SLIFF 2015 Review – THE KEEPING ROOM

Review by Dana Jung

THE KEEPING ROOM screens Friday, November 6th at 4:45pm and Sunday, November 8th at 9:15pm as part of The St. Louis International Film Festival. Both screenings are at The Plaza Frontenac Theater. Ticket information can be found HERE and HERE

During the last days of the War Between the States, Augusta (Brit Marling, I ORIGINS, ANOTHER EARTH) and her younger sister Louise (Hailee Steinfeld, TRUE GRIT), along with the former slave Mad (Muna Otaru), are etching out a meager existence in the deep South, surviving one day at a time on sparse vegetables they grow in a barren garden, and little meat.  Their time is spent working all day, or longing for the days of old when they wore fine dresses and men came calling.  The sheer monotony of their isolated lives is slowly wearing the women down, but things change one afternoon when Louise is bitten by a raccoon and needs some medicine to fight the fever from the infection.  On a trip to a nearby saloon to find help, Augusta encounters two murderous Yankees, and soon the three women are fighting to survive when the renegade soldiers lay siege to their homestead, in the suspenseful new film THE KEEPING ROOM.

Stories depicting the women of the South left to fend for themselves when their fathers and brothers all went to war are certainly nothing new.  From the classic GONE WITH THE WIND to THE BEGUILED to COLD MOUNTAIN, several films have examined different aspects of these fascinating characters.  One thing most of these movies have in common is their portrayal of smart and strong-willed females who ultimately survive every physical and emotional tragedy that is thrown at them.   THE KEEPING ROOM adds its own twist to these tales, as it navigates a fairly simple story with excellent performances, a sense of historical realism, and themes of who really survives when a war is over.

Director Daniel Barber tells this story with a spare, almost elegaic style, accompanied by a lightly discordant string musical score.  The evil nature of the film’s main villains (Kyle Soller and a nearly unrecognizable Sam Worthington) is established in a brutal and shocking opening scene.  The mundane daily life of the women is shown as a series of chores, eating, and sleeping.  Both of these sequences have almost no dialogue, as Barber lets the camera reveal this information with visual details.  The first half of the film slowly builds the tension surrounding the women, as we know nearly from the beginning that they are on a collision course when the violence of the war comes knocking (literally) at their door.

Marling is wonderful as the solid and unflinching Augusta, never yielding one iota (as mama used to say) even as she worries that she’ll end up alone, not ever being with a man.  But Marling also shows the depth of her character in a heartrending scene in which she tells a version of the 1001 Arabian Nights to her deathly ill sister.  Steinfeld is at first a petulant and stereotypical Southern belle, but soon becomes the focal point of the plot as both older women attempt to protect her.  Otaru as the slave Mad is the most sympathetic character, as she relates her own experiences which are just as horrifying as the war.

In one of the most sadly beautiful scenes in the film, Sherman’s march to the sea is referenced as the women realize that war really is hell, even more so to those left behind than the soldiers who fight them.  In the end, these survivors have a plan that just might see them to safety, and on the evidence depicted in THE KEEPING ROOM, we understand how such strong and resourceful women truly won their war.