Rabbit Hole
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Year Released: 2010
Rating: 2.0
An unhappy couple - Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart - mourn, mourn and m-o-u-r-n the death of their young son, who was killed by a teen driver (Miles Teller), with each 'coping' in their own way: the husband busies himself with work and smoking pot while the wife weeps and tries to connect with the boy who took her son's life. I'm sure that the immediacy and intimacy of the stage helps playwright/screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire's work, but the screen strips that closeness away, leaving even more (unwanted) distance between the viewer and the characters: Scott Black is correct in calling this an exercise in grief porn, in which the sadness becomes fetishized, and the humor in the stage play gets lost. Kidman is quite good, however - in every scene she looks like she's trying to tell herself to keep her chin up even though with every step she's ready to fall apart.
