In the Bedroom, A Modern Bourgeois Melodrama

In the Bedroom, A Modern Bourgeois Melodrama

Works Cited Missing

Studies in melodrama usually hover around the works of a few significant directors, all of whom were at the top of their craft in Hollywood during the 1950s. Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli, and Nicholas Ray were just a few of the directors who worked at that time, and all helped to shape the conventions of melodrama to which audiences and critics alike have become so accustomed. However, recent melodramas have been unable to reach the popularity that the films of the 1950s achieved, and most current audiences would dismiss the na•ve and artificial world that those films presented as rather trite. But Thomas Schatz raises an interesting point in his article "The Family Melodrama." He claims that "those who look more closely at [the films of the 50s] may see through the facile naiveté to an altogether bleaker reflection" (152). And, even though melodramas are not as widely seen as they were in the past, the ones that are still strive to portray the "[paradoxical] view of America, at once celebrating and severely questioning the basic values and attitudes of the mass audience" (Schatz 150).

Todd Field's 2001 film, In the Bedroom, is a perfect example of such a film. It is a bourgeois melodrama that reflects the sensibilities of melodramas of the 1950s, but also one that refashions the aesthetics of the genre to accommodate the interests of modern audiences. The film tells the story of a middle-aged couple, Ruth and Matt Fowler (Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson), as they try to cope with the murder of their adolescent son, Frank (Nick Stahl). When the film opens, Frank is romantically involved with Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei), a divorced mother. The Fowlers do not approve of this relationship, but allow it because of the happiness it brings Frank. When Natalie's ex- husband, Richard Strout (William Mapother), kills Frank in a fit of jealousy, the Fowlers must find a way to continue on with their lives in the wake of this catastrophe. Field, who also co-wrote the screenplay, creates an intriguing modern-day melodrama that both reflects the narrative principles of the films that preceded it and adapts the genre to meet the aesthetic expectations of contemporary audiences. Narrative choices in melodramas have become so commonplace that, like any genre, they have grown into a part of the genre's language.