Rabbit Hole
Review
by Anthony Morris
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Rabbit Hole
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Films about grief are tricky to pull off. Not just because watching
people grieve is often depressing either - grief is also boring, a lead
weight around your heart that just sits there for months at a
time. Rabbit Hole
isn't a perfect film by any stretch, but for a film entirely about
grief it does manage to - mostly - avoid sinking the viewer into a pit
of depression and boredom. With his adaptation of David
Lindsay-Abarie's play, director John Cameron Mitchell doesn't spell
anything out. It takes a while to even realise that the glum, stilted
atmosphere between wel-off suburban couple Becca (Nicole Kidman) and
Howie (Aaron Eckhart) is because of the recent death of their
child. They are dealing (or not) in different ways : she's
pretty much shut down, just wanting to move on and not talk about it,
while he's always going on about the importance of their support group
and letting his feelings out. They can't turn to each other, so where do they go? She
befriends the driver of the car that killed their child, while he
starts smoking dope with another disaffected member of the support
group. Neither solution can be a permanent one, but maybe they'll find
a way to move on at their own pace. High stakes drama this
isn't, but as a look at grief this mostly hits the mark without ever
really seeming to plumb the depths of despair. The
performances are vital in an understated film like this and both Kidman
and Eckhart are fine without really breaking out into truly exciting
work.
Rabbit Hole is
a good film and a solid drama, but it's never that exceptional - and
for a film about loss and grief, if you're not being exceptional, why
bother taking audiences there? 3 out
of 5
Rabbit Hole
Australian release: 17th February,
2011
Official
Site: Rabbit Hole
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Sandra Oh, Jon Tenney, Dianne Wiest, Mike Doyle
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
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