Beginners (2011)
Sometimes a film will come at you sideways and hit you when you least expect it. Beginners is one of those films. Starting with a meet-cute reminiscent of Miranda July or Wes Anderson, Mike Mills’ story possesses a strength and individuality entirely its own. Ewan McGregor plays Oliver, a graphic artist who, in two separate timelines, is helping his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), through end stage lung cancer shortly after his dad has come out of the closet, and - after Hal’s death - attempting a tentative relationship with a beautiful French actress, Anna (Mélanie Laurent). Most will come for Plummer, whose performance has been touted as a potential Oscar contender, and he is indeed incredible here. Mischievous, compassionate and stubborn, it’s a performance that never feels the need to learn towards cliché, and his “coming out” story is one marked by freedom of expression and happiness, rather than the usual heartache and indecision. The film also refuses to patronise its audience in de-sexualising Hal, who is supported throughout by his amusingly right-on boyfriend (Goran Visnjic).
The film is slightly less successful in portraying Oliver’s budding relationship with Anna, which is prone to the odd indie rom-com cliché (including a dog that talks in subtitles and night-time graffiti art dates), but which settles into a quiet melancholy entirely free of affectation. Oliver isn’t merely traumatised by his father’s death, but, as Mills’ smart use of intertitles detailing social oppression and changing concepts of happiness through the twentieth century implies, is stuck with the concern that no such connection, no such “real” happiness is possible. As Oliver states in one of the film’s most moving scenes, he struggles to speak to Hal’s boyfriend not because he’s uncomfortable around gay people, but because his father loved him so much. The alienating affect of other people’s happiness is a theme that runs throughout the film, as Oliver is less rocked by his father’s sexuality (of which his mother, he discover, was aware of when they married) than by his ability to throw himself completely into a feeling which he himself understands so little. It’s this realisation, rather than Hal’s death, which forms the core of the film. Indeed, Beginners is surprisingly unsentimental for a story that would at first glance appear to be spilling over with tears and recriminations. Instead, it’s a featherweight but pleasingly flinty look at the way other people’s relationships affect our own outlook on life, and the pre-conceived notions of self that can cripple human interaction. Bedded by McGregor’s best performance in quite some time, Beginners will be a little too quiet for some tastes, but there’s no denying it’s a deeply felt, personal movie, whose indie rom-com tendencies it wears lightly on its sleeve in order to reveal something deeper and more intangible beneath the surface.
