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The Door in the Floor
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The Door in the Floor is a 2004 American drama film written and directed by Tod Williams. The screenplay is based on the first third of the 1998 novel A Widow for One Year by John Irving.
film is set in an exclusive beach community on Long Island, where children's book author and artist Ted Cole lives with his wife Marion and their young daughter Ruth, who usually is supervised by her nanny Alice. Their home is filled with photographs of the couple's teenaged sons, who were killed in an automobile accident; the tragedy left Marion nearly catatonic and her marriage in shambles.
Ted and Marion temporarily separate, each alternately living in the house and a rented apartment in town.
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Encyclopedia
The Door in the Floor is a 2004 American drama film written and directed by Tod Williams. The screenplay is based on the first third of the 1998 novel A Widow for One Year by John Irving.
Plot
The film is set in an exclusive beach community on Long Island, where children's book author and artist Ted Cole lives with his wife Marion and their young daughter Ruth, who usually is supervised by her nanny Alice. Their home is filled with photographs of the couple's teenaged sons, who were killed in an automobile accident; the tragedy left Marion nearly catatonic and her marriage in shambles.
Ted and Marion temporarily separate, each alternately living in the house and a rented apartment in town. Ted hires Eddie O'Hare to work as his summer assistant and driver, since his own license was suspended for drunk driving. An aspiring writer, Eddie admires Ted, but he soon discovers the older man is a vain, self-absorbed alcoholic with an erratic work schedule that leaves the young assistant to fill his time as best he can. Eddie and Marion soon engage in a sexual affair, which doesn't bother Ted, who is enjoying trysts of his own with local resident Evelyn Vaughn during the sessions she serves as his model. When Ruth walks into the room while Eddie and her mother are making love, Ted becomes upset with his wife and advises Eddie he may have to testify about the incident if Ted decides to fight for full custody of the child.
Marion eventually walks out on Ted and their daughter, taking with her all the photographs and negatives of her dead sons. All that remains of the boys is one picture that was in a framing shop for repair. Ted, furious with his wife for abandoning their daughter and leaving him no reminders of their sons, orders Eddie to leave the house.
Production
In Author John Irving: From Novel to Screen, a bonus feature on the film's DVD release, Irving discusses the adaptation of his novel by screenwriter/director Williams, whose only previous credit was the 1998 film The Adventures of Sebastian Cole. Irving was impressed by his decision to concentrate solely on the first third of his novel, rather than try to compress its lengthy time span into one film, and was pleased with the end result.
The film was shot on location in Bridgehampton, East Hampton, Orient Point, and Sea Cliff.
The film went into limited release in the US on July 14, 2004 and earned $456,876 on its opening weekend. It eventually grossed $3,854,624 in the US and $2,860,443 in foreign markets for a total worldwide box office of $6,715,067 .
Cast
Critical reception
A.O. Scott of the New York Times called the film "surely the best movie yet made from Mr. Irving's fiction" and added, "It may even belong in the rarefied company of movies that are better than the books on which they are based . . . If you examine the story closely, you can find soft spots of implausibility and cliché. But the shakiness of some of the film's central ideas . . . matters far less than it might . . . The Door in the Floor nimbly shifts between melodrama and comedy, with a delightful and perfectly executed excursion into high farce near the end, and it seems perpetually to be discovering new possibilities for its characters . . . Mr. Foster and Ms. Basinger are both very good, but the film is dominated by Mr. Bridges' performance . . . [He] not only dominates the movie, he animates it. He is heroically life-size."
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone rated the film 3½ out of four stars, calling it "extraordinary in every way, from the pitch-perfect performances to the delicate handling of explosive subject matter." He added, "It's bumpy going at times. But Williams is a talent to watch and a wonder with the actors. Basinger's haunted beauty burns in the memory - this is her finest work. And Bridges, one of the best actors on the planet, blends the contradictions of Ted . . . into an indelible portrait. You can't shut the door on this spellbinder. It gets into your head."
James Christopher of The Times observed, "What’s strange about the film is that it’s pitched like a play. There are no obvious ructions yet it bristles with small riddles and puzzling inconsistencies . . . The chemistry is absurd and tragic. Bridges is the obvious pull; Basinger is a one-note trauma. The story is curiously spellbinding, and fabulously ambivalent about their sins."
Awards and nominations
Jeff Bridges was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Lead Male but lost to Paul Giamatti for Sideways. Tod Williams was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay but lost to Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor for Sideways, and was nominated for the Golden Shell at the San Sebastian Film Festival but lost to Bahman Ghobadi for Turtles Can Fly. The film received the National Board of Review Award for Excellence In Filmmaking.
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