Review of Beginners (2011) by Ola S — 07 Feb 2012

Find Who You Are Before You Are Old.

I'm not sure I'd call this a comedy, though I read somewhere that it was. It's funny, but that's not really the same. I mean, [i]Hamlet[/i] is funny in places. Certainly Christopher Plummer has not joined the ranks of those nominated for Oscars for comedic performances; few have. His character is completely serious most of the time, though we are supposed to find much about him funny. However, it's more in the way that we find our friends funny even when we know they mean what they say. These characters are charming enough, though they're all at least a bit warped. It's their twists that make the movie. These are people who have had life throw things at them, and they seem afraid of what will happen to them next. They can joke about it, but they aren't really fooling anyone, including themselves. Still, they go on, because what else can you do?

Oliver Fields (Ewan McGregor) is generally unsure about life. Five years ago, his mother (Mary Page Keller) died, and his father (Plummer) came out. He knew he was gay when he married Oliver's mother, but he believed he could be cured. When she died, he decided not to hide anymore. He came out and had a boyfriend (Goran Visnjic). And then, a few months before our story begins, Hal died as well. Now, Oliver must come to terms with himself, his parents, his life. His friends (Kai Lennox and China Shavers) drag him to a costume party one night. He dresses as Sigmund Freud and spends the party providing therapy to the guests. Eventually, Anna (Mélanie Laurent) lies on his couch. She has not come for therapy; she wants to help Oliver. They connect, though she has laryngitis and just writes on a pad, and they begin a relationship. But they're both bad at relationships and have a lot of baggage, including that Oliver is constantly hauling around his father's dog, Arthur (Cosmo).

The movie is based on the real-life experiences of writer-director Mike Mills. Doubtless it is not unlike the experiences of quite a lot of other people. (On the day I am writing this, the Ninth Circuit Court has ruled California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional!) The movie mentions the fact that homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness; indeed, the movie gives quite a few highlights of the history of the gay rights movement, albeit leaving out the ones it assumes you already know. Harvey Milk is mentioned but with the frank assumption that you should know everything important about him. Hal tries to explain several things to Oliver, who cuts him off by pointing out that not only does he know, so does everyone else. Andy, Hal's boyfriend, assumes that Oliver acts the way he does because of the gay thing, but he does not seem to be aware that Hal raised an emotionally distant son. Which, yes, had something to do with the gay thing, but Oliver didn't know that until he was an adult.

Oliver is designing what is supposed to be an album cover for a group called The Sads. By the time he shows it to them, it's really more that booklet you get as an insert in some box sets or Broadway original cast recordings. And the thing is, I would like to see all of it. What we are shown is intriguing. It strikes me that it would be not unlike Oliver's version of Art Spiegelman's [i]Maus[/i]. A stylized telling of his father's story in graphic novel form. How his personal life intersected with twentieth century history--in this case, the change in the status of gays. Okay, yeah, that also means that it's a lousy album cover, and I think he probably needs to take a sabbatical if he's every going to be able to do his job right again. But it's seriously worth reading, based on what they show us here, and I can't help wondering if anyone has any intention of releasing it. Or how I'd find it if they did. Maybe I should spend some time poking around for it.

Christopher Plummer is nominated for Best Supporting Actor this year. Not a one of this year's nominees have ever won. For one, this is not merely his fifth nomination but his fifth category of nomination. Plummer has been in nearly a hundred movies in the last fifty-four years. Max Von Sydow has been acting since 1949. All in all, we're looking at nearly two hundred years of movie experience in this year's category. This means that I am having a hard time hoping that Plummer will win. In fact, charming though his performance was, I rather think he was nominated because he's been in nearly a hundred movies in the last fifty-four years. He lost a couple of years ago for [i]The Last Station[/i], and I can't say he's necessarily going to win this year. It's a minor but vital performance. Sometimes, those are the ones which win the prize--fellow nominee Nick Nolte lost Best Actor in 1991 to one of those. And after all, this is the Supporting Actor category, which is built on minor but vital performances.