The Keeping Room

Three women, two white and one slave (Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld, and Muna Otaru), are trying to stay alive in the closing days of the Civil War in the South, and must fight off two renegade Union soldiers. It’s possible I might have liked this film if two things had been different. One, I admit I wasn’t really in the mood for a film this bleak, so it may have colored my judgement. But more importantly, there was no closed captioning. And almost all the dialogue was whispered. Another thing I will admit is that my hearing is not what it used to be, but Lee has hearing aids and she says she missed most of the lines, too. I hate that. Not that there was a lot of dialogue, as the scenes dragged on and on, pointlessly, but still, I want to know what they’re saying to each other. I gave this one the thirty minutes I will allow to any film that seems to have serious intent (only around fifteen minutes for a comedy, these days), and switched it off.