Holding up a lobster, "You get two of these in the same bedroom (trap) and your gonna have a problem...

" A story about an exceedingly normal upper-middle class family in a small fishing village in Maine. The father is a doctor who has repressed his emotions all of his life, and the mother is a caring responsible citizen and teacher. Their son is attracted to, and dating, an older woman with two children. She is attempting to maintain distance from her violent ex-husband. A simple story with honest overtones.

Filmed almost exclusively with no panning shots and a static camera, director Todd Field has been able to crawl inside our psyche, under our thickest layer of compassion, and burrow his story deeply in our sense of justice and vengeance. This film creeps up on you with such stealth, you almost feel detached from your life and part of the onscreen characters activities. You find yourself constantly questioning behavior in their circumstances. Many characters are slightly flawed only helping to adhere to the truthful atmosphere of the film. The acting is magnificent on all fronts and the story even better. Even though this film won countless awards and accolades it only adds to my disbelief on how more people are not aware of it. This is as close to a masterpiece as I have seen in few years.  out of ."