Gurdjieff Brazil

The Door in the Floor

Director: Tod Williams, 2004. Drama. 
(from novel: "A Widow for One Year" by John Irving)
Jeff Bridges, Kim Basinger, Elle Fanning, Jon Foster.
Illustrator: Jeff Bridges.

The most dangerous secrets are the ones we're afraid to tell ourselves.

A writer's young assistant becomes both pawn and catalyst in his boss' disintegrating household.
 

In "The Door in the Floor", adapted from John Irving’s novel, Bridges plays Ted Cole, a grizzled, idiosyncratic children’s book writer and illustrator. He renders an intelligent, multi-nuanced performance as a man forced to deal with the accidental death of his two boys, a depressed wife, and a marriage falling apart. However, despite personal sorrow, marital strain, and awareness of his wife’s affair with his 16-year-old assistant, Ted refuses to wallow in self-pity.

Role ingredients: At the risk of trivializing his rich, complex part in "The Door in the Floor", it’s noteworthy that he plays an eccentric novelist, a womanizer with foul mouth, a man walking around his house naked in the most unselfconscious manner imaginable.