RABBIT HOLE
RABBIT HOLE, directed by John Cameron Mitchell. Starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart and Dianne Wiest; 91 minutes. Images: Roadshow – Nicole Kidman and Dianne Wiest; headshot: Aaron Eckhardt.
POOR OLD NICOLE KIDMAN – and we know she’s mega rich and barely 40 so what I’m really on about here is good grief, enough already with the Botox jokes. How dispiriting to be stalked by snide conjecture about cosmetic procedures and gynaecological minutiae rather than figuring in discussion based on your work. There’s something oddly mean-spirited about the way people rip into Our Nic. Not for this tall poppy the affectionate good-on-yers lavished on Our Jacki as the Golden Globe hype morphs into the Academy Awards this time round. Nor was that sort of barracking forthcoming last time she figured so notably in the Oscar race, when, let’s remember, she actually won the Best Actress Award for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in Stephen Daldry’s The Hours.
Of course on that occasion, according to her detractors, Kidman only got the gong because she was working in tandem with a seriously strange fake schnoz – on the principle that weird physical transformations are automatically front-runners for major awards. (Think twitchy savant Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man; gibbering Geoffrey Rush as David Helfgott in Shine, and <>b>Colin Firth doing his five star stammer in The King’s Speech). Then again, in the gossipy glossies’ version, Kidman only got to be a star in the first place because she married Tom Cruise.(Notwithstanding that she started in movies as a teenager and won her first AFI Award at 20 and has managed to make numerous major movies since she gave her Scientologically-challenged ex the heave ho.)
Anyway, for those who haven’t been paying attention, Kidman has notched up quite a catalogue of memorable performances, including, apart from The Hours, Dogville, To Die For, Cold Mountain, The Interpreter, and Alejandro Amenabar’s The Others. Amenabar’s supernatural thriller comes to mind here because on that occasion Kidman was very convincing as a tightly wound woman marooned in a strangely out-of-sync world and trying desperately to hold it together. And that, for very different reasons, is her situation again in Rabbit Hole, a difficult, demanding role that sees Kidman at her very best.
Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by David Lindsay-Abaire, the title summons up the topsy-turvy world Alice encounters when she blunders through the looking glass. Rabbit Hole ventures into tricky terrain, with the story of a couple reeling in the maelstrom of emotions that has engulfed them up after the accidental death of their child. It’s the kind of scenario where melodrama and histrionics lurk perilously close in the wings – and Hollywood has given us more than enough stops-out maudlin in this area to make us fear the worst. Yet all that is a world away from the delicately observed storytelling that takes hold of us here, in the (ominously) quiet unravelling of this bereaved couple.
As Kidman and Aaron Eckhart play it, it’s a process whose seismic shocks are no less disturbing for being muffled by their clumsy (and very different) efforts to make themselves over as real, when in fact– as this screenplay understand so well – the unexpected loss of a loved one instantly transports you into the unreal. You’re suddenly a stranger in a strange land; a parallel universe from which other people, blearily observed at a distance, appear, inexplicably, to be going about their normal lives.
Eckhart’s Howieis at least able to let some of his grief show, hiding himself away from the wife he loves but can’t reach despite his best efforts; obsessively replaying a video of his son and finding solace and maybe more with a woman they encounter at a therapy group. Kidman’s Becca meanwhile, is like a puppet that’s gone a bit wonky, her efforts at a crisp, in-control demeanour coming across as oddly herky-jerky. Detached in her separate existence, she is – painfully for the viewer – oblivious to the hurt and embarrassment her behaviour is visiting on well-intentioned friends and loved ones. Like her casually smart-arse dismissal of a fellow sufferer’s religious belief at a group therapy session, and the scarifying response she hurls at her mother (a wonderfully bruised but battling on Dianne Wiest). This is a film operating way beyond the “closure” clichés and it knows there are no easy answers. Everyone wants to make it better, but nothing anyone says really works.
If it sounds depressing, the surprising thing about this film is that it is so engaging and warm; even funny at times. There is a genuine sweetness too in the interaction between Kidman and the young driver who was involved in the fatal accident (a lovely performance from newcomer Miles Teller). Not a lot happens, but the small, delicately calibrated developments in the lives of these hapless characters struggling along life’s path build step by step into an engrossing story. We watch them with concern, and we wish them well. The appealing thing here is that this is not just a touching human story, but also one that has a lot to say. Grief is a land we don’t all get to visit, and don’t really understand. Rabbit Hole says this is a part of life. Watch. Learn. Care. And that’s quite an outcome.
