“Harrowing, Heartbreaking, Tragic Tale About Mental Illness and Family”
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What You Need To Know:
Based on a tragic true story, ROSEMEAD is a well-crafted and acted, yet nihilistic independent movie. The performances and camerawork are praiseworthy. The move shows a strong mother and son relationship, a hard work ethic, and seeking out therapy treatment. However, it’s weighed down by a sad and nihilistic, heartbreaking ending. ROSEMEAD is also marred by some strong foul language, disturbing violence, instances of self-harm, visions of school shootings, underage drinking, and abuse of pain pills. MOVIEGUIDE® advises excessive for this unacceptable movie.
Content:
Very strong humanist, nihilistic worldview with a strong nihilistic ending and bias, but mitigated by some moral values such as the mother and son hold a strong personal bond in spite of losing the father, the mother values hard work and contributing to her Chinese-American community, and there’s a heavy emphasis on fixing one’s mental health, but the schizophrenic son is inclined to emulate the violence in school shootings, and the mother forgoes her moral compass when she discovers she’s terminally ill;
14 obscenities (including eight “f” words);
Very strong disturbing violence with blood when a character is shot in the chest in cold blood with some other strong disturbing violence such as boy barges into an empty classroom and starts demolishing the chairs, teenage boy consumes news reports about violent mass shootings across the United States, teenage boy cuts a knife into his arm and violently breaks into a printing business, and teenage boy draws graphic imagery of spiders and demons in his notebook;
No sex;
No nudity;
One scene of teenage students doing underage drinking;
No tobacco use, but boy gets addicted to pain killers and steals pills from his terminally ill mother, and five other scenes with characters taking pain pills; and,
Woman hides her terminal cancer diagnosis from her son, a boy lies to his therapist that he’s all right, and a woman orders her friend to burn family photos of herself and her son.
More Detail:
ROSEMEAD is based on a true story published by the Los Angeles Times. From a filmmaking perspective, the movie knocks it out of the park. The movie does a great job capturing the dingy and downtrodden neighborhoods of Los Angeles. The color grading is dark and cold, but it elevates the tense atmosphere to great effect. The acting is also excellent, with Lucy Liu doing a phenomenal job playing the loving but increasingly anxious and anguished mother. The dynamic between the mother and son is the glue that holds this movie together. The only weak link is that the movie ends five minutes too short. For example, the ending and its aftermath are glossed over too quickly. Sadly, the ending holds an unsavory outcome.
ROSEMEAD holds a strong humanistic worldview with Christian and nihilist undertones. The characters do not go to Church or pray to God, but they experience “demonic” visions of their past traumas. The mother openly loves her son, sends him to therapy, and tries to heal his trauma by sharing past memories together. The lead characters are Chinese Americans who value hard work, good grades and being involved in their local community. However, both characters have a violent fallout. Without getting into spoilers, the story ends with a violent crime, but this is not the worst of ROSEMEAD’s cinematic sins.
ROSEMEAD bombards viewers with foul language, physical violence, self-harm, and drug use. The movie has at least 12 strong obscenities. Also, the teenage boy has visions of self-harm, consumes media reports about mass school shootings, and openly cuts his arm with a knife. The boy bleeds from the cut and violently barges into an empty classroom at school. The boy deals with intense schizophrenia, while the mother suffers an irreversible type of cancer. The story gets even worse. In fact, if this movie was a math equation, it would be “nihilism squared,” or even quadrupled.
[SPOILERS FOLLOW] Throughout the movie, the mother and son take pain pills to treat their pain. The boy gets addicted to his mother’s pain killers and steals some for himself. Later, the boy breaks into a printing shop and scrounges through its trash heap. Then, the boy suffers a mental breakdown and wanders the streets of Los Angeles as a homeless drug addict. Finally, the mother decides to take drastic action, not only to put her son out of his mental misery but also to protect other people who might be seriously harmed, or even killed, by him.
ROSEMEAD is a well-crafted and acted, yet nihilistic independent movie. The performances and camerawork are praiseworthy. The movie depicts a strong mother and son relationship, a hard work ethic, and seeking out therapy treatment. However, the ending’s weighed down by a humanist, nihilistic, immoral choice. The heartbreaking ending matches the actual tragic, nihilistic ending in the true-life story on which the movie is based. ROSEMEAD also has some strong foul language, references to self-harm and drug abuse, and visions of school shootings. That said, the movie makes a plea to stop stigmatizing mental illness and encourage people to get the treatment they need. It also shows a strong mother-son relationship. MOVIEGUIDE® advises excessive for this unacceptable movie.
