Review of Beginners (2011) by Ryan H — 21 Jan 2012

Mike Mills has done here is create a film that stirs up many emotions at once without making us feel overwhelmed. No, I felt all that I needed to feel. The complete joyfulness in the meeting of Oliver and Anna, the love shared between Hal and Andy, the mourning of Oliver, and the dissatisfied feeling from Georgia.

Imagine: she was a woman in love with a man whom she knew was gay. Yet she proposed to him and said she would change him. In the 50s, as seen in Far From Heaven, they believed that being a homosexual was an illness that could be cured.

Since Hal loved Georgia, he wanted to change for her. But he just couldn't; that's not who he was. Growing up with this made Oliver confused. Love never really works out. We see him as a child with his mother, but we never see his father.

And there is never a seen where I saw genuine happiness from his mother. It's like she kept trying to be happy, and we are constantly looking for it, but she is such a strange woman. She'd have to be.

I loved the way they told the story. Oliver does a voiceover explaining life from his perspective, never giving too much detail. He says when his father came out, he saw him wearing a purple sweater, but really he was in his robe.

This really captures how the mind works. He does this a few times, another one being the picture that his mother framed. The confusion of his parent's relationship led Oliver to believe that something will always happen and love won't work.

But what the audience knows very well that he doesn't is that his father loved Andy to the end. I never really doubted the relationship. I don't think we were supposed to. Instead, we knew the journey Oliver had to take and we wanted to support him.

That's why it's important to see where things go with Anna. Their introduction at the party (where she had laringitis) was pretty fantastic. Original and fun while not trying to be too witty. Just real.

And we know eventually something is going to go wrong, something from his faults will peep through. But we know that he's working things out with his father, so this problem will be fixed in time.

Mills really guides us through this film, letting us feel every second and enjoy every moment. Beginners is truly a beautiful film.