pediatric cardiac intensive care unit, my wife Suz watched couples not unlike this film's Becca and Howie (Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart) in a particular sort of crisis: not the crisis of a sharp, sudden catastrophe, but a long, numbing slog through a seemingly endless twilight between agony and normality. Sometimes there's a sudden calamity at the beginning, or the slog might be punctuated by new crisis—a new operation, a downturn, death—and in the throes of trauma the flickerings of normality are extinguished. But one can't live long in that state of trauma. The crushing darkness yields imperceptibly to a Cimmerian gloom.

Not infrequently, the couple find their way through the gloom at different rates, or in different directions. A sharp moment of suffering draws them together, but in the long slog it's not uncommon for them to drift apart. They suffer and grieve, but they grieve differently. One spouse (more often the wife) may be wholly consumed by the crisis, while the other (more often the husband) feels that their relationship (or he himself, or their family) is being neglected. Divorce is a common hazard for couples who lose or almost lose a child.

Nicole Kidman as Becca

It's indicative of the muddle of life in the shadow of crisis that critics seem divided on whether to focus on the poignancy or the humor of Rabbit Hole. "Grief may be the topic under examination," one writes, "but humor—incisive, observant and warm—is the tool with which it's dissected." Another goes so far as to call the film "a dryly un-sentimental black comedy." It's not that, but Rabbit Hole knows that sentiment and unsentimentality are very different and even incompatible drugs to which different people turn to help them cope through dark times.

Becca is a confirmed unsentimentalist. Dragged by Howie to a support group, she's repulsed by a couple who introduce themselves as group veterans of eight years—"professional wallowers," she snorts later. Pressed beyond endurance by another grieving couple's pious declarations that "God had to take" their child because "he needed another angel," Becca blurts, "Why didn't he just make one? I mean, he's God after all. Why didn't he just make another angel?" By this point Becca is pretty sure that group is not for her, and Howie's probably figuring it out too.

Aaron Eckhart as Howie

Written for the screen by David Lindsay-Abaire (adapting his own 2005 play) and directed by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), Rabbit Hole takes its time establishing the particulars of Becca and Howie's crisis. I won't preempt the film's storytelling strategy here, but I will say that Kidman and Eckhart embody Becca and Howie with such unforced ease, interacting so naturally in both relaxed and tense moments, that they seem to be not so much playing characters as playing a relationship—a fragile, troubled marriage with a long history, in which more is unsaid than said.

For Becca, tense and brittle, contact with other people has become burdensome even when they aren't actively annoying her, which is often. Her well-meaning neighbors with their invitations; the friends who should have called but haven't; her garrulous mother (Dianne Wiest) with her conventional religiosity and anecdotes of her own bereavement; her unmarried, blithely pregnant kid sister (Tammy Blanchard of Bella) with her musician boyfriend … it's all too annoying.

Dianne Wiest as Nat, Becca's mother

Howie's grief is different. He's trying to grieve in a healthy way, to follow the program. His wife's pain brings out his protective instincts, and he wants to be the good guy, but he's also concerned that her isolation and ruthless purges are becoming more morbid, not less. One night he puts on Al Green, dims the lights, and starts rubbing her shoulders. The way that it doesn't go exactly how either of them would like perfectly encapsulates the growing wedge between them.

The stages by which Howie finds some relief in another relationship are plausible enough, although the movie goes back to that well for one scene too many. I'm not sure I understand the psychology behind Becca reaching out to the one person that would seem to be the last person in the world she would want to talk to. Perhaps he's the only one who wouldn't dare try to help her. Or perhaps his own pain, and the possibility that she might help him, offers her something.

next page... |  1 of 3 | last page

Displaying 1–3 of 8 comments

See all comments