The film was shot with an aspect ratio that matched the stage play’s claustrophobia. The apartment — Charlie’s apartment, the place he cannot leave — was the world of the film, and the cinematography was designed to make the viewer feel the confinement without rendering it static. For a film about a man who can barely move, it has a remarkable amount of kinetic energy.
Critical response was divided in ways that reflected genuine debates about what the film was doing. Some critics found it moving, its portrayal of Charlie’s internal life the most human and generous thing Aronofsky had ever made. Others found it manipulative, its use of Charlie’s body as the central visual element verging on the exploitative in ways that couldn’t be entirely redeemed by the quality of the performance at the center. The fatphobia debate — whether the film’s casting of a conventionally built actor in a fat suit, and its visual attention to that body, perpetuated the representation problems it was ostensibly trying to address — was substantive and was engaged with by critics, scholars, and advocates for fat representation with varying conclusions.
What almost no one disputed was the performance itself. Fraser’s work as Charlie was, by critical consensus across even those who had reservations about the film, the thing the film had unmistakably gotten right.
## Venice, September 4, 2022: The Room Rises
The 79th Venice Film Festival is one of the oldest and most significant film festivals in the world. It runs in early September at the Palazzo del Cinema on the Lido, a barrier island off the coast of Venice, and serves as one of the first major showcases of what will become the fall awards season’s most significant films. Atonement premiered at Venice. Brokeback Mountain. The Favourite. Gravity. Black Swan, Aronofsky’s earlier film, won the Golden Lion there in 2010. The selection of a film for Venice, and the reception it receives in the Sala Grande, are considered meaningful indicators of how the broader awards season might unfold.