Memories and places about a certain thing, a certain person, of course remain, but it seems one becomes able to say a greeting to those memories and places.
'Bye wardrobe, bye chair no.1, bye skylight, bye room'
-1. And 0.
I was very curious. I was curious about this film. I wanted to see the film. I wanted to see a film that would stay in my head a little. The flashdance I'd watched before seeing this film became a film that stayed in my head. The kind of film you can talk about for a long time. Maybe because once you taste a higher level of happiness you come to want that much happiness, my deliberation over whether to watch Civil War naturally moved to another film. The reason this film came to mind, I myself don't remember, but at any rate today's film was very good.
On the day I came from Helsinki to Korea, after drinking enormously the night before and boarding the plane to Milan without having fully sobered up, I faced the huge plane from Milan arriving in Hong Kong. On the screen inside that plane was this film. Of course, if I'd watched this film then, this piece might have come out a bit sooner, but it didn't. On that plane I chose Spectre. Because I regretted not having seen it when it opened in Britain, I watched it about 3 times out of wanting to see it. So Room didn't really enter my head, and moreover, in a situation where I had to take 3 flights the exhaustion was added on, so the cognitive burden of watching another film must have been too severe. So this film remained in my head only as a 'title,' with only the curiosity about what on earth it was about remaining, and I didn't watch it any further.
Usually my curiosity isn't easily forgotten. The 'first curiosity' I have about a certain subject always remains as a very vivid memory, and this film was like that too, and that curiosity contributed to my watching the film today. On a strangely leisurely Wednesday afternoon.
1.
Today I thought of a few topics to write about regarding this film. First, I think the spatial setting should be divided in two. 'Room' and 'outside the room,' and the skylight inside the room that tells the temporal setting, and I also want to talk a little about what the word 'real' signifies, and I'm going to write about 'to be normal' (a normal life). This film has too many stories to deal with. The thoughts that came to me just after watching were considerable, and now that some time has passed and I think again, the things that come to mind only grow more and more. So I put my hands on the keyboard.
2. 'room'
What kind of space is 'room'? This space is a physical space and at the same time a mental space. The biggest reason this space becomes a physical space is that nearly 1/2 of the film consists of the story within this room. In other words, this room is Joy and Jack's space, and because the only way these two can choose comes out to be living well here. Extending life through the food and vitamins and such that 'old nick' brings. Because Joy doesn't know the passcode, Joy has no choice but to follow Nick's words. For that reason Joy and Jack had to resolve all of life in that small space. Toilet, bathing, food, sleep, play, exercise - because they live in that far-too-narrow space, Joy, now in her 7th year, stopped thinking about going out, and Jack grows up as a child unable to think of 'outside.' In a space with a minimum of sunlight, I mean. For that reason, 'Jack' thinks of the things he sees, hears, and perceives through TV, and the stories heard through storybooks and Joy's teaching, as reality, but the start of the film is when this begins to break. Put differently, the shift in perception about the outside is similar to these two preparing to go out.
The ironic thing is that in the situation where this 'room' gave them stability, it functions as their own kind of space, the only but safe space. Because society's gaze can't reach it, no reporters would ever come, and there's no need to form a 'connection,' that is a relationship, with anyone else, Joy and Jack only had to get along well, the two of them. And they were doing that. In her own way, Joy had never been taught by anyone what role a 'mother' should play, but in her own way she did her best, and when something arose that she should apologize to Jack for, she apologized, and she looked after Jack's emotions. As much as she could, Joy maintained her relationship with Jack. That's why she thought of Jack's gifts, and on Jack's birthday she must have made a cake in her own way.
Another thing worth considering is the things Jack describes about the objects of 'room' here and there throughout the film. The water-holding space of the toilet that he called a small sea, or the ventilation duct, or whatever - the space full of imagination in everything is precisely 'room.' Because for Jack that 'room' is his everything, by assigning his own meaning based on the things he heard from Joy and the things he saw on TV, Jack perfectly made his own space. A small but perfect space, a space where everything he thinks of exists in his own way.
That is, this 'room' is confined, but to them it was a space where they'd mastered their own way of living within confinement. Because, despite being by no means a good situation, it remained as the only option for them.
3. The world after coming outside the 'room,' another 'room'
The reason I thought of it as another 'room' is that even after escaping, they couldn't find stability. They weren't prepared. The escape and process were also very dramatic, and they couldn't be accustomed to everything. Joy seemed accustomed, but she wasn't, and as for Jack, the director seems to have intended to maximize that feeling by processing everything as 'appearing blurry' from Jack's viewpoint. For them as they were when in a 'plastic' state, I mean. When the doctor pointed to Jack and said he was in a state like plastic, Jack said he wasn't plastic, but actually from my perspective both Joy and Jack were no different from plastic. They came out but weren't prepared and hadn't thought it through. Their life, the life outside, I mean. After coming out they're harassed by reporters and stressed by this, and Joy worries about Jack who has no experience mingling with children and thinks a connection with other children is needed, but it was also a situation where she didn't know what to do. But Jack overcomes that well. As Joy's mother said, 'it's fine.' Jack begins to find his own way to live happily. In the midst of that was the grandmother. Jack's grandmother, who is Joy's mother, gradually grows close to Jack. Nancy's perspective is drawn as that of ordinary people, and Leo too is drawn as one of those ordinary people. Probably most people will become immersed from Nancy and Leo's perspective. In a way, because it's not an easy situation to empathize with either Joy or Jack, the universal perspective viewing this appears most often in Nancy.
