Every movie has a theme, but some movies are more thematic than others. ""Rabbit Hole"" is one of those movies. Search through ""Rabbit Hole"" for plot and you'll find some, but not much. Examine it for showy camera work or snappy catchphrases and you'll come up short. What you will find is grief, and you will find that in spades.
The grief comes from husband and wife Becca and Howie, played by Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart, respectively. ""Rabbit Hole"" finds the couple eight months removed from the tragic death of their young son, and while it's impossible to define the right way to cope with that situation, it is definitely apparent that they are not coping well. Becca in particular is clearly struggling, especially when the internalization of her grief results in borderline sociopathic behavior toward those around her.
As a film, ""Rabbit Hole"" acts as an examination of Becca and Howie's grieving process. Director John Cameron Mitchell, known better for more shocking fare such as ""Hedwig and the Angry Inch"" and ""Shortbus,"" tones down his work to adapt David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning play from Lindsay-Abaire's own script.
Mitchell has excellent support from his cast, thanks to great performances by Kidman, Eckhart and Dianne Wiest as Becca's scatterbrained but well-intentioned mother. But in this analysis, Mitchell's eye is more important than anything else, and while he clearly is able to bring a unique look to the grieving process, he veers away from that perspective at some key moments.
""Rabbit Hole"" is at its best when Mitchell eases it into a slow burn, with the tension always simmering under the surface but never really getting out. It works well because ultimately the film is not building to anything – its end game revolves around simply learning to exist and live with pain, something people do not learn through inspiring revelations where a glowing idea bulb pops up above their head.
But this slow burn doesn't last, as Mitchell and Lindsay-Abaire insist upon throwing in conventional dramatic beats to make the movie pop. The movie's dramatic descent begins with a heated shouting match between Becca and Howie, a standard scene that appears in every relationship drama but doesn't make much sense for these characters. Mitchell is a talented enough director to convey the same amount of conflict through a more subdued confrontation, and both Kidman and Eckhart have the acting skills to pull off the emotions needed for such a scene. However, instead, we just get a lot of conventional screaming and crying. It's so intense it becomes bland.
Even worse is Howie's monologue at the end of the film, which seems to be heading in a very nice minimalist direction as it starts. But then Mitchell moves us into a slow-mo montage with soft, comforting music, as Eckhart's lines start to become more monumental. In about one minute, Mitchell turns ""Rabbit Hole"" from an intimate story of grief's permanence into a saccharine tale about moving on.
And maybe the audience needed that. Maybe it would have just been too much to take without being calmed by a soothing string quartet and words of wisdom from the guy who played Harvey Dent. But it would have been so much more interesting if ""Rabbit Hole"" ended with a bit more uncertainty. Mitchell does leave us with some ambiguity, but he severely hedges his bets. Ultimately, despite tapping into such authentic, unexplored territory, Mitchell ends up shying away from it all, deciding that the ""Rabbit Hole"" was too deep to explore fully.
