Diractors is an ongoing series in which Hassle writer Jack Draper examines films, new and old, whose directors are better known for their work in front of the camera.
One of the longest and more standard lineages for a Diractor is the path from acting in theater to then making movies. The ability to adequately ring out a great performance from someone is heightened in an actor with theater experience raises versus a purely cinematically trained actor. Folks like Vincent Sherman, Irving Cumming, and Alexander Hall follow a similar pipeline of having taken smaller roles in Broadway productions, then supporting film roles, then ultimately directing studio pictures. As I’ve begun further and scattered research about what movies directed by actors look like in the 20th century, director John Cameron Mitchell is right in line with what was common in the ’20s through the ’50s, when it wasn’t normalized yet to see movie stars reach a new high directing themselves. Mitchell wasn’t born in cinema, and the grammar that comes from that but seeing this familiarity with performances that best suits the play is really great to see. The play, Rabbit Hole (by David Lindsay-Abaire, who’s also responsible for the screenplay), is one that really celebrates the actors’ abilities to get lost in events portrayed before the beginning of the movie.
Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart) are making every effort to go forward. Eight months after their 4-year-old (Danny) ran out into the street and was killed by a car, there’s nowhere to hide in the midst of the appropriate level of wallowing. Grief leveled them. Their sexual life came to an end. Grieving in their own way means they can’t see how to compromise, even without the correct way to process grief. The belongings of the child who no longer resides in the house surround them for a while as they live in a daze. Life hits a hard reset for them.
When they go to a group therapy session for grieving as a couple, Howie finds a sympathetic ear in Gaby (Sandra Oh), but Becca finds it to be a room full of self-righteous therapy addicts. And he discovers just that—an ear. He feels he must have been talking over Becca when he finds someone who can hear him. Additionally, neither her mother Nat (Dianne Wiest), who also lost a son to an overdose, nor her younger sister Izzy (Tammy Blanchard) are audible to her. She doesn’t even get along well with the dog. They’ve gotten to the point in their relationship where they can’t seem to find the proper words to say. John Cameron Mitchell’s film is fascinating since it boldly explores what you say back then.
Kidman, in a nominated performance, is the star of the show, the movie keeping up with her grieving journey. Becca befriends the teen who struck her son, Jason (Miles Teller), in a moment of acceptance. Unable to forgive herself, she attempts to forgive the individual at fault, or at least psychoanalyze him and use Jason as an exposure therapy for the teen son she’ll never parent. Meanwhile, Jason sorts out how he compartmentalizes his own guilt and sees her as someone who isn’t pushing him away, but how grief and guilt project the same emotions. Unable to navigate alone, Becca is surrounded by family and especially her mom, who’s perceived to be judging her but really deeply relates to Becca’s sadness. After a phone call that was a long time coming, Becca finally reaches out to Nat to ask in confidence, “Does it ever go away?” to which her mother can only be honest and reply, “No,” hoping this level of assurance can get through to Becca. I’d like to interpret that it does. Both Becca and Howie have equal amounts of sadness and emotional mess left to clean up that only increases when they refuse to acknowledge how weak their codependency has broken.
As pitch perfect as Kidman is, it’s her work with Aaron Eckhart (What the hell happened to this guy? He had the juice!) that makes the scenes with Becca and Howie feel alive. They make visible how much they’ve become strangers to each other the more distance they have from being parents. In one moment, Becca is accused of deleting a video of their son off Howie’s phone, which she claims she did by accident. Howie is fully indignant about this even with Becca’s reasoning that this wasn’t intentional, revealing once more that he isn’t any better at coping with their loss. Neither of these moments are true to the play (as well as Becca’s sister as a character) but their inclusion in the film by Lindsay-Abaire repeats this idea that we are forever stuck in the worst day of our life.
Mitchell began working in theater in the mid ’80s in Chicago. He swiftly moved to Broadway after acting in Huck Finn, a role he would reprise in Big River. He appeared on stage in The Secret Garden, Six Degrees of Separation, and Hello Again, receiving accolades in all three, as well as smaller film roles in Girl 6 and Book of Love. It was off to the races, however, with Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a production in which he wore the most hats of his career. Writing and starring while adapting his own book, Inch focuses on an off-Broadway rock musical about a genderqueer East German rock musician chasing after an ex-lover who plagiarized her songs. The film version, which is ripe to be written about here, is still admired to this day as a cult hit, with Mitchell’s performance receiving much of the acclaim.
After his next project, Shortbus, Mitchell felt a deep connection to Rabbit Hole, as he also had to sort out his grief after the loss of his four-year-old brother. Yet, unlike in his earlier films, Mitchell does not receive a producer credit in Rabbit Hole, making this quite the different world for the director. It was the first time he didn’t have final say, the first time he didn’t produce, and the first time he didn’t originate the work himself. “It was strange at first to be a director for hire,” he said. “It takes longer to make decisions when there’s more approvals necessary. These two producers – Per Saari and Leslie Urdang – had great taste, but you had to go through a process with these people to make decisions and they were very painstaking about every decision. Editing wise, music wise, shooting wise… So it took a lot longer to finish the film than it would have had I’d been in charge. And there’s some decisions I didn’t think were quite right at first, because of the amount of time it took. But now I know that their input made it a better film. They were right. We ended up making a better film than if just one of us had been in charge. I fully acknowledge that they made it a better film, and that I made it a better film with them. Everyone was necessary, and Nicole was very hands off with the direction. She stepped in once in a while and looked at it but her notes were more like ‘I don’t believe that moment. I’m not moved by that.’ And she was right by coming at it from this very instinctual actor’s point of view. So it was a great partnership.” Nevertheless, he maintains a complete vision and a sharp eye for working with actors at their full potential.
Rabbit Hole
2010
dir. John Cameron Mitchell
91 min.
Currently streaming on Kanopy, Hoopla, and Tubi
