Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

The Keeping Room Blu-ray Movie Review

3 Women (in 1865)

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 7, 2016

The Keeping Room demands close attention but richly rewards it. It's a bleak, spare film peopled by characters whose faces say as much as their words. It punctuates long arcs of quiet tension with abrupt eruptions of shrieking violence. It's the kind of film that can provoke strong but opposite reactions. Some viewers will be riveted; others will wonder what the fuss is about.

Screenwriter Julia Hart first conceived of her story while visiting friends on whose property several Civil War soldiers were rumored to be buried. Envisioning how those soldiers might have come to such an anonymous resting place, Hart imagined a scenario that is both specific to the history of America's bloodiest conflict and universal in its exploration of how war transforms both soldiers and civilians. Hart's script attracted the attention of Daniel Barber, director of the contemporary urban thriller Harry Brown, who proved to be an ideal match for the material, despite the radical change in setting from modern London to the 19th Century American South. As with Harry Brown's vigilante retiree, the characters in The Keeping Room are forced by circumstances into a conflict they would rather avoid. The fierceness of their response is a surprise to both themselves and their attackers.

The Keeping Room premiered in September 2014 at the Toronto International Film Festival, after which it was acquired by Drafthouse Films. Following a limited theatrical release, Drafthouse has now issued the film on Blu-ray, providing yet another fine addition to their unique collection.

The time is 1865, the last year of the Civil War, and three women face an uncertain future on a deserted Southern farm, where every day is a struggle for survival. By all appearances the main building was formerly a rustic but gracious household when it was headed by the father of Augusta (Brit Marling) and her younger sister, Louise (Hailee Steinfeld). Now their father and elder brother are long gone, fighting with the Confederate Army and presumed dead. The house has been mostly stripped of furnishings, the furniture presumably used for firewood and anything valuable traded for necessary supplies. The surrounding fields lie fallow, worked only by the two sisters and a slave named Mad (Muna Otaru) to raise crops for food. Shared hardship has forged new relationships among these women, erasing the distinction between slave and owner more effectively than any government proclamation.

The transition is hardest for sixteen-year-old Louise, who as a girl probably looked forward to a pampered emergence and gentleman callers, but now finds herself reduced to a laborer. Augusta, the elder sibling, has assumed the stoic attitude appropriate to the head of the household, a role that has fallen to her by default. (Their mother died years ago.) Mad, though still deferential out of habit, is acutely aware of the de facto equality that their straitened circumstances have forced upon the group. Slights that once would have been borne without question are no longer tolerated. When Louise protests that Mad, not her, should do the heavy work, Mad stands her ground, confident that Augusta will back her—as she does, in the strongest possible terms.

This already precarious existence finds itself threatened by two lines of attack. The first is foreshadowed in an opening title card quoting General William Tecumseh Sherman, whose troops are steadily advancing across the land, their approach announced by the distant glow of the flames that are burning the Confederacy into surrender. The second threat is more limited but no less deadly. It comes from two violent men who are memorably introduced in the film's opening sequence without a word of dialogue. They will later be identified as Moses and Henry (Sam Worthington and Kyle Soller), and it's unclear whether they are soldiers, deserters or just outlaws. In a telling detail, Henry wears the Union's blue uniform, while Moses' coat is Confederate gray, but the men act with a single purpose, which appears to encompass nothing more than drinking, rape and murder. When a chance encounter prompts them to follow Augusta home from a search for medicine, they invade the farm, expecting no opposition.

Screenwriter Hart cites both Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah's original) and Night of the Living Dead as inspiration for the siege toward which The Keeping Room builds with a mounting sense of dread. As in those earlier films, desperate efforts to maintain a makeshift fortress tests relationships that are already strained and reveals sides of the combatants they would otherwise have kept hidden. Already united in hardship, the three women now share the common threat of sexual violation—a subject on which Mad, the slave, is sadly an expert, as she reveals in a spellbinding monologue. All of them must now learn to handle firearms, something that so far only Augusta has done in the hunt for food—and there is no time for target practice.

The title of The Keeping Room refers to the common name for a Southern farm's kitchen, which was often housed in a separate structure to protect the main building from threat of fire. It is here that one of the film's most significant confrontations occurs, where combatants separated by gender, purpose and circumstances achieve a startling moment of recognition of what they have all become. The inexorable march of war has transformed even those not directly in its path, and no one emerges unscathed, no matter how good or bad their intentions. Periodically throughout the film, we catch sight of a freed slave, Bill (Nicholas Pinnock), who is stealthily returning to the farm to rejoin Mad. Will he arrive in time to save the day, or will he be too late? In the unforgiving world of The Keeping Room, nothing is certain.

The Keeping Room Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Keeping Room was shot on the Arri Alexa by German cinematographer Martin Ruhe, who previously worked with director Barber on Harry Brown . Ruhe favored natural light, accentuated with illumination from oil lamps, to achieve a period look, and he and Barber deliberately adjusted the film's palette to play down the beauty of the surrounding countryside and emphasize the desolation of the three women toiling (and fighting) on a remote farm. Drafthouse's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, which was presumably sourced from the digital intermediate, captures the rough and dirty detail of the production design, costumes and makeup; the image shifts effectively between the overbright exteriors, where the women toil in the sun, and the darkened exteriors, with little to illuminate them. Several night scenes feature deep blacks, with figures reduced to silhouette. Noise, interference or other distortion are nowhere to be found.

Drafthouse has mastered The Keeping Room with an average bitrate of 24.99 Mbps, which is fine for digitally originated material, and the compression has been carefully done.

The Keeping Room Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Keeping Room's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA, draws sharp contrasts between the quiet of the countryside and sudden intense bursts of noise: a dog barking loudly, a horse's hoof beats and, especially, gunfire. The sound design makes effective use of noises that would normally fade into the background, like the flies that buzz a little too loudly when Augusta makes a startling discovery, or the distant voices of Moses and Henry outside the farmhouse they are attacking. Most of the dialogue is quiet and understated, often reflecting the speaker's fear of saying the wrong thing, but it is always intelligible. The mournful score, punctuated by violins, is by Martin Phipps, another veteran of Harry Brown.

The Keeping Room Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Actress Brit Marling and Writer Julia Hart: This is a lively and informative commentary that provides insight into the production (for which Hart remained on set throughout), as well as astute assessments of the many shifts in relationships among the three main characters. The writer and star joke at the end that they'd be happy to keep talking about the film past the credits.



• The Making of The Keeping Room (1080p; 1.78:1; 11:16): This EPK-like featurette was shot on location in Romania, where the production recreated farm buildings from the antebellum South. The actors are in costume, interviewed between takes. Marling, Steinfeld, Otaru, Worthington and Soller speak about their roles.



• Trailers
• The Keeping Room
• The Congress
• The Connection
• Spring



• Booklet: Drafthouse's booklet contains lengthy production notes (by an unidentified writer); stills; and film and disc credits.



• Digital Copy.

The Keeping Room Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Recent cinema is filled with post-apocalyptic visions of a blighted world, including The Road, the Mad Max series and How I Live Now. The Keeping Room reminds us that one doesn't need to look forward to find characters coping with an apocalypse. "War is cruelty", says General Sherman, in the quotation that opens the film. "The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." When it is over, worlds have been destroyed. The Keeping Room takes us deep inside such a world, one rarely examined in depth or with so much appreciation for the courage of survivors. Highly recommended.