The Keeping Room

Image: Drafthouse Films

Hailee Steinfeld in 'The Keeping Room'

There were a number of things I could have Googled after watching The Keeping Room, a Civil War-era drama now playing in limited release. Like, “How many females were widowed and/or orphaned by the war?” or “What was the condition of the South after General Sherman plowed through?” or “How many soldiers died?” And many more.

But here’s what I Googled instead: “Why is there so much mumbling in modern movies?”

I’m not talking about mumblecore, the sub-genre where you might expect some inaudible dialogue, given the often-low production values. I’m talking about mumbling, where the actors just don’t articulate their lines very well. And/or the director and sound team do a lousy job picking up those lines.

Apparently this is really a thing too. Some of my search results:

“Stop the mumbling! Why can’t we understand what people are saying in movies any more?”

“The rising problem of inaudible dialogue.”

“Why we can’t hear anything in the movies any longer?”

There were more, but you get the point. It’s not just me. You’ve probably noticed too.

And what a shame, because I think The Keeping Room is a very good film—at least for a film where I probably couldn’t understand 20 percent of the dialogue. I even had the advantage of watching at home, on my BluRay player (the studio sent a disc, since there weren’t any local screenings scheduled). My home sound system is a good one too. But even with the advantage of rewinding and re-listening to some spoken lines, I couldn’t make them out. (Alas, press screeners don’t have subtitles.)

One of the lead characters is played by Sam Worthington, so there’s part of the problem right there. Worthington’s a decent actor, but he does mumble.

Two of the three female leads—Brit Marling and Hailee Steinfeld—were fine. Marling, trying on a Southern accent, slurred a few words. Steinfeld, who was Earth’s Most Articulate Thirteen-Year-Old in 2010’s True Grit, speaks clearly here too. But the third female lead, Muna Otaru, speaks in such an odd way (her high pitch and peculiar enunciations—she’s a Brit, trying to speak Southern) that she’s hard to understand.

Toss in a few lesser characters who also mumble, and, well, it’s a serious problem. Too bad. Because what I saw and heard of The Keeping Room, I really liked.

Image: Drafthouse Films

Sam Worthington in 'The Keeping Room'

It’s tough to pin down a genre for this movie. It’s a Civil War film in that it’s set in 1865, when the war is winding down. It’s a bit Southern Gothic. It’s a home invasion action flick. It’s a survival story. And, as some have said, it’s a feminist Western. The official website says it “shatters both gender and genre conventions.” And they’re all right.

The movie begins with these words on a black screen:

War is cruelty.
There is no use trying to reform it.
The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
— William Tecumseh Sherman, Union Army General

And then this:

The American South, 1865

And then we see three atrocities: A Union soldier raping and then killing a white woman. Another Union soldier shooting a black woman, presumably a slave, in the head. And then both of those soldiers setting a horse-drawn carriage on fire, a black man tied to the driver’s seat, dead, as the flaming chariot bolts through the dusk. Horrific.

That’s just in the first three minutes. Yikes. This is not a popcorn flick.

Then the film transitions to a farm, the home of the three female leads—25-ish Augusta (Marling), 18-ish Louise (Steinfeld), and 30-ish Mad (Otaru). Augusta and Louise are sisters; their brother and father are off at war. We don’t know if the men are dead; only that the sisters, with help from their slave Mad, are manning the home front—and “manning” is exactly the right word, as they’re doing the work that would normally fall to men. Their mother is presumed dead. Augusta is clearly in charge; she does all the hunting and the wood chopping, typically men’s roles. (Marling really did the chopping with an axe, and it’s impressive; the blisters on her hands in the film are quite real.)

The stark film score—mostly just aching, wailing violins and a harmonica—is dark and foreboding. These women are just trying to survive until the end of the war, or at least until their men return. But from the opening scene (and the trailer), we know that their lives are about to intersect with those rogue Union soldiers.

Image: Drafthouse Films

Brit Marling in 'The Keeping Room'

Those renegade Yanks, played by Worthington and Kyle Soller, are despicable—drinking, leering, the personification of “raping and pillaging.” After running into the men on the road, Augusta knows the scoundrels are headed her way. And as the soldiers’ journey brings them closer and closer to the farm, the tension builds. Augusta knows how to handle a rifle, but Louise and Mad do not. So they make a plan to protect themselves.

While we’re waiting for the inevitable conflict, something remarkable is happening. Mad, the female slave, and the sisters, especially Augusta, have begun to bond—even before the threat arises. In one early scene, Louise uses the N-word to refer to Mad. Mad, clearly hurt, doesn’t reply, but Augusta does: “Like I told you, Louise, we’re all niggers now.” Meaning that with their men away, they’re all just chattel and plunder, no matter their pigmentation.

But the line also means, We’re all in this together. All for one, one for all. We’re the original post-bellum feminists, doors barred but guns cocked, terrified but determined, taking a stand, ready to defend one another, to the death, if necessary.

I like the way Marling puts it in this interview with the Associated Press:

“(The women) have to defend themselves and do it in a way that’s plausible,” she says. “Nobody is being asked to be impenetrable. There are no karate kicks in stilettos. The girls cry, they break down, they get hurt and they’re scared. Being brave doesn’t mean not being scared. It means being scared and moving through it anyway. They’re all very vulnerable in it. They fall apart and put themselves back together.”

I couldn’t put it any better. This isn’t Charlie’s Angels waiting to kick some misogynistic, chauvinistic Union butt. There’s no Katniss Everdeen, Joan of Arc, or Mulan among them. They’re strong, independent women, yes. But they’re also very much afraid.

Image: Drafthouse Films

Muna Otaru and Brit Marling in 'The Keeping Room'

It’s feminism with a twist. Marling is always looking for films that accentuate a woman’s strength. As TIME magazine put it recently, when Marling, an economics major at Georgetown, decided to give Hollywood a try, “she found that the only roles available to her were variations on ‘Terrified Girl No. 1’ in slasher films. Disinterested in playing damsels in distress, she says, she could think of only one way forward: She’d write her own roles.”

Which is just what she did with her breakout indie films, Another Earth and Sound of My Voice. But when she read the script for The Keeping Room, she wanted in—even though it is, in many ways, a “damsels in distress” movie. But not just any damsels. Strong ones.

To say much more about how the story unfolds would be saying too much.

The performances are strong, the scenes and sets authentic, the camerawork excellent. Though parts of the film are difficult to watch, it is beautifully composed and filmed.

Now if only I could say the same for the dialogue. What was that again?

Caveat Spectator

The Keeping Room is rated R for strong violence including a sexual assault. The “strong violence” is depicted only briefly here and there, but it’s brutal; one character is shot in the head. We also see a few gruesome after-effects of the violence. But the real caution here is the sexual assault. A young woman is raped, and while there’s no nudity, it is depicted as the horrible act that it us. Take the R rating seriously.

Mark Moring is a writer for Grizzard Communications in Atlanta, where folks still haven’t forgiven General Sherman for burning down the joint.