Daily Dialogue — October 29, 2016

“What’s even tricksier? Pretending to be sick and… play dead.”

— Room (2015), screenplay by Emma Donoghue based on her novel

Watch the scene here.

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Discipline.

Trivia: “Old Nick,” the name of the antagonist, is another name for the Devil in Christianity, dating back to the mid-17th century, most likely associated with Niccolò Machiavelli. Emma Donoghue, the author of both the source novel and the movie’s screenplay, has confirmed in several interviews that this was her purpose for choosing this nickname for Ma and Jack’s captor. For example, in 2010 (shortly after the book’s publication), Donoghue told the public radio interviewer Diane Rehm, “their captor…is known only by the nickname Old Nick, because he’s very much a devil figure,” and she told the faith-based website Patheos, “because it’s a mother raising a child who is potentially heroic, I saw it not only as being like Mary and Jesus with Old Nick as the Devil — in Britain, ‘Old Nick’ is a slang phrase for the Devil — so yeah, I saw the Mary and Jesus elements as pretty obvious, but also kind of Adam and Eve elements. To me it was important for Jack to be male. I liked the idea that they act as this kind of microcosm of human civilization, this male and female. And also as a contrast to Old Nick; he’s such a devilish figure, I thought having a really good male figure, in the form of Jack, kept that balance.”

Dialogue On Dialogue: Ma has been incredibly self-disciplined during the years in which she and Jack have been imprisoned. Here she uses the discipline she’s instilled in Jack to facilitate his escape.