Fantasia 2020: The Oak Room
In Cody Calahan’s new film The Oak Room, the term ‘goose the truth’ is mentioned by one character. The phrase means, when you’re telling a story, that you “skip the boring shit, pump up the action, and give meat to chew on”. Don’t you wish every story was like that? In Calahan’s film, the truth is tested and goosed, but by how much?
The Oak Room stars RJ Mitte (Breaking Bad) as a college dropout and drifter, Steve, who finds his way back to his old hometown, which he hasn’t been to in three years. Through a snowstorm at night, he wanders into a bar his deceased father would often visit only to be welcomed back to not-so-open arms from a grumpy bartender, Paul (Peter Outerbridge). The man behind the bar is obviously not happy to see Steve at all since he abandoned his father during his raucous teenage years, abused his father’s money for college only to drop out, and has floating debt. You can feel how quickly the animosity rises making the film instantly uncomfortable.
Steve knows the tension is visibly apparent between them, so to soothe things down a bit, he begins to tell a story of an incident that happened at a bar nearby. Paul seems to calm down a bit but is still irritated and ends up confronting Steve about his father’s death and, again, a story that his father told him years ago, how his life is hell without his son. Resentment and guilt boil over to the third act where questions arise about sanity, the stories being told, and who these people really are.
From the short synopsis I read and seeing the poster, I was excited and expecting something brutal in an isolated location. Unfortunately, that was not the end result. The first word that comes to mind with this film is: convoluted. The script is good, but with an abundance of diatribes being told, the film needs to follow its own suggestions of goosing the truth. The meat and action of this film doesn’t really kick in until the third act, but by then it doesn’t help beef the film up in terms of substance. Act one and two move at snail's pace, getting to a point was all I was yearning for.
The Oak Room is a frustrating atmospheric slow burn that holds a strong point in its characters, pushing the film along, but misses the mark in keeping engaging and enthralling in the multitude of stories being presented. RJ Mitte does such a wonderful job at being calm, cool, and collected even when aggression is thrusted upon him and the burden of guilt looms over him like a dark cloud. His character was the only one that I truly cared about because he delivered.
For some, this movie will be right up their alley and to top it off it’s a mere 89 minutes. It’s a deep dive into guilt, facing issues of masculinity and trust. However, for me personally, the lack of umph made those 89 minutes feel like it was doubled.
