Several men walk into several bars in this interlocking suite of tales, and the repeating permutations of barman and barfly, blue collar and white collar, father and son, raconteur and listener pile up pleasingly into a kind of oppressive, Coenesque cosmic joke. RJ Mitte, Breaking Bad’s Walter White Jr, plays college boy Steve, who turns up in a snowstorm at a bar owned by the irascible Paul (Peter Outerbridge). He owes the latter money – and without it, Paul won’t give up the ashes of Steve’s recently deceased dad, Gord, whose funeral the youth failed to attend. And then this arrogant sadsack – whose very presence aggravates Paul – offers to pay him with a story.
Steve’s yarn is a slack spin on his own: a freezing wayfarer walks into The Oak Room, a pub in a neighbouring town, and puts a set of demands to an irked barman. Unimpressed, Paul tells him that he must learn to “goose the truth” to hold an audience, and then sucker-punches him with a story about Gord, with another story inside. Or he thinks it’s a sucker-punch – Steve reveals that he had only told the ending of his, and the start will transform everything.
Adapted from Peter Genoway’s stage play by the playwright himself, the film is almost completely dialogue-reliant and initially a bit wearing. But as the tales gather weight like snow on a roof, and intriguing correspondences accumulate, the impressive structuring tells. What at first appear to be rather impoverished visuals from Canadian director Cody Calahan – a window of storm-blown exterior the only respite from bar-room wood – starts feeling like an uncomfortably tight grip.
It’s not immediately clear what deeper point this suffocating proliferation is making, but perhaps it is about control: whose narrative gets to predominate, who in this countertop-sparring full of filial issues is the “daddy”. Or perhaps ultimately no one is, and in this infinite story regression, we are all equally – as Gord concludes – in hell. TV veteran Outerbridge strategically overplays, allowing the seemingly callow and flaky Mitte to come to the fore. This sharply crafted piece talks the talk and finally threatens to walk the walk.
• The Oak Room is available on 26 April on digital platforms.
