This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Jan. 13, 2011 - Good theater seldom makes the transition to the screen unscathed, but playwright David Lindsay-Abaire has done an exceptional job of turning his Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Rabbit Hole" into a compelling movie. The subject - the effect of the accidental death of a young child on his parents - could easily lend itself to melodramatic screen hysterics, but the performances in "Rabbit Hole" are remarkably controlled and measured. When bottled-up pain does burst forth in self-pity and rage, it appears to be fighting its way through a desperately maintained facade of self-control.
Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart), the middle-class couple in "Rabbit Hole," are trying to cope with their tragedy in such different ways that they are, in effect, at war with one another.
Howie clings to the physical evidence of the life of his young son, insisting that the boy's room be kept as it was, and he is eager to attend group therapy sessions with others who have lost children.
Becca hates the group therapy sessions, and makes bitter fun of one women for consoling herself that her daughter died because "God wanted another angel." She wants to clear the house of her son's belongings and try to move past his death. Then, by chance, she sees the young man (Miles Teller) who was driving the car that her son darted in front of. She finds herself following him, wanting to get to know him.
Cynthia Nixon won a Tony award for her performance as Becca in the play "Rabbit Hole," and there's a good chance Nicole Kidman will be nominated for an Oscar for her superb performance in the movie. (She's already been nominated for a Golden Globe.) The remainder of the cast, which includes Dianne Wiest as Becca's emotionally shaky mother and Sandra Oh as a member of the therapy group, is uniformly superb.
Director John Cameron Mitchell, known for directing and starring in the flamboyant rock musical "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," skillfully avoids dramatic excess and the movie avoids offering easy answers to complex and perhaps unanswerable questions.
Opens Friday Jan. 14
'Somewhere'
In three movies in a row - "Lost in Translation," "Marie Antoinette" and now "Somewhere" - filmmaker Sofia Coppola has dealt with the emotional difficulties of the rich and famous, and perhaps it's time for her to find another subject. "Somewhere" opens with a Ferrari speeding around a race course in the desert. All alone, it goes around once. And again. And again.
It is, of course, going around in circles. So is its driver, movie star Johnny Marco (Stephen Dorff). He lives at the legendary Hollywood hotel -- The Chateau Marmont -- and, when he is not watching twin blond strippers pole dance at the foot of his bed, he is drinking (and sleeping) with people he barely knows and going through the motions of promoting his latest movie. Then his 11-year-old daughter (Elle Fanning) from a defunct marriage shows up, and he finds family life of a sorts with her. But he keeps going around in circles. Slowly. After a while, it's hard to care very much about Johnny, although Elle Fanning is a delight.
Opens Friday Jan. 14
Harper Barnes,; the author of Never Been A Time: The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked The Civil Rights Movement, is a special contributor to the Beacon.