I’m trying to decide whom Rabbit Hole will satisfy. Anyone drawn to the theater purely by Nicole Kidman’s star power will find a film so deeply suffused by sadness that it hardly qualifies as “entertainment” in the usual sense. Those already familiar with the subject matter and hoping for a cathartic experience may be disappointed by the trite moral tacked onto the story.
The movie’s desire to end on a hopeful note is frustrating because it undercuts the more interesting question at its core: If a person doesn’t believe in a God and rejects the notion that there’s a divine plan at work behind even the most tragic events, where does she turn to make sense of this world? If our universe is inherently chaotic, governed by a series of random collisions and coincidences, then what’s the point of investing one’s emotions in the continuous effort necessary to live? When a squirrel darting into a street can cause everything that one values most to come crashing down, what’s the point of it all?
As the film opens, it’s been eight months since Becca (Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart) lost their 4-year-old son. The pictures he drew remain hanging on the refrigerator door. His bedroom sits just as it was before the accident. His upper-middle-class parents have continued playing out their lives — Becca planting in her garden, Howie playing squash at the club — but under the surface they are both severely broken.
They begin attending a support group for grieving parents, in a futile attempt to seek comfort. Another couple in the group speaks of how they’ve made peace with their own loss. God took their daughter, they say, because he needed another angel. Becca, who lacks any faith in an afterlife, lashes out at their delusions. “Why didn’t he just make another angel?” she asks, mockingly. “I mean, he’s God, after all.”
Becca never returns to the group after that. Howie does, and he strikes up a friendship with a woman who’s been attending for eight years. They make a connection, mostly because they’re able to enjoy each other’s company in ways no longer possible with their own spouses. Together they can set aside the overwhelming grief and relax. They’re able to have fun again.
Meanwhile, Becca begins to follow a teenage boy (Miles Teller) whom she sees riding a school bus one day. The mystery of why she’s stalking this kid is sustained well. (I felt a jolt of surprise in learning the answer.) It’s through her relationship with this boy that Becca is finally able to reorient her universe. He offers her a thoroughly scientific reason for beginning to believe again in the possibilities that remain for her life.
The scenes between Becca and the boy play with such truth and grace that I wish there had been more of them. Instead we get a late speech by Becca’s mother (Dianne Wiest), which serves only to underline the grating this-too-shall-pass, it-gets-better-one-day-at-a-time lesson. It should have been excised entirely.
And yet, as much as I consider that concluding message to be fortune-cookie philosophy, I can’t entirely discount that someone, somewhere might find comfort from it.
I’ve never faced anything like the tragedy suffered by these characters. It’s possible that for those who have, a fortune cookie is the perfect salve.
