Word: claustrophobia
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Whatever his other phobias, Hughes did not suffer from claustrophobia. His bedroom was the smallest on the penthouse floor. It measured only 15 by 17 feet ("infinite riches in a little room"), considerably smaller than the usual "master" bedroom in a low-priced tract house. Even this meager lebensraum was further cramped by stacks of newspapers and magazines...
...Times is unusually important, since so much of the play deals with the spaces between people and attempts to penetrate them. Randy Head's set is perhaps too spacious to evoke the claustrophobia of Pinter's world, but its triangular arrangement neatly defines the nature of the central conflict...
...Bergman trademark. It is successfully used in his other films, but he abuses it here. The camera focuses so obsessively on Ullmann, that, beautiful as she is, we begin to long for a pull-back, an aerial view, anything. No doubt the director intends us to feel irritated; our claustrophobia parallels Jenny's vexation at being walled up with herself, with the memories and impulses she wants to suppress. Unfortunately, Bergman goes too far with the close-up; he pushes us over the line from tension to squirming boredom. If the dream-sequence technique is condescending, the excruciating close...
...music, which goes so far as to include an anomaly of sorts in Tots, a serious lost-love song called "Minus Me." All this floats around in a melange of parody and self-parody that tries to raise Tots above--and simultaneously recognizes that it can't--collegiate claustrophobia...
...Quad's only definite attraction to outsiders is Hilles Library, which is much more luxurious than the Yard's Lamont and is a great place to study when the Yard gets too noisy. Hilles's comfortable chairs and bright airy atmosphere contrast to Lamont's stiff wooden claustrophobia...