Marrow
Synopsis
“Marrow” is an open-frame psychological drama about what truly haunts people. Open-frame in that the behavior and settings are realistic and part of the real world, psychological in that the film adds further exploration of the internal life of the protagonist.
The film begins when Frances, a single-mother living with her 16-year-old son Wiley, hears sounds of something trapped in the wall of the house. She is disturbed by the noises, which trigger memories of her father’s last words. A year prior, he described to her a vision in which rodents came to fetch him away to the afterworld. But instead of taking him, they bestowed a prophecy about his bloodline— that there is something in them that makes them behave like “dirty little rats.” She played along with him and helped him in his final days, even when he pressed upon her a difficult moral dilemma.
In the present, Frances is tortured by the memories. She imagines he is one of the rodent fetchers, watching her as she slowly works through the grief in the year after his death. To save money, she has moved into his house and is fixing it up. She lays traps to catch whatever is living in the wall and repairs the scars left scattered throughout the house—a hole punched in the wall, hundreds of hammer indentations in the floor.
When Wiley gets in repeated trouble at school, she starts to see him through the veil of her Father’s prophecy. She vigilantly corrects him at every turn, which makes him rebel even more. In her perceived expectation of being a good parent, e.g., having control over your own children, she feels like a failure and trapped in an impossible situation because she can no longer effectively control Wiley. At 16 he’s bigger than her, and has a strong will of his own.
Somewhere between hero and anti-hero, Frances is trying desperately to be a good parent, just as she tried to be a dutiful daughter. But at times she over-reacts. She feels manipulated by her father and son and frustrated by her inability to control them — so frustrated that she loses her temper and becomes exactly what she preaches against. She then realizes there is truth in what her dad told her.
In Frances’ journey of self-discovery, she tries to fix her house, she tries to fix her son, but in the end, ends up breaking everything — her leg, her relationship with her son. In utter frustration she initiates a climactic ceremony where she summons the ghost of her father. A physicalization, or perhaps hallucination, of the prophecy appears and changes her forever, leading to a metaphorical exorcism of grief and pain.
The film works the polarity between trapped and free, controlling and non-controlling, manipulative and honest, holding onto and letting go. The interior emotional map of the characters can be traced by watching their hands—what the hands are doing at any given moment is a clue to their internal lives.
Heroically, Frances finally figures out a way to break the cycle. She realizes that when she tries to control her son she traps herself in her own web, and that there is only one real way for her to be free.
The intense performance of Frances Hearn, full of raw, real emotion is balanced with the down-to-earth performance of Wiley Wilkins, who finally, suddenly becomes aware of his mother’s grief in the last moments of the film. Wayne Horvitz’ haunting and moving score supports the claustrophobic and noir-ish cinematography from Ryan Purcell.
