CAST: Nicole Kidman,Aaron Eckhart,Dianne Wiest,Tammy Blanchard,Sandra Oh,Miles Teller
rating: **1/2
The death of a child is shattering. And the devastation that follows is non-negotiable. How do you live,after? Rabbit Hole,based on a play of the same name,takes this intractable problem and tosses it at young couple Becca and Howie,and invites us to see how they are doing,eight months after the tragedy.
Truth is,they are doing very badly indeed. Becca (Kidman,up for a Best Actress Oscar) is a zombie,moving from one room to another,erasing all signs of Danny. There’s no attempt at trying to come to terms with something you have no control over: a wild sister’s unexpected pregnancy is a cause not for celebration,but more angry frustration. Howie’s (Eckhart) efforts at trying to prise her,and them,out of it are rebuffed: all Becca wants is to dig herself deeper into the hole,and the only solace she can find is,ironically,from scarred rabbit Jason (Teller),the schoolkid who was driving too fast that terrible day,and who didn’t swerve fast enough.
Doing grief is tricky. At its most effective,it can reach out and wrap itself around your heart. But Kidman is never given a chance to take it in,deep into herself,and bring it out. The appearance is all right — the pinched face,the sunken eyes,the careless putting together of the self,but you don’t feel it. Eckhart gets it right: it’s in the way he settles down in the settee,late at night,bringing his son alive in the video he has on his cellphone; it’s in the way he holds his wife,willing her to come back to him,to life.
Other performances make this film. Blanchard is terrific as Becca’s sister Izzy,who becomes pregnant and who is unsure how to deal with her sibling’s downer on everything to do with her. So is Sandra Oh,playing a therapy junkie,who brings a nice texture to her brief role. When Becca’s mother (Wiest) talks about the loss of a child (she loses an adult son,Becca’s brother),you see the weight that she’s carried all these years. But she doesn’t,like Kidman,make such heavy weather of it. It’s just there,says Wiest,something you carry in your pocket,and once in a while you forget it is there,and then you remember,and say “oh”.
Kidman tries too hard to get that “oh”,making Rabbit Hole a much less effective vehicle for loss and reparation than it could have been.
