A Review: The Dark World of a Man After Mental Collapse

A look at the short film Enter the Room, directed by Harry Waldman

Short films have always offered exceptional opportunities for experimentation. Filmmakers who wish to explore unconventional spaces, venture into uncharted territory, or adopt less familiar forms of expression usually turn to the short format. The primary reason is practical: the tools, form, runtime, and production costs of a short film are far more manageable than those of a feature. This freedom allows a filmmaker to execute ideas with precision. A second advantage is the audience. Viewers of short films tend to be more attentive and specialized in their approach to cinema. From its very first image, Enter the Room signals that it is an experimental work intent on entering new territory.

The film opens on an anxious man sitting in a room, apparently waiting for something or someone. The images are bathed in blue, and moments later the title fonts appear in the same color. For viewers familiar with the significance of opening scenes, this blue is a deliberate signal. In art—and especially in cinema—blue carries layered and often contradictory meanings. It can suggest melancholy, loss, or inwardness. Expressions such as “feeling blue” and the tradition of blues music stem from this association. Blue-toned sequences frequently isolate a character from their surroundings and create a sense of emotional distance. The color is often employed in emotional dramas, stories of romantic failure, or internal crisis. Director Harry Waldman clearly understands these connotations and has chosen the hue with intention. This tense, unsettling opening is underscored by a tense and threatening score. It serves as a precise introduction to the character of Brian and is skillfully woven into his characterization.

Immediately after the opening, the story begins. There is a knock at the door; Brian opens it. The lighting, the rhythm of events, and the sudden absence of the score indicate that we have left the melancholic space and entered reality. With these simple elements the filmmaker marks the boundary between reality and nightmare, between the exterior world and the interior one.

One of the film’s strengths is its ability to seize the viewer’s attention and hold it. After the brief introduction, we are plunged into the heart of the story. We learn that Brian’s friend has arrived, according to a prior arrangement, to stay for a while. Everything begins with a misunderstanding: Brian expects payment for the use of his home, while his visitor believed the arrangement was a simple favor between friends. The surprise, however, goes beyond this awkward exchange. We discover that the newcomer is not a friend but Brian’s younger brother—an engaging point of departure. Listening to their conversation, we recognize Brian as a nervous, restless man, and the connection to the opening scene becomes clear.

The film’s most striking quality is its engagement with an eternal subject in the history of art: the relationship between two brothers. As the film progresses, we perceive the depth of the tension between them—a tension initiated by Brian and his self-centered, abrasive behavior. He wants everything for himself, places himself at the center of the world, and shows little capacity to regard his brother as a person with equal rights. While the younger brother displays patience, tolerance, and a complete absence of resentment or aggression, Brian remains filled with anger and anxiety. The contrast is especially evident in the performances of the two actors. Through careful expansion of the situation and deeper attention to Brian’s character, the filmmaker reveals the full extent of the damage in this relationship. Brian not only lies to his mother and others (claiming, for instance, that he is employed), but also appears to forget many of his own actions. He does not remember that he left the lights on when he went out, or that he himself ate the sandwich, yet he berates his younger brother for these things. The younger brother, who is trying to succeed as an actor, endures the constant stress of living with someone as difficult as Brian.

Another notable strength of Enter the Room is its ability to examine its subject from multiple angles, exploring both the obvious and the subtler aspects without lingering excessively on any single one. In the final third of the film, for example, there is a scene in which Brian converses with someone only he can see. The room is empty. After reading an email from a person who appears to have been a former girlfriend or partner, Brian grows agitated and begins speaking to this invisible figure. We then see his other self sitting opposite him, engaged in conversation. This figure eventually gives way to his brother, and Brian unleashes his full rage upon him. The shifting identity of the invisible interlocutor is Brian’s way of continually affirming his own rightness, confirming his position, and granting himself permission for his behavior.

What Harry Waldman does so skillfully is to keep descending further into the depths of the story. He continually uncovers new layers, repeatedly surprises us with events and revelations, and forces us to readjust our understanding of the situation. Toward the end we learn that there is no younger brother at all. All the arguments, all the events, all the awkward encounters have taken place inside Brian’s mind. The younger brother was imprisoned months earlier following an incident and has now been incarcerated for six months. Since that day Brian has lost his job, withdrawn, and become the anxious, unwell man we see. The obsessive behaviors displayed throughout the film stem from a serious crisis and trauma. Intense fear, helplessness, shock, emotional numbness, anxiety, anger, guilt, or shame are all consequences of trauma; after such an experience a person is often unable to behave normally. At the close of the film we return to the starting point—the same blue-toned opening images—and understand that Brian is trapped in a closed loop, forced to live this repetitive cycle again and again. In this cycle he blames his brother for the catastrophe that occurred and, in a sense, takes revenge upon him.

Enter the Room unfolds entirely within a confined space, no small achievement. The entire film is limited to a small apartment: essentially one room, a bathroom, and a kitchen. The filmmaker succeeds in telling his complete story with only two actors and a single closed location. As noted at the outset, this constitutes serious experimentation. Restricting oneself to a closed location is a considerable risk; it limits the available tools. Yet such constraints often become the source of creativity, and many inventive filmmakers have used them to realize distinctive and original ideas. Here the filmmaker reconstructs a mental space within the apartment. We feel as though we are inside Brian’s mind—in a stifling, enclosed place filled with tense events, interrupted only by fleeting rays of real life in the form of an email and a phone call with his mother. The two women—Brian’s mother and the woman named Laura in the email—are the sole signs of ordinary, non-psychotic existence, the only people who maintain contact with Brian from a world without tension or madness. Through these slender connections the film makes a significant point: it invites us to see the world through the eyes of someone who is ill. The filmmaker asks us to look through Brian’s perspective—the perspective of a man who has endured a mental crisis, been wounded, and now lives daily with the scars of that injury without knowing how to heal them. Seeing through Brian’s eyes offers a valuable opportunity to understand people in similar situations—people who are damaged and wounded and who, at first glance, may appear frightening.

https://vimeo.com/387311561

Enter the Room makes skillful use of the resources cinema places at a filmmaker’s disposal. Within a closed location, with two actors, and relying solely on cinematic language, it presents its subject, develops it, and brings it to a climax and resolution. It is a compelling, well-paced film, full of ideas that invite reflection.