The Screenwriter’s Art: “Rabbit Hole”

On Sunday, January 2nd, the NYT had a special section called The Oscars. It’s got some excellent articles and I highly recommend it.

One of the features they ran was excerpts from four screenplays, each likely to be nominated for this year’s Academy Awards. Today: Rabbit Hole, screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire, based on his play:

Becca (Nicole Kidman) has been numb with grief since Danny, her 4-year-old, was killed by a car. Now, eight months later, her mother, Nat (Dianne Wiest) — whose son, Becca’s brother, died at 30 — is helping Becca to put away, finally, the little boy’s things.

Int. basement — day

Becca and Nat carry the milk crates of Danny’s stuff down to the basement, and put them in the corner with a few other things Becca has put aside.

Becca stands there, taking it in. Danny’s been reduced to a small corner of stuff in the basement. She lets out a breath, then turns to her mother.

BECCA: Does it ever go away?

NAT: What.

BECCA: This feeling.

They lock eyes. Nat can see she actually wants an answer. Maybe for the first time ever.

NAT: No. I don’t think it does. Not for me, it hasn’t. And that’s goin’ on 11 years.

(Beat)

It changes, though.

BECCA: How?

NAt: I don’t know. The weight of it, I guess. At some point it becomes bearable. It turns into something you can crawl out from under, and carry around — like a brick in your pocket. And you forget it every once in a while, but then you reach in for whatever reason and there it is: “Oh, right. That.” Which can be awful. But not all the time. Sometimes it’s kinda … not that you like it exactly, but it’s what you have instead of your son, so you don’t wanna let go of it either. So you carry it around. And it doesn’t go away, which is …

BECCA: What.

NAT: Fine … actually.

They’re silent for a couple of beats. Becca nods a little. Nat turns and heads up the basement steps.

In Hollywood many movies are what they call wish fulfillment stories, where the viewer can enter into a wondrous fantasy through the Protagonist’s experience. It’s me who scores the winning touchdown! Me who gets wined and dined in Monaco. Me who blows away the bad guys.

Then there are movies like Rabbit Hole. What to call these? Nightmares? What other name can we have? I doubt a parent has any fear greater than losing their child.

And yet that’s precisely the power behind a movie like Rabbit Hole: to provide a safe place for people to go to experience vicariously through the characters in the story the grief we would feel in such a horrible eventuality. 

Stories serve a multitude of purposes. Having the opportunity to feel emotional pain at the safe distance of that lived out by Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart), the lead characters in Rabbit Hole, is one of them.

The movie’s trailer: