Off to one side of the Camden, Maine canneries that make up the local economy, Todd Field's In the Bedroom is a drama about domestic stability. Its performances are credible, provocative and sustained across a slow moving film punctuated by two bursts of extraordinary violence. Yet the centerpiece of the movie is its rich and descriptive metaphor about lobsters and the fact that two males can't be put together "in the bedroom" of a trap or they'll attack each other until one is disabled or dead. Using this metaphor to organize a four-act play, the resulting story depicts four characters reacting to the death of a fifth.

Dr. Matt Fowler (Tom Wilkinson) is a successful doctor and doting, middle-aged father. His wife, Ruth (Sissy Spacek), is a music teacher with a critical eye extending to her son Frank (Nick Stahl), a college student home for the summer. Working as a lobsterman Nick also dates Natalie Strout (Marisa Tomei), the separated mother of two young sons with an ex-husband-to-be named Richard (William Mapother). Their romance is unconventional due to age and lifestyle differences but their mutual excitement suggests something more than a mere summertime fling.

Still, Ruth can't stomach the idea of her son's older, more highly traveled mistress. Nor is she pleased after Richard attacks Frank, leaving him with a black eye and stitches. Heeding her husband's advice to blow it off as a growing pain gone awry, Ruth lets her misgivings remain silent as the season unwinds. Then everything changes when Frank rushes to Natalie's house to defend her against Richard who has arrived, hell bent on taking back his family. A standoff ensues and just as things calm down Richard kills Frank with an off-screen shot to the head.

Matt struggles with a heavy heart and unyielding guilt while Ruth succumbs to her mangled sense of "I told you so." Making matters worse, Natalie can't substantiate the murder charge because Richard insists Frank's killing was a move in self-defense so he's allowed to go free, haunting the Fowlers' lives and complicating their daily grieving. Unable to forgive the other for habits built across years, Matt and Ruth slowly unravel as a pair, each of them shouldering an unknowable loss. Separately trying to fulfill their need for vengeance and comfort, they fail one another until arguing one afternoon in one of the film's finest moments of raw emotion.

Written by Field with Robert Festinger from a story by Andre Dubus, In the Bedroom is a movie filled with moments of action and thoughtful pauses, meaningful silence and sustained anxiety. Action matters to the story but so too does contemplation as a means to attaining vengeance, though not in the commercial pattern of bullet-ridden blood baths and righteous good guys. Instead the film's dramatic heft stems from the central performances of Wilkinson and Spacek in that their mature, married relationship is put to the combined test of loss and helplessness. Their bond is thrown into question but in the end it is also affirmed since the movie's resolution offers a lopsided sense of justice and tranquility.

Remarkable moments abound and it's these slices of time that mark the picture, making it stand out in memory. There's a conversation between Matt and the district attorney prosecuting his son's case where legal bureaucracy and personal indifference are represented with the force of a body blow. There's a short confrontation between Natalie and Ruth where apologies and body language make all the difference. Then there are constant fades to black marking gaps in the action where Frank's life should have continued but doesn't and, of course, there is Camden, Maine as a setting for malevolence despite many shots of a lovely northeastern town.

Altogether Field's drama may be 2001's defining indie but it's still important to separate the good from the bad. On the one hand, In the Bedroom is a convincing drama about the layers of mourning that change normally repressed and civilized behavior. On the other, it's a movie with a handful of characters, a lot of conversation and only a few bursts of revealing excitement. The long gaps will surely give plenty of time to thumb-twiddlers but the lesson here is about seeing small movies that succeed on a big scale despite an emphasis on words and character over explosions and special effects.