Friday 22 January 2016

Room the movie and one A-Ma-Zing mother






If I tell you what Room is about you probably won't want to see it. The premise is based on a girl abducted, raped and kept captive in a single room, so far so horrible. But the film picks up the story seven years after her capture and depicts the frankly incredible relationship between the captive mother and her five-year-old child by her captor.

While critics and viewers alike have waxed lyrical about the performances of the lead characters Brie Larson as Ma and Jacob Tremblay as her son Jack, what really made me sit up and take notice were Ma's amazing skills as a mother.

Here is a girl who was snatched off the street in her teens, repeatedly abused by her kidnapper until she becomes a single mum left to bring up a child alone in a tiny room. As a mother who had children in a loving marriage and brought them up with all the mod cons imaginable, I was so moved by what a great job Ma did with nothing at her disposal beyond her imagination and a fierce desire to protect her child from the horror of his surroundings.

As I drive my children around in a car to the cinema or to go bowling, they annoy me to the point of screeching on a regular basis. I very rarely find the time to amuse them with anything other than an iPad or the television and flights of imagination are in very short supply, and this is how good a job I can do while bringing them up in what is comparatively the lap of luxury.

I can't imagine how I would cope should I be stripped of all of this and left to my own devices with my children in a single room. Suffice to say I suspect my captor would soon be begging us to leave.

The concept of creating a limitless world for your child, within four grotty walls left me speechless with admiration. To be cooped up day in, day out with a child, with no park to wear him out, no babysitter to give you respite, not to mention the constant unwanted attentions of your abuser, his father, would be nothing short of a living hell.

Yet Ma really does make the best of it, putting those of us who struggle in much more hospitable circumstances to shame. Room is not only a great film, it is a perfect depiction of the epitome of a good mother and one that left me feeling both awed and hugely inadequate.





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