Becca and Howie are very happily married, successful and have rather a charmed life, which is shattered when their only child, a 4-year-old boy, chases his dog into the street and is killed by an oncoming car. 8 months later they are still trying to come to terms with his death and find ways to not just being able to communicate with themselves, but also with their families and friends. They try Group Therapy which Becca soon shuns after other grieving parents claim their own losses are part of God’s great plan. And Becca needs to confront the fact that her wayward younger sister is now suddenly pregnant for their first time, and also deal with her own mother who insists on comparing the pain of the loss of her own son who died by a heroin overdose with that of her grandson. And as Becca and Howe start to find their own separate ways of dealing with all of this and try to move forward, they put their own relationship at risk.
The excellent and wonderfully rich movie completely avoids the trap of being the slightest bit maudlin and melodramatic and it deals with all their loss and all the other effects of this tragic accident so sensitively. What makes this so extremely watchable is the fact that the story seems not to be about healing, nor even finding any real consolation, but an attempt to give some sort of meaning to the awful experience that they suffered.
Nicole Kidman loved the Tony Nominated play it was based on and bought the rights to produce and star in the move, and I am so pleased she did. She is in her element with this superb pared down performance of a woman who is so brittle she could break at anytime. It is unquestionably worthy of an Oscar. Ms Kidman handpicked Aaron Eckhart to play Howie, and the perfect chemistry between them certainly helped him give the best performance I’ve even seen from him. And I should not fail to mention the superlative Dianne Wiest as the mother
R.T.V. The subject matter means that this rather beautiful movie would not be an obvious choice for quite a lot of people, which is a pity. It is excellent and does deserve a much wider audience than it will get. Go see it … unless maybe if you are on a first date
P.S. Two very surprising facts/trivia about Rabbit Hole. It’s written by David Lindsay-Abaire who won a Pulitzer for the play BUT then went on to write the Book & Lyrics for ‘Shrek The Musical.’ And the movie is directed by the multitalented John Cameron Mitchell who’s claim to fame so far is the fact that he wrote, starred and directed ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’, and then the very provocative ‘Shortbus’. Now there’s versatility for you
★★★★★★★★
