“The Room Next Door” (2024) Pedro Almodóvar’s English-language debut comes with its strengths and limitations. It is a visceral melodrama with surreal undertones. The bright reds and greens along with its orchestral music highlight these dramatic shades in his usual style. However, the dialogues feel odd, stilted, and unnatural in many situations. Of course, they are filled with subtext and exude the emotions that he hopes to convey, but they keep viewers a step away from fully immersing in his fictional reality.
Despite those apparent shortcomings, the film is thoroughly stimulating, and filled with insightful discussions about life and death. It examines the themes of choice and autonomy on a microscopic and grander scale without resorting to any simpler one-size-fits-all-styled conclusions. It does so through a rekindled friendship between estranged friends, who offer each other company in trying times. Find the film’s ending explained here.
Spoilers Ahead
The Room Next Door (2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
“The Room Next Door” follows Martha and Ingrid, once close friends, who get back together and bond as Martha suddenly calls Ingrid for help. It offers them a chance to heal their old wounds and confront their fears as they face an unavoidable situation.
What happens in ‘The Room Next Door?’
“The Room Next Door” revolves around Martha (Tilda Swinton) and Ingrid (Juliane Moore), who used to work at the same magazine. While once close friends, they grow apart until Ingrid learns something shocking about Martha. Now a respected writer, Ingrid learns that Martha is suffering from cervical cancer. She meets Martha, bedridden in a hospital. Martha, a war correspondent, opens up to her about her past. She had a daughter when she was barely a teenager. Her then-partner, Fred (Alex Høgh Andersen) returned from war, deeply affected by the horrors he witnessed.
Martha allowed Fred distance and decided to care for their daughter, Michelle. Growing up, Michelle was curious about her father, but Martha never shared any details as she wasn’t privy to them herself. She got busy with her profession, which created a rift between her and Michelle. Eventually, out of curiosity, Martha asked a mutual friend about Fred, only to learn that he tragically died trying to save someone from an empty, burning house. In the present, Martha braces herself for an inventive method for her cancer recovery. However, the same procedure causes her excruciating pain and doesn’t offer her a longer life.
Instead of barely surviving in such pain, Martha decides to take matters into her own hands. She acquires a euthanasia pill and asks her friends to accompany her but to no avail. So, eventually, she seeks Ingrid’s help. Ingrid reluctantly agrees to accompany her. Together, they travel to Martha’s house in the woods. Martha panics as she forgets to bring her pill. She urges Ingrid to return immediately to her apartment to find it. After retrieving the pill, Ingrid returns with Martha and joins a gym to distract herself from the inevitable. Martha tells her that she will close her room door when she decides to take the pill.
The Closed Door
One morning, Ingrid wakes up to see Martha’s door closed and believes she has taken the pill. So, she starts weeping, trying to process Martha’s loss. Soon, Martha walks out and reveals she did not shut the door. It might have been closed by the wind. Anyhow, it makes Ingrid face her fear, viscerally. She meets her (and Martha’s) ex-boyfriend, Damian (John Turturro). Unlike Ingrid, Damian is rather cynical. He is deeply concerned about the climate crisis and the planet’s inevitable, impending doom. He is certain that humanity will not survive the consequences of its selfishly destructive actions.
As Damian has grown older, he has lost interest in things he once held dear. Martha shares that sentiment. However, despite a probable gloomy future, Ingrid takes a different approach to life. Damian appreciates this quality of Ingrid of how she doesn’t let her suffering be anyone else’s problem. Back at Martha’s place, Ingrid decides not to practice writing as she fears she might end up sharing some details from Martha’s plan. Martha, who plans to take the euthanasia pill, will do so after leaving a note for the police that it was her idea and Ingrid was in the dark about it. It will help Ingrid from not getting implicated in any criminal charges.
The Room Next Door (2024) Movie Themes Analysed:
Youth and Aging
Martha got pregnant as a teen and decided to have the baby without Fred’s support. However, she pursued her ambitions and did not want to lose on the opportunities that her youthful enthusiasm brought to her. Years later, she finds it difficult to concentrate while reading books and cannot seem to enjoy the things she once did. Damian, who used to care for poetry, finds it hard to care for artistic expression in a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable. They both experience aging from their overall loss of interest paired with a heightened sense of self-awareness. It also makes them painfully aware of their past mistakes. While youthful irreverence feels unavoidable at a point, it doesn’t look the same when seen as an older person with increased maturity and wisdom.