A truly sorrowful scene that plainly shows the conflict Joy and Jack go through was precisely the part where Nancy and Joy argue. Joy makes a protest mixed with anger and grief, as if she hadn't been needed, but it also shows that Nancy too was merely a victim of that situation. What sin is it of Jack's to watch this kind of argument - he merely still needs time. Yet Joy's heart watching this was not at ease. Even after Joy attempts suicide, Jack still struggled, going through separation from Joy, but the one who overcomes this is Jack, and it's also Jack who cuts his hair and sends it to Joy, giving Joy hope to live. So Jack is far stronger than we think. In a way, when it comes to saying that adults are fearful but children are not, there seems to be nothing that shows it as easily as the relationship between 'Jack' and 'Joy' here.
Even when he met Joy crying out 'Ma' inside the police car, the reason Jack missed the bed inside the 'room' is that that place was precisely the place he shared with 'Joy.' That's how inseparable the two are, but the figure of Jack accepting this and beginning to stand on his own shows a hopeful figure adapting to another 'room' called the world. It seemed the director intended that, even if hope isn't visible to adults, it's not so for children, that an 'answer' can be visible to children's eyes. Moreover, if you watched carefully, perhaps you'd notice that the poster too has 'angles' to it, that the world is another 'room' by the name of the world, but that this 'room' is not a dark and dim space but a brighter, hopeful one - dusty and with many flashy things, yet a somewhat better, decent space where there are friends - we can think.
4. skylight
I wrote skylight, but this is, beyond simply a skylight, a single 'window.' If the skylight of 'room' - telling you that rain is falling, showing real leaves, autumn leaves at that, indicating winter, the skylight of the flow of time - was the window of 'room,' the skylight in society is the world seen through the countless lights and windows that exist everywhere, and everything Jack encounters in the new house. The skylight coming in from the ceiling window showed a limited field of view, but the world afterward tells you it's a world where everything is open. Right from the hospital, the 'symbolism' that the huge window of the hospital room shows reveals the nature of the world fragmentarily, but very accurately. It shows that it's now always open, that even a closed space is open, and that Jack and Joy must accept this. The director's setting of this kind of scene was truly astonishing. The reason I felt throughout, while watching, that the director's spatial composition was tremendous is that part by part he symbolically explained their situations with 'space' alone.
5. 'real' and 'normal life'
We live within reality. But this reality consists of things whose meaning-assignment is all finished. Of course, there's a slight difference in that it's not that I assigned the meaning, but that I follow what others have already assigned meaning to. Here Jack shows a difference. In 'room' he had a world to which he himself assigned meaning. The scene of greeting that world and forgetting the past is precisely the final scene. And thereby 'Jack' takes a proper step into the world. Toward the past he had, bidding farewell to the imagined world he had, toward a new world - but within that greeting no sorrow was embedded. There I felt some indescribable hope. Not the kind of melancholy that Yun Hui-jung felt in 'Mujin Travelogue,' but the kind of hope one can have as a 'child.' And watching that figure, the adult 'Joy' too learns once more from Jack. I keep feeling that a child, more flexible than an adult, is after all stronger. That would be the greatest virtue we should learn from children..
When the interviewer spoke to Joy about Jack's 'normal life,' the feeling was really strange. I wondered what on earth a normal life is. A life similar to others, we usually call a 'universal life' or a 'normal life.' I wondered why they showed the scene of the interviewer asking Joy about not having given Jack a normal life in his life, and here I reached my own conclusion.
One might live according to the normal life that 'adults' think of, but I concluded that just because they didn't live exactly that way, children won't be frustrated and collapse. The one who shows that is 'Jack.' Making a cake together with Nancy, taking a walk with the dog Leo brought, kicking a ball with a friend. Jack grows up as a child who adapts faster and is stronger than we think. To the point that it reminds me of the educational view Rousseau advocated. I came to think that Rousseau's educational view - which said it's wrong of us to forget that children always have the possibility of accomplishing things on their own, and to fuss, worry, and try to educate them - finds its grounds in a child like 'Jack.'
If they'd sent Jack outside so he could live a normal life, would Jack really have lived a normal life? Hmm... I think life inside the 'room' was a normal life in its own way too. The normal life one can live within that 'room' - wasn't it that kind of life, I wonder. Because the figure of Jack, who in a situation he himself assigned meaning to adapts well and lives, didn't appear unhappy to my eyes. Rather, what was unhappy was when Joy, in order to leave, gives Jack the education about 'real' - that looked unhappy. Even though that's an indispensable act, and even though I feel Joy's belief that imagination must be broken in order to adapt when going out, on the other hand it was sorrowful. Even if Joy says it isn't so, reaching the point of actually believing and accepting it takes a longer time and requires more actual experience, but Joy wasn't like that.
5. In closing.
I'll mention a few impressive scenes and wrap up.
1) When Jack told Nancy he wanted to cut his hair, Nancy says this. 'None of us can become strong alone, and we must always help each other.'
2) The part where, in the situation where Joy weakens, saying to Jack that she didn't do well in her role as a mother, Jack instills confidence in Joy, telling her that she's still my 'mom.'
3) The final scene where Jack, greeting the objects of 'room,' says that a 'room' is a 'room' only when it's closed, indirectly telling Joy that 'room' no longer exists, and Joy, watching this, also greets the 'room.'
In the end Jack was stronger than the adults.
Jack's purity was by no means weaker than that of soiled adults. Watching Jack, I too feel I'm getting closer to the stage of being able to say a greeting to my own past memories, places, and objects. For the time being this film will stay in my head. It was a film that calms the heart.
I recommend this film to you who have something you want to organize, want to bid farewell to, and want to keep well in your heart.
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