Starring: Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart and Dianne Wiest
Directed By: John Cameron Mitchell
Written By: David Lindsay-Abaire, based on his stage play
Produced By: Nicole Kidman, Gigi Pritzker, Per Saari, Leslie Urdang and Dean Vanech
Distributor: Lionsgate
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: Approximately 92 minutes
Website: rabbitholefilm.com
Budget: $10 million
Genre: Drama
Release Date: January 14, 2011
There’s a moment early on in Rabbit Hole where Howie (The Dark Knight’s Aaron Eckhart) sits alone, in the living of room of the expansive house he shares with his wife, Becca (Nicole Kidman), looking at the tiny screen of his phone, enrapt. On it is a video of their only son, dead a year and before his time. At this point of the story, the audience doesn’t know the full circumstances of young Danny’s demise, only that something happened to this child, this couple, who move through the unsettled motions of their otherwise picturesque American lives with the quiet, inarticulate despair of ghosts, hoping that repeating what they did when they were alive will be enough to revive them.
It’s not, and it’s also not the last time we see Howie turning to Danny’s baby video for something resembling comfort. Rabbit Hole is full of anguished, reflexive, recursive moments like this one. The hope of the characters is that doing the same action will have different results – the traditional warnings signs of insanity. They hope that on the other side of the Lewis Carroll “rabbit hole” is a world where everything turned out differently. For Howie and Becca, affluent suburbanites living out some version of the American dream, there is no life beyond their loss, and Rabbit Hole sees them trying to get a grip on their grief.
Adapted by David Lindsay-Abaire from his own stage play, Rabbit Hole is rife with elements that would seem trite in the context of suburban melodrama: Neighbors with awkward smiles, the promise of escape through work, the temptation of infidelity. In different hands, the setting and core tragedy could be handled with all the subtlety and sensitivity of a Lifetime Original Movie, playing every note for maximum volume and emotion. The direction is handled by the unlikely John Cameron Mitchell, known for more provocative movies like Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus, who expands his range with Rabbit Hole and produces something just as genuine, if not as outright subversive, as his previous films.
While Lindsay-Abaire’s script does a good job of avoiding the general staginess that plagues many plays that make the jump to film, the movie, like the play, is anchored by the performances of Howie and Becca. Both Kidman and Eckhart are notably (thankfully!) understated in their roles. Eckhart, about as underappreciated a leading-man type as you’ll find working in movies today, plays well off of Kidman, who, as always, becomes a better actress the further she gets from the vanity of movie-star roles. Together, they are sympathetic, vulnerable, and occasionally humorous (don’t let my use of the words “anguished” and “inarticulate despair” make you think there aren’t moments of genuine humor and warmth here). Howie and Becca are potential ciphers, blankly good-looking rich people who deal with their problems between home-gym workouts and summer barbecues. Eckhart and Kidman make it work. Supporting turns by Tammy Blanchard (as Becca’s wild-child sister) and Dianne Wiest as Becca’s mother also stand out.
There’s a lot that could have could have gone wrong in Rabbit Hole, from the concept to the talent before and behind the camera. There’s a well-trod element of suburban ennui that’s in fashion from American Beauty on through to 2008’s Revolutionary Road, but the handling of the movie’s central tragedy and what comes after keeps it from being another indictment of the horrors of social status. When Howie keeps turning to that video, the audience feels for him, even if everyone in the scene is a ghost.
3.5 Stars
