The Oak Room

Director: Cody Calahan (Canada). Year of Release: 2020

A man walks into a bar. Actually, the film starts before this, but – given the amount in which it plays around with time structure, and the content’s affinity to shaggy dog stories – maybe this is as good a place as any to start.

Or maybe not, so let’s start again.

A deserted bar in the middle of a snowstorm. It’s twenty to eleven, and the bartender is closing up. Welcome to suburban Ontario, where the bars are shut around the same time that people in some other places are going out. As the bartender is cleaning the glasses, a large figure bursts through the door. When the figure doesn’t respond to being told that the bar is closed, the bartender, who we later learn is called Paul, picks up his baseball bat. The figure finally reveals his face.

Stephen left town quite some time ago, not even returning for his father’s funeral. Paul, who was friends with his father, is a bit pissed off with Stephen, but not half as much as people to whom he still owes money. Paul rings one of them, who is due to arrive before midnight. For the next 80 minutes, the clock ticks down towards the fatal arrival of Stephen’s pissed off and powerful creditor. All very High Noon, although the narrative will often jump out of real time.

Although Stephen went to college (Paul regularly refers to him derisively as “college boy”), he dropped out after one term. He has a way of talking out of the side of his mouth which makes him seem a little slow. Paul treats him with visible contempt, based more on Stephen’s arrogant demeanour than his old debts. Nonetheless he is persuaded to pour the younger man a shot of something on the house.

At one stage, Stephen pulls out a metal box, containing the ashes of Gord, Stephen’s father. Stephen wants to take his father’s ashes, but Paul is not sure that he deserves them. It is a reasonably memorable scene, but much of it does not ring true. The people we see on screen are acting and reacting to each other like actors, not like people would behave in real life. There is a lot of declamation in the film, and not much people actually engaging with what the other is saying.

When Paul serves Stephen a second drink, Stephen asks if he can pay with a story. Is there any place outside a film (or possibly a play) where the offer of a story is treated as acceptable currency for unpaid bar bills? Is it even a thing? There is a little too much artifice in this obvious plot device for me, but at least it does help break the monotony of a simple two-hander. As Stephen tells his story, we are transported back into his story, which takes place a few days previously.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. A bar in suburban Ontario in the middle of a snow storm. The bartender is closing up, when an injured man bursts in, demanding a little warmth before he makes his way. The bartender initially treats his customer with suspicion, telling him that they’re closed, but eventually relents and pours him a drink. Then the customer starts to tell a story about something that he’s witnessed.

There is a certain elegance about the way The Oak Room plays with time schemes. It’s no surprise that the film is based on a play – actually you have a sense that the script has been adopted without enough respect for the fact that film and theatre are different media which don’t exactly function in the same way. Stage actors need to project to an audience in a way that people in films do not. Thus some of the dialogue feels a little stilted – staged you might say.

There is also the aspect of the blood. There is not much violence in The Oak Room, but when it comes it is unremitting This is to be expected in a film which was shown on a Horror Night, but somehow you didn’t really have the feeling that the film earned the right to go suddenly all psychotic on us. You (which means I) didn’t really have enough sympathy invested in the characters for this to be any more than mindless violence, out of synch with most of the rest of the film.

At one stage, Paul asks Stephen: “You’re telling me this story backwards? If I’m this bored by the ending, why am I going to bother with the beginning?” In doing so, he echoes the inner thoughts of much of the audience. We see things happening on the screen in front of us. We watch admirable techniques of switching between different stories. But, ultimately, its all a little too predictable, a little too boring. We don’t care enough about what is happening to whom.

A final point. There is a lot of testosterone in The Oak Room. For all the changes of time and place, we do not see, let along hear, a woman. This enhances the existing limitation that too many of the different characters are indistinguishable from one another. There is just not enough variety. This is a film that you might find impressive in a certain way, but it has little soul. Iz does its job, but this job is a little mundane for it to stay with zs too long.