Review of Beginners (2011) by Eyal D — 05 Nov 2014

There's nothing typical about BEGINNERS. And yet despite its originality, the film, as hard as it tries, fails to completely engage the viewer and satisfy. Clearly an inventive drama with lots of heart, BEGINNERS ironically works more intellectually than it does emotionally.

In this respect, the film somehow misses the mark when it comes to tagging at our heartstrings. Perhaps this is due to the disjointed, fragmented nature of its storytelling, obviously personal, that takes us from place to place, character through character and, more importantly, present and past, like a memory play, dissecting a random selection of fleeting moments of its four protagonists.

In fact, the film doesn't have actual antagonists, which may be the root cause of its underwhelming result. In the name of realism, it's all about 'real' people and their 'real' flaws that get in their own way.

BEGINNERS is really about imperfections, the ones found in all of us. By the end, because of its unusual narrative structure, in which even the dog gets his internal musings subtitled, it's hard to actually to really 'get' the characters or even get into them.