DVD Reviews

Rabbit Hole – Blu-ray Review

By June L. Apr 25, 2011, 14:30 GMT

This is the extraordinary story of Becca and Howie. Eight months ago, they had a picture-perfect life with their young son. Now, they are posing as normal in the wake of an enormous loss; blindly looking for footing in a sea of new emotions. This is the remarkably moving journey of a couple finding their way back to love. ...more

Becca (Nicole Kidman) and her husband Howie (Aaron Eckhart) lost their four year old son eight months ago and the grief of this event will not turn them loose. In a film adaptation of his play David Lindsey-Abaire presents a portrait of grief that is life changing and different even for the two people most closely involved.

Sandra Oh’s character Gabby perhaps says it best when Howie and Becca are at a group meeting of bereaved parents. “we are all in different places.” She means in the grieving process, and it couldn’t be truer for Howie and Becca. Both are devastated, and want to move on, but cannot connect in the actions and so appear stalled in their healing process. Becca can get rid of the pictures on the fridge and her son’s clothes, but she can’t eat and isn’t dealing well with others.

Howie is shocked by the removal of reminders of their son, and watches videos of the family late at night, but he is trying to reconnect with Becca in a rebuilding of their fractured marital relationship. Neither one is sleeping and both are trying to work out what to do next, trying to appear as “normal” as possible.

Nicole Kidman won a nomination for Best Actress for her portrayal of Becca, a woman who is complicated and caring to the point of being painful to those around her. One gets the feeling that she has tried without much success to put herself back into life, and she doesn’t suffer foolish denials of others, which at times makes her seem cold or cruel.

She cannot accept platitudes such as “God took our child because he wanted another angel” and she speaks up voicing her opinion on the subject. Howie is baffled by it all, and tries to change the downward spiral of non-communication the only way he knows how, by trying to renew physical relations.

Becca isn’t ready for that, or feels she isn’t, and avoids Howie’s advances. This is a difficult movie to watch, as the pain of the characters is so present throughout. Even the peripheral characters are in their own types of hellish emotion and no one seems to be able to speak freely or connect with each other to make it any better.

Rabbit Hole on Blu-ray is stunning, scenes of life in the suburbs, not glorified, but as they are, the perfect home and envirnos of Howie and Becca jar against the chaos of their emotional states. Everything looks normal, but it is a masking of what is really happening.

Running time for the film is 92 minutes, but sometimes seems longer as there are such struggles to go through. Special features include an audio commentary with the Director, the Writer and the Director of Photography which provides an additional dimension to the film. Deleted scenes and a theatrical trailer round out the disc.

The acting is superb, as the people and the situations feel so real, especially in places where it could degenerate into melodramatic excess. Tight and well written, Rabbit Hole charts the journey of Becca and Howie through the wastelands of grief and suffering.