The Second Room (1995) Online

It's always fascinating to see the early works of filmmakers, and thanks to its re-release, The Second Room is no exception. First films can be pretty hit and miss, make that mostly miss, but getting a peak at the cinematic jumping off point from 1995 for director Bryan Simon, was pretty terrific. I'd love to see where his filmmaking takes him a few decades from now with three films now under his belt.

Director Simon handles Ron Winterstein's cleverly layered script expertly and he is aided by great cinematography from veteran DP Lloyd Freidus. Winterstein's story follows Stanley, a bored architect who desires more from life, but doesn't have a clue where to start until he spies Moira and believes she has the answer. His daily routine of sharpening his pencils and placing them perfectly in a drawer seems to be all he has going on until Moira unknowing leads Stanley down a path from which he can never return. Richard Neil gives a strong and compelling performance as Stanley and C. C. Pulitzer is haunting as the beautiful Moria, the object of Stanley's misplaced attention. Films are often thought of as only a visual medium, but The Second Room is much more than that; words, images and a killer jazz soundtrack collide to make a very well executed and wonderfully complicated piece.

Actually, I watched The Second Room twice and found even more things to think about the second time around. A cleaner transfer from film to tape to digital media would have been nice, and a director's commentary track in the extras would have been cool, but it's understandable that the distributor would want to keep costs on a re-release to a minimum. This 21 minute film, keep in mind I didn't say short for good reason, feels like a feature film because there's as much going on here as in many studio or independent features today. New filmmakers could take a lesson from Simon and Winterstein when considering making a five or six minute short to showcase their talent. Less is not always more.

I reviewed "The Second Room," in 1995 for the Copley News Service. Since that copy is not available online, I've reprinted it here: The Second Room is a 22-minute cinematic short story set in Los Angeles. Its central character is Stanley, an alienated architect portrayed by Richard Neil, an intense and highly talented actor who creates an intriguing, unsettling character.

We never actually learn Stanley 's name during the course of the film, but its selection is clearly significant. It suggests an ironic counterpoint to Stanley Kowalski, the antithesis of this protagonist. The primal and decisive Stanley Kowalski (portrayed by Marlon Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire") never hesitated to seize what he wanted. This Stanley is paralyzed by disengagement, fear of experience and a warped intellectualism. He has no idea what he wants, much less how to get it.

The film alternates between Stanley telling his story to another man and scenes from the tale he is relating.

Stanley is an extremely unreliable narrator. He's not a liar - just fantastically, compulsively deluded. He becomes obsessed with a woman he bumps into -- literally -- in a restaurant. Her name, he tells us, is Moira (in Greek mythology, "destiny" or "fate") although she never tells him so. In fact, she never tells him anything. They never actually meet.

When Stanley speaks of "one time when we were having lunch together," he's actually seated at another table, merely shadowing and fantasizing about her. When he catches "a cab" to follow her, he romanticizes boarding her bus. And when she leads him "down to the beach," he's really tailing her through a residential neighborhood where he begins a steady habit of spying through her window.

Stanley is convinced that Moira has learned the metaphysical secrets of life that have eluded him so thoroughly for so long. His suspicion is clinched when he observes her in her sanctuary -- a candle-lit room in which she works, naked, at a watercolor painting in an attitude of freedom, comfort and something like bliss.

Stanley longs to find the fulfillment that she has, to learn her secrets. Like everything else in his skewed narrative, that fulfillment is a sorry dead end. The woman's release isn't metaphysical, it's pharmaceutical. She uses morphine, apparently to relieve some sort of chronic back pain. We see her wearing a brace and wincing in pain several times. At one moment the pain is so intense she snaps a pencil she's holding -- a symbol of Stanley,who recklessly sharpens them all day instead of actually doing any work when at his office.

Stanley discovers her secret in the film's literal second room, the place Moira went -- just out of his view -- to find her peace. To Stanley 's feverish imagination, however, this second room takes on immense metaphorical significance. He laments that he's spent his entire life in "the first room," outside the inner sanctum of release, fulfillment and true knowledge. He confuses her physical pain and artificial release with his spiritual pain and the ultimate experience he's longed for.

When Moira overdoses, with Stanley creeping around her bungalow, he complains that "she'd denied me completion ... the kind that she found." But he's not to be denied. He ultimately achieves the same "completion," a lethal injection for her presumed murder. His interlocutor throughout the film is the priest who's come to deliver his last rites.

For a film debut, The Second Room shows a strong directorial hand and the same keenness of vision he demonstrated at Stage Two, the Chicago-area theatre company he founded in the 1980s. The film is unmistakably a festival kind of product, designed to arouse interest in its maker. Its ambitiousness, its high style and its artful self-consciousness (much of which is due to Ron Winterstein's rather deliberate and highly literary script) are all calibrated to announce an artistic presence.

The Second Room makes that announcement quite clearly. Its intensity and unconventionality make the film a natural for Simon's debut. So does its story, which offers a striking contrast to his own.

"Confidence," muses Stanley, awaiting execution, "is a seductive concept... if you've never had any and are starting to get some." Bryan Simon has never lacked confidence. "The Second Room" shows why. He's captain of his own Moira.