Beginners

Sometimes you watch a movie and you can’t but think “That must have been very cathartic to write.” Beginners is a deeply personal journey through two strands of time, which never really intersect in the narrative-proper but thematically and emotionally in ways both obvious and subtle. Never self-pitying, nor is it an embellishment of self-hagiography, Beginners strives sincerity, and never even bothers to soft the sharp edges, or to unload the emotional/mental baggage that it’s characters carry around.

Ewan McGregor plays Oliver, a conceptual artist, he has never had a truly deep emotional relationship with a woman, and his relationship with his father was frayed at best. Through voiceover we learn all about his bruised heart, his self-destructive techniques, and how he is trying to pick up the pieces of his fragile, broken emotions and restart. We see Oliver at three points in his life: in flashbacks as a child, in span of time that his elderly father (Christopher Plummer) comes out and then slowly dies of cancer, and the relationship he tries to make work with the equally damaged Anna (Melanie Laurent).

Events in his childhood become clearer with the information that his father was a repressed homosexual in a sham marriage. Suddenly, the distance and emotional disengagement from his father make perfect sense. This knowledge does not heal these wounds overnight or at all really. But it helps to make sense of everything, it gives him an answer.

And now, at age 75, his father, Hal, is ready to start anew. His wife has died not long before he finally makes this announcement, and he takes this as a moment to lunge at life with a vigor that would make many twenty-something’s exhausted. To see their relationship finally start to heal itself is a wonder. Not all is forgiven or forgotten, and neither of them ever expect for it to be. But they look at each other and think: I need you now more than ever. Oliver is also amazed at how his father is able to grab hold of a romantic relationship that is deeper and more meaningful than he has ever had.

And then comes to announcement that Hal has cancer. And Oliver is, once more, an emotional outcast sent adrift. All of the mechanisms and emotional ugliness that he was working on have come back to him. And this is when he meets Anna.

So far, I have talked about the film as if it were structured linearly. It is not. It is an emotional collage in which events in the present or the past recall other things. It moves like stream-of-consciousness literature. We follow Oliver’s inner-monologue from one connect to the next before moving on.

The lessons of love, life, and living that Hal taught Oliver in his final years help him try to make sense and make a real life with Anna. But romantics are the worst when it comes to truly dealing with their emotional turmoil. Just when you think that he’s finally over it all, much like in real life, he knows that he’s damned to mess it all up somehow.

I have talked almost exclusively, and at great length, about the main character. And Beginners is really about all three characters. I could have talked about Hal or Anna just as much. That is because they are both written so fully, and essayed so greatly by three fantastic, and underrated, actors.

McGregor is subtle, wondrous, and utterly seamless. He never appears to be acting or affecting an emotion: he just is. And Laurent is mesmerizing, luminous, and quietly heartbreaking, often in the same scene. But neither of them can match the power that Plummer brings to the role. He’s charming, funny, vibrant, filled with a naturalistic presence and grace, but never showy or purposefully trying to steal the scene. It’s a quiet piece of work, but I hope that come Oscar night Plummer finally wins that golden guy.

Beginners is an unexpected mixture filled with tears, joy, and laughter. It has stayed in my memory for a very long time.