Chronically deluded madman, or absurdist visionary? I will try to argue the latter through his greatest offering, ‘The Room’ (2003).

Tommy Wiseau’s most successful and genre-ambiguous offering, The Room (2003), has suffered through ridicule and enjoyed cult status since release. The spectacle of high production values (the film was financed on a budget of $6 Million acquired from still unknown sources) combined with an absurd narrative and dialogue combination have served the film well thus far, propelling it and its enigmatic director through to the upper echelons of ironic hipster culture. Though terrible films continue to pass studio green lights, none have so carved out a niche in the realm of bad filmmaking – since perhaps the works of Ed Wood – that The Room has, combining the cult spectacle of The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s fandom with the absurd cult of personality an obsessive dictator would fashion around himself.

However, there may, in fact, be some substance in this film that possibly escaped viewers upon first viewing. This is understandable, given the confrontationally quirky nature of the film and its director, being so radically different from the atmosphere of a conventional independent drama film. In film and all other artistic mediums, difference to the conventional should not be shunned, but rather appreciated for its own merits, and the absurdist philosophy complements this ideal. It is a school of thought concerning the absurd nature of seeking meaning in life where there is none, therefore offering a critical perspective on the norm that we so readily accept. On this principle, I contend that The Room is an absurdist masterpiece, perhaps independent of a critical spectrum to assign it a rating between ‘bad’ to Citizen Kane. Transcending beyond all recognisable genres and labels, it merely becomes an astute commentary on American society and the modern human condition.

Johnny is the film’s enigmatic yet amiable protagonist. Despite the lack of backstory given to this character, his romantic affectations for his ‘future-wife’ Lisa, and his altruistic treatment of the much speculated autism-suffering man-child Denny surely paints him to be a most amicable and agreeable figure. However, it is his further characterisation that cements his place into protagonist meta-lore. His bizarre, almost unidentifiable accent places him within the undefinable immigrant population of America; through not belonging to one particular ethnic group (and his white collar bank job), Johnny is representative of middle-class America, complete with modern quirks and affectations, on a perpetual chase for the American dream.

Past the establishment of Johnny as the film’s moral arbiter, many moral actions taken throughout the course of the film are contrasted with his own, or call Johnny in to intervene. Johnny is present to successfully deliver Chris-R, a notorious and violent drug dealer, to prison; Mark is constantly besieged by moral considerations of his affair with Johnny’s ‘future-wife’, and the effects on Johnny himself. Through Johnny’s ultimate collapse and failure at the end of the narrative, Wiseau demonstrates the excessive pressure placed on the everyman to find and deliver moral objectivity to an inconsistent world populated by irrational people with inexplicable motivations.

Behind the smashing beard, great bone structure and flowing golden mane lies an unknowing antagonist that takes on a malevolent passenger role in our lives.

The relationship between Mark and Johnny is established as one of inconsistency, and a perpetual bitter battle for dominance. Mark, a white American male of dubious profession is shown repeatedly to be uncomfortable in the presence of Johnny, and frequently indulges in Johnny’s most cherished possessions: his house; his wife; and, to an extent the ability to access Johnny in his most raw, vulnerable emotional states. In this respect, Mark represents the unfeasible relationship between the vulnerable common man and enigmatic and opaque bodies of organisation such as the government, to Johnny’s working class sensibilities. In a similar fashion, Lisa grows to become equally as uncomfortable, and gains financial security through her relationship with Johnny.

Conversations between the Mark and Johnny end in emotional resolution and elation for Johnny (seen in the infamous Rooftop and Coffee Shop scenes), though this is not reciprocated, similar to Johnny’s fracturing relationship with Lisa. Dramatic irony is created as Johnny is oblivious to the one-way nature of his relationships, thus a statement on the superficiality of modern relationships is raised. Johnny, sage-like in his lessons on humanity (‘If everybody love each other, the world would be a better place’), willing and capable of honesty, insight, altruism, and an almost childlike innocence, must silently and unknowingly toil and labour through unfulfilling relationships built not upon mutual trust and respect, but upon desires of attaining unfeasible absolutes – for Lisa, this is to satisfy lustful, classical romantic desires; and for Mark, this is to fulfil desires of gaining power and control over who he views to be the underclassman.

Additionally, there is a great deal of irony in the film’s perhaps initially misleading title ‘The Room’, in comparison to where most emotional revelations in the film come from, i.e. the rooftop of Johnny’s house. Scenes such as Mark’s attempted homicide of psychiatrist friend Peter (who attempts to act as an outside force of moral objectivity, subsequently representing the battle between id and ego within Mark), and Johnny and Mark’s discussion on the ethics of cheating and the perceived morals of the modern woman take place upon the rooftop.

Johnny, like most of us blames the material world, for ‘tearing him apart’. What he has not realised, is that this is the fault of his own consciousness and existence, that he feels this way.

Aside from the obvious use of high locations to seek elation from the mundane in nature, and consultation from higher powers, the use of the rooftop contains a much grimmer metaphorical message within the film. Whereas the rooftop represents what is amiable and desired in life – emotional compromises based on trust and understanding, lucid flashes of clarity and reasoning, friendships in their most raw forms (such as the invaluable rooftop football scene) – the titular room is all that is below and beneath that. The room is instead a pedestrian space, a bastardised manifestation of Johnny’s dignity where people frequent to fulfil insignificant, primal desires (like Mike’s inexplicable attempt at sex on Johnny’s couch, and the premises for all of Mark and Lisa’s sexual escapades), and his remaining link to the insignificance of his material world and friends, and finally the avenue he graciously allows the world at large to use, to undermine him.

In the end, Johnny comes to his conclusion that there is no point, no purpose in the world around him, and his Sisyphean task of integrating into a nonsensical world proves too much. Johnny’s suicide is a statement of intent – it is a cold, bitter sentiment stating the only way to be a part of this world and to stay sane is to not be a part of it at all. In Johnny’s cruelly tragic and twisted reality, this solution provides the catharsis he was to never achieve in life; absolute, unequivocal peace (and necessarily, absence) of mind.

The film’s overarching statement is that it is too much to ask for of the humble everyman to create sense or meaning in life, as there is none to be found. Johnny, though encompassing traits which we would deem admirable, is driven suicidal by his desire to achieve sense and meaning, thus the only way to achieve objective morality and clarity of reasoning is to forcibly remove yourself from the narrative. It is a great shame that the philosophical significance of this film is overlooked, for the sly injection of metaphor to be inferred from it can provoke significant thought toward the unclear and often absurd nature of our own lives.