Death
Although technically a cancer drama, “The Room Next Door” isn’t solely about a person inching toward their death. It rather expects us to contemplate how we usually look at cancer patients and their recovery process. Martha looks at death differently than such dramas often do. She does not want to be self-obsessed and wallow in self-pity as she barely lives while suffering with a threadbare hope of recovery. Unlike her who embraces the inevitable, Ingrid is scared of death to the point she has centered her book around this fear. She gradually learns to be comfortable with an uncomfortable truth.
Death, besides love, also appears in discussions about their intersection with faith and religion. The cop looks at Martha’s choice differently as a man of faith. Faith-based beliefs also keep Martha’s former colleague away from his male lover. Besides the end of one’s life, death is discussed through its connection with the climate crisis. The gradual death of our planet along with outdated political morals will lead most humans to extinction. Then, one won’t be privy to choose death. Instead, they will succumb to it since they cannot survive.
Bodily Autonomy
“The Room Next Door” explores death through the angle of bodily autonomy. It asks the audience whether such a choice can be liberating or it is plain defeatist as often described in popular culture. This chain of thought brought me back to a scene from “The Pitt,” an American show that follows the hectic daily schedule of an emergency hospital. There, a senior doctor had to help a family choose what was best for their old, ailing father. The children hesitate to let their father die, but it can technically help the father not suffer considering the lack of options to fully recover him from his condition.
In this situation, the children face a similar dilemma that Martha or the ones around her do. They worry about whether they should accept death as a more humane solution instead of holding on to life with agonizing pain. So, the film leaves us to ponder upon these quandaries. Should we make a similarly humane choice if need be or should we hold on to life just to prolong it, despite pain?
Loss & Grief
Martha, a war correspondent, closely dealt with loss throughout her life. Through that experience, she realizes the value of a company in similarly trying times. That’s why she wants someone to accompany her as she takes the bold step. Unlike her, Ingrid refrains from talking about death in general. The firsthand experience of loss changes people differently. It leaves Fred with a horrifying PTSD. Eventually, he loses his life after entering a burning house.
Unlike what he claims, no one was screaming for help from this barren house. It is his projection telling him to save Martha, whom he left behind. Martha’s loss affects Ingrid and Michelle as they process their grief in each other’s company. While Michelle could not be close to Martha, her loss brings them spiritually closer. Ingrid, who grieves at a previous point after seeing Martha’s closed door, accompanies Michelle to process her grief.
The Room Next Door (2024) Movie Ending Explained:
How does Ingrid process Martha’s loss?
Martha continues with her daily rituals with Ingrid. One night, they watch a Buster Keaton film, together, followed by a film titled Death. Martha deeply resonates with the protagonist of the latter film. The next day, once Ingrid goes to the gym, Martha writes a note for her and another one for the authorities. She prepares herself to take her pill. Soon, Ingrid returns home to find Martha’s room door closed. She finds Martha lying on a sun lounger outside the house. Later, Ingrid is asked to meet the police for questioning. A cop (Alessandro Nivola) asks her in detail about her knowledge of Martha’s plans.
The cop tries to implicate Ingrid in Martha’s death as he finds Martha’s choice to be against the teachings of his faith. He also mentions a testimony by another one of Martha’s friends, whom Martha previously asked to accompany her. So, Ingrid seeks a lawyer’s aid to save her from the needless escalation. Then, she receives a call from Michelle. Ingrid invites Michelle to her mother’s house. Michelle, a spitting image of her mother, meets Ingrid and has a heart-to-heart conversation with her. Ingrid acknowledges Michelle’s pain of living with an absent mother and her desire to know who her father is.
Ingrid reveals what Martha couldn’t do about her life. Michelle empathizes with her mother and decides to spend a night in the house. She walks out to lie on the sun lounger, near-identically to how her mother used to. Michelle seems quietly overwhelmed with emotions as she can connect with her mother only after her death. Ingrid joins her as they look at the snow falling slowly on the ground. Although the snowfall is unusual considering the predicted seasonal climate, they embrace the present as it comes without judgment, at least for the time being.
