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Beginners
| Released |
22 July 2011 |
| Director |
Mike Mills |
Starring
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Ewan McGregor, Christoher Plummer, Mélanie Laurent, Goran Visnjic, Kai Lennox, Mary Page Keller |
| Writer(s) |
Mike Mills |
Producer(s)
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Miranda de Pencier, Lars Knudsen, Leslie Urdang, Jay Van Hoy, Dean Vanech |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
105 minutes |
| Genre |
Comedy, drama |
| Rating |
15A |
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Beginner’s luck.
Mike Mills, director of Thumbsucker and new film Beginners doesn’t like his work being described as “quirky”. I can understand his annoyance; in my experience “quirky” is just shorthand for annoying. Zooey Deschanel for example; she’s pretty “quirky” isn’t she? Well unfortunately for Mills, Beginners will do little to redress the balance. In some ways, this is his most mainstream friendly movie to date, with big stars and a premise that is certainly unusual but not off-putting for a broad audience but Beginners is also embellished with a whole host of (sorry Mike) quirks. Some of these work (the frankly adorable dog who speaks through subtitles, acting like a Greek chorus) and some are less successful (the repeated photo-montages get a little repetitive and add nothing) but it is still a sweet, if inconsequential little film.
Based on Mills’ own life, Beginners tells the story of Oliver and Hal, an elderly father and his son played by Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer. When Hal’s wife dies, he comes out to his son as gay, starts seeing a younger man and becomes an active member of the gay community. A short time later, he is diagnosed with cancer and passes away and Oliver struggles to come to terms with his father’s death. The film plays out through three timescales; flashbacks to Oliver’s unconventional childhood, his father’s coming out and battle with cancer and the present where Oliver grieves and tries to find solace in a new relationship with the enigmatic Anna (Melanie Laurent). This unusual structure is the film’s biggest success. As we move between tragedy and joy the film never gets trapped in a mire of depression, in spite of McGregor’s performance which is characterised by a blank numbness.
It is Plummer who is the highlight here, giving a charismatic and profound performance as a man who has only just embraced his life as a gay man when it is taken away from him. He brings both a nice comic touch as he tries to cram in a lifetime of experience into a small amount of time- dancing at gay bars and rewriting the Bible (the original being far too violent).
So while its not an unmitigated success, Beginners stays on just the right side of that perilous edge between interestingly off-beat and self-consciously hip. A likable film elevated by Christopher Plummer and a talking Jack Russell.
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Linda O’Brien |
