In the Bedroom (2001)

Chief among the striking elements of the slow-burning critical favorite, In the Bedroom, is the final name in the opening credits: director Todd Field, a character actor best known to audiences as Tom Cruise's piano-playing friend in Eyes Wide Shut (2000). In his feature-length debut, Field showcases a languid pacing that perfectly suits the coastal Maine community of Camden, which he introduces as a hamlet of quiet insularity, its deceptive comfort peeling away into deep mourning. The soft background soundtrack of Boston Red Sox radio broadcasts is like an entrancing lullaby, heightening the sense of endless summer calm that the plot so viciously overturns. These instincts typify a veteran intuition on Field's part, which also coaxes career-best performances out of a number of actors, notably Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson, and Marisa Tomei. Spacek and Wilkinson routinely turn in good work, here offering award-worthy views into the unraveling of two previously contented salt-of-the-earth parents. But Field gets from Tomei a subtlety that was not even required in her Oscar-winning turn in My Cousin Vinny (1990), and has not been evident in her work since. For a consummate character study, In the Bedroom culminates in a manner some critics considered too theatrical, out of sync with the meditative two hours leading up to it. But nearly all of them were able to excuse the ending in deference to Field's detailed incisions into the paralyzing impotence of grief. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide