Review: John Cameron Mitchell's "Rabbit Hole" is Well Worth Exploring

John Cameron Mitchell and Nicole Kidman

Fans of out director John Cameron Mitchell are in for a real shock this time: his latest film isn't shocking at all.

Instead, the latest movie by the director of two cult classics, the sexually explicit film experiment Shortbus and the glorious gender-bending punk romp Hedwig and the Angry Inch, has made ... a subtle and touching meditation on the nature of grief.

This is Oscar-bait all the way: a sometimes quiet, always literate script based on a play starring a cadre of exceptionally talented, A-list actors, including Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest, and Sandra Oh.

What's this? Has Mitchell sold out?

It's clear he's playing in the big leagues now, but if this is selling out, more artists should do it. In its way, this subtle, challenging film is every bit as daring as Shortbus or Hedwig. It's just that this time around, mainstream culture might take note of Mitchell's considerable talent.

Eight months ago, Becca and Howie lost their four-year-old boy in a tragic car accident. Now they're both coping with grief in very different ways: he's taking a touchy-feely route, attending a support group and trying to get their lives back to "normal," while she's clinging to the past, even as she tries to destroy all evidence of it.

As the days and weeks pass, their lives diverge further: she befriends the teenage boy who was driving the car that killed their son (and whose also working on a comic book called Rabbit Hole, about parallel dimensions), and he befriends a woman (Oh) from their support group who is also grieving the loss of a child.

But what makes this movie work is that there are absolutely no villains. Becca and Howie are in deep, deep conflict, but one of them is not "wrong" while the other is "right." They're both right from their own point of view. How do you solve a problem like that, Maria?

Sandra Oh and Aaron Eckhart

This is a first class project all the way, a script with absolutely no easy answers. There's a sequence toward the end of the movie where the characters both strike out in what seem to be bold, climactic third-act story resolutions. We've seen such dramatic story-arcs a thousand times before, and we think this is all heading for a teary-eyed hug on the beach, looking out over the water. In the hands of a less gifted screenwriter (David Lindsay-Abaire, based on his play) and director, it might've gone there.

Instead, we get a defiantly non-resolution resolution, which is precisely the point. A child has died, he's not coming back, and two people don't really see eye-to-eye about what to do next: there can't really be a resolution to that.

In fact, in one of the movie's best monologues, Dianne Wiest, playing Nicole Kidman's mother and a woman who has also lost a child, is asked: does the pain ever go away? "No," she answers flatly and incredibly honestly. "It changes though. The weight of it. At some point, you can crawl out from underneath it, pick it up and carry it around with you, like a brick in your pocket. You don't like it exactly, but it's all you have left of your son, so in a way, you treasure it."

It's beautifully written and incredibly acted.

Speaking of which, Wiest is, as usual, Meryl-Streep-good, but it's especially noteworthy since this is a very different role for her. Eckhart is also excellent (and is his usual hunky self). I've never been a particular fan of Nicole Kidman's ice-queen persona, but even she acquits herself well, in a WASP-ish control-freak role she was pretty much born to play (and apparently she's been laying off the Botox, because her forehead definitely moves!).

But the best performance in the movie might belong to 23-year-old Miles Teller who plays the teenage boy who accidentally killed Howie and Becca's son. His performance is a terrific mixture of regret, confusion, awkwardness, and compassion, and I completely bought every second of it.

But let me also give credit where credit is due: our own John Cameron Mitchell who, it seems, is just as talented, and maybe just as surprising, even when his characters aren't screaming punk rock or participating in an orgy.