Raiders
03-16-2009, 08:14 PM
http://www.cinematical.com/media/2006/03/lg_room_henry.jpg
May Contain some Spoilers
Kyle Henry's Room is either a complete mess or among the most surreal, brilliant films I have ever seen. Clocking in at a scant 70 minutes, it is the vision of Julia, a woman living in our post-terror-frenzied world whose life is unravelling via a series of epileptic seizures wherein her mind visits an abandoned industrial warehouse. Eventually, the stress of her life leads her to New York City where she begins a series of episodic journeys in an attempt to locate this warehouse (the titular "room"--or perhaps the title is an inflection of her desire to find "room" for herself away from the chaos). She is spurned to New York after she has a seizure while driving and crashes into an airport road sign--the film cuts to an image of the plane on the sign breaking through her windshield--just one of the film's many allusions to the 9/11 attacks, some vague and others forthright, so much so that the opening strains of the film are voice-over recordings of many post-9/11 press conferences. The film's ending is a model of unresolved conflict, insisting instead to merely wind up in an experimental, visual fury and the final image of the barren room at the film's core, exposed once and for all for the lifeless, solemn entity it is.
I have read a couple supposed readings of the film, and it is likely all are equally valid, but I do not agree really with any of them. At least not completely. The idea that Julia has died at the scene of her early-film accident is valid, but perhaps only insofar as the previous, responsible mother and Bingo employee Julia has died, but her body is still very much alive. Through his references to post-9/11 America via the constant presence of TV news relaying current world/terror events, often accompanied by a loud droning score indicating that our world became and has become proliferated with terror doublespeak, Henry directly links Julia with a country careening head first into a search for meaning and retribution and to explain the unnatural acts committed against it. It is, in the truest sense, a "horror film for our times," no matter how cheesy that comes across. Julia's complete abandonment of her responsiblities as mother and "governing" entity to her family mirrors a government's complete disregard for its duties to its people and that has become completely engulfed in its own twisted ideals. The film's open-ended conclusion is indicative of our still lingering "war" with these terror entities and the film's ultimate image of a barren, empty room gives Henry the perfect visualization of our previous administration's immense failure to provide any comfort or closure to a country desperately in need of calm and assurance, not fear-mongering.
I imagine most here would not love it as I do, though I do strongly recommend this film to Rowland. Dunno why, just seems like his kind of film.
May Contain some Spoilers
Kyle Henry's Room is either a complete mess or among the most surreal, brilliant films I have ever seen. Clocking in at a scant 70 minutes, it is the vision of Julia, a woman living in our post-terror-frenzied world whose life is unravelling via a series of epileptic seizures wherein her mind visits an abandoned industrial warehouse. Eventually, the stress of her life leads her to New York City where she begins a series of episodic journeys in an attempt to locate this warehouse (the titular "room"--or perhaps the title is an inflection of her desire to find "room" for herself away from the chaos). She is spurned to New York after she has a seizure while driving and crashes into an airport road sign--the film cuts to an image of the plane on the sign breaking through her windshield--just one of the film's many allusions to the 9/11 attacks, some vague and others forthright, so much so that the opening strains of the film are voice-over recordings of many post-9/11 press conferences. The film's ending is a model of unresolved conflict, insisting instead to merely wind up in an experimental, visual fury and the final image of the barren room at the film's core, exposed once and for all for the lifeless, solemn entity it is.
I have read a couple supposed readings of the film, and it is likely all are equally valid, but I do not agree really with any of them. At least not completely. The idea that Julia has died at the scene of her early-film accident is valid, but perhaps only insofar as the previous, responsible mother and Bingo employee Julia has died, but her body is still very much alive. Through his references to post-9/11 America via the constant presence of TV news relaying current world/terror events, often accompanied by a loud droning score indicating that our world became and has become proliferated with terror doublespeak, Henry directly links Julia with a country careening head first into a search for meaning and retribution and to explain the unnatural acts committed against it. It is, in the truest sense, a "horror film for our times," no matter how cheesy that comes across. Julia's complete abandonment of her responsiblities as mother and "governing" entity to her family mirrors a government's complete disregard for its duties to its people and that has become completely engulfed in its own twisted ideals. The film's open-ended conclusion is indicative of our still lingering "war" with these terror entities and the film's ultimate image of a barren, empty room gives Henry the perfect visualization of our previous administration's immense failure to provide any comfort or closure to a country desperately in need of calm and assurance, not fear-mongering.
I imagine most here would not love it as I do, though I do strongly recommend this film to Rowland. Dunno why, just seems like his kind of film.