Beginners

A couple of weeks ago, I received this email from a friend:

Nevan,

Drop what you are doing, get yourself to a cinema¹, and see Beginners. (You can thank me later.)

[Redacted]

Now, it’s hard to say no to something like that, and I decided it was a great opportunity to go see a movie I had no pre-impressions of. (This method worked great several years ago when some high school friends dragged me to American Splendor.) So I put it in my mind that I’d go see it soon.

A couple of days later, I happened to walk by the poster for Beginners, somewhat ruining my plan to go in knowing nothing. All I took in were the actors. Oh!, I thought, trying not to look too closely at the poster for the movie I was trying to remain ignorant about. Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, and that actress from Cashback. Certainly sounds like a Britishy good time.

As luck would have it, I was already planning on seeing The Tree of Life that afternoon with another friend.² I called ahead to see if she’d rather meet for Beginners instead. That’s how I wound up at this movie.

I should point out here that “that actress from Cashback” is Emilia Fox, who also happens to not be in this movie. In fact, I had mistaken Mélanie Laurent (of Inglourious Basterds fame) for her. Just so we’re on the same page, I sat down expecting a British indie film.

The movie begins without speech, with a quiet montage of Oliver (McGregor) cleaning out his father’s (Plummer) house after he has passed away. Then Oliver starts speaking, and I realize that McGregor’s trying to do an American accent. OK, I think, this must be about Americans. Indeed it is. Even Plummer is playing an American as best he can. (For some reason, Old Man Voice seems to hold up fairly well in the transition across the Atlantic, but still has a bit of uncanniness, cf. Ian McKellen in The Shadow.³)

We start to get some background. Oliver’s mother died a few years back, leaving his father, Hal, to come out of the closet and live his final five years as an older gay man. At this point I look over to my friend and acknowledge that we had seen the trailer for this together.

The movie starts to weave together two stories (or so). One is of Oliver and Hal after their mother/wife has died. The other is of Oliver after Hal has passed away. Still upset by his father’s death, Oliver is coerced into going out with some friends to a costume party, dressed as Freud.⁴ This is where Anna (Laurent, not Fox) enters the picture. She looks like she’s dressed as Charlie Chaplin, and after another patient gets up, plops herself down on the couch in front of Oliver Freud, ready for a session. She doesn’t speak and instead starts to write in a notebook, blaming it on laryngitis. (At first I think she’s just trying to stick to the silent movie look of her costume. I also still think she’s Emilia Fox.) She has Oliver pegged immediately, asking him why he’s come to a party if he’s so sad. This insight into him is the basis of their developing connection.

It’s an exciting way for a relationship to start: one of the partners able only to nod and write little bits in a notebook, the other doing his best to make out what he can of her personality. They fall asleep together the first night in her hotel, and when she speaks a little the next morning, I start to piece together that she’s Laurent. The development and growth of their relationship is the high point of the movie.

We start to get a third story as well, of Oliver and his mother when he’s just a boy, his father always off doing work at the museum. I don’t want to give much more of the story away, but it starts to become clear that Oliver undermines his romantic relationships in part because his parents never seemed happy, and that there is something of his mother’s off-kilteredness in Anna.

The movie is quite beautiful and at times moving. I felt like it slowed toward the end, but is still worth seeing. Mary Page Keller’s performance as Georgia, Oliver’s mother, is especially fun. Beginners will appeal most strongly to romantic young people who want to keep hope for love alive, but perhaps haven’t quite found it or figured it out yet.⁵

Super 8

Let’s get the monster business out of the way first. This world needs another monster movie like it needs another Michael Bay movie. And the monster in this movie is really no exception: it’s some kind of snoozy huge alien spider thing, basically the kind of thing you’d only be into if you’re just into monster movies. Abrams doesn’t quite succeed in giving the beast some humanity, but he tries. I can’t decide whether forced sympathy is better or worse than blind fear and hatred.

Big however, this movie is a lot of fun, and the monster business is really beside the point.¹ This movie is about a bunch of awesome middle school kids living in a boring town in Ohio in 1979. Following them around and enjoying their antics is the principal pleasure of the movie. In one utterly relatable scene, the five boys sit around the one cool girl in a diner, all more or less trying to impress while genuinely having a grand time. Says one (the pyromaniac of the stable): “We need another order of fries because of my fat friend.”

The adults in the story are not interesting, which is good because they generally seem to be disposable as monster food. Elle Fanning and newcomer Joel Courtney have some great moments, and their blossoming flirtations are surprisingly mature without getting all kissy. Abrams is probably one of the few directors who can write indie-movie characters into a mainstream flick.

Oh, and stay for the credits.