Skip to main content

Friendship, Freedom, and Death in The Room Next Door

Even as someone living in a country where consensual assisted dying is legal, I only ever hear about it through the contentiousness around the issue. And there is valid reason for protest and scepticism, especially around its relationship to healthcare resources, but the principle shouldn’t be so controversial. And Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door even dares to suggest it could be profoundly liberating, and strengthen the bond between the living and the dead. A novel, perhaps healthy approach to that most difficult of subjects.
The Room Next Door is Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, though he’s made a couple English short films in the last few years. The source is an American novel, What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez, but I have to imagine the real reason Almodóvar made the film in English was to utilize Tilda Swinton, who starred in his 2020 short The Human Voice, and who was very much an ideal match for this character. Her Martha Hunt is an ex-war correspondent with terminal cervical cancer, who many years prior had worked at a magazine with Julianne Moore’s Ingrid, now an author -where they had been close friends but had fallen out of touch. Upon hearing about Martha’s condition, Ingrid immediately decides to reconnect, though their renewed relationship is put through the ringer when Martha announces her intention to die and her desire that Ingrid help her.
Like most Almodóvar movies, the vibrant and attractive colour stands out first and foremost -particularly the bright reds and blues and greens- perhaps most noticeably here in the context of something seemingly so dark. Martha and Ingrid’s frank discussions about the inevitable and how to prepare, Ingrid especially, for how to deal with the ramifications both emotional and technical, of Martha’s death; it’s all set to a gorgeously warm colour scheme that calms the tension of these heavy points. And Almodóvar applies a similar approach to their dialogue which is mannered and forthright, intelligent, rational, but not unemotional -on Martha’s part most of all, who is emphatically confident over these final choices, yet still critically sentimental and empathetic, though in subtle ways.
And indeed Swinton’s performance of this complex fusion is probably the movie’s most charming feature. There is a terrible weight, palpable on her, all throughout and simultaneously a sense of assured relief. She feels for her own death and the impact it will have on others, but is completely at ease with it for her own sake. It’s an attitude not often portrayed openly, and a maverick actor like Swinton is really the ideal person to go there. You also see too in her tender personality, her exciting stories, and elegant wisdom just why she becomes so important a person to Ingrid even after so long an estrangement. You want to be close to her, to understand and connect with her. Going through that in our stead, Moore handles Ingrid’s love for her friend with the utmost delicacy. She’s the one who must take on the trauma of Martha’s passing, and necessary steps to prevent herself being implicated in it given the illegal nature of what Martha strives to do. Through the pain and even occasional lapses in understanding, she inhabits a strength of sympathy so sweet to take in.
Almodóvar treats us to a few snapshots of Martha's past through the stories she relates -stories that belong to others who crossed paths with her- granting us a glimpse of the scope of her life. Martha is a very literary woman and so it is appropriate how these detours have a character almost akin to James Joyce -who is often referenced in the film, his story “The Dead” being quoted directly. We learn of her partner Fred, who came back from Vietnam traumatized, left before their daughter was born and later perished in a house fire. We learn of Martha's daughter, who from adolescence has been distant from Martha over her desire to find the father she never knew. And then there is the story from her time in Iraq when a Spanish colleague brought her to an ex-lover priest running a mission in war-torn Baghdad and she was tempted to publish a fictitious version of their love story. Each of these anecdotes she shares with Ingrid reveals a little something about her attitude towards mortality and death, so that you're unsurprised when the euthanasia pill comes up afterward. It certainly feels better weaved in than the digressions of Parallel Mothers.
Martha's death will be spontaneous; to assuage Ingrid's mental health and give herself some freedom, she gives Martha no set time except that she will know when the door to her room is left shut. And of course there is a false alarm, and another sequence of Ingrid suggestively questioning if Martha is sure in her decision -contrivances I figured Almodóvar wouldn't resort to. But apart from these, the mood over their friendship, their hikes in the woods, their nights watching movies in these ever uncertain last days, is by no means plaintive. Rather it is wholesome and mature. There's not the underpinning fear of death examined in Almodóvar's Pain and Glory, but it otherwise touches on a lot of similar themes of reconciling one's life before the end. And in addition to the controversial way that death comes about, it ventures a certain warmth and critical bonding in that. If His Three Daughters was about grief's ability to bring a family closer, The Room Next Door is about how it can solidify and deepen a friendship. Before hearing of the cancer, Ingrid and Martha were out-of-touch acquaintances -by Martha's death they are practically sisters. 
And Almodóvar appears to be grappling with a larger idea in these musings. In a curious scene late in the film, Ingrid goes to lunch with Damian (John Turturro), a past sexual fling of both women and currently Ingrid's partner. A climate journalist, he goes on a tangent of frustration about the dire future of humanity and the planet that can't help feel connected to Almodóvar's own opinions on the matter. And yet his cynicism is met by Ingrid's insight that in light of the doom, it is our relationships we must put stock in. It would appear to be something she learned from her proximity to Martha, and it comes at just the right time.
Flourish makes a difference. In one gorgeously ambient scene, the two women lay side by side as they watch the rain outside the hospital window -Martha observes that it is pink, and the room is cast in a rosy radiance. It leaves an aftertaste throughout the movie, with reflective moods and compositions up to the ending, which again asks for a leap from the audience, yet one that is surprisingly easy to accept. The film can't help but feel good. The Room Next Door is a touching story on friendship at death, radical enough in that fact without Almodóvar's particular graces and emphatic virtues. It has these in spades though, and as much life as anything he's made.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more

Back to the Feature: New York, New York (1977)

New York, New York  is a two hour forty minute musical movie largely about a toxic relationship and I understand why it was Martin Scorsese’s first big flop. Some have blamed its poor reception on the kind of movie it was, of a style and tone Scorsese wasn’t known for, but I find that hard to believe. Even after only five films, he’d proven himself an extremely versatile director, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore  found an audience. Sure this jazz musical love letter to New York City was following up Taxi Driver and its’ far more cynical take on the city, but then it’s also ‘from the director of Taxi Driver ’ which itself was a big hit. Was it a matter of public appetite for musicals, or mere word of mouth and early critical reception that dissuaded viewers? Irrespective of that, I was stunned to discover this movie was the origin of the titular song, which I’d assumed was much older (it’s definitely got the sound of something that might have come out of the Jazz sce...
Post a Comment
Read more