Beginners: A Slice of a Rather Interesting Life

I've been wanting to see Beginners ever since I saw the theatrical trailer in front of some movie (maybe Jane Eyre?) in March. It looked interesting: with Ewan McGregor, Melanie Laurent (of Inglourious Basterds fame), and Christopher Plummer (that's Captain von Trapp, Sound of Music lovers), I couldn't help but be intrigued. But sadly it had a terribly limited release sometime in the summer and I never got around to seeing it until now.

This movie is decidedly not going to please everyone. You could argue that not a lot happens from the beginning to the end as you follow the life of Oliver (McGregor) who is learning to deal with the death of his father and starting up a tentative relationship with Anna, a French actress he meets at a party (the incandescent Laurent). But while Oliver's tale might be slow, the story of his father Hal (Plummer in a wonderfully whimsical and upbeat guise) is what makes the movie so special. 

After his wife's death, Hal, who is now 75, comes out to his son Oliver. Through a series of flashbacks, Oliver gives us the story of his father's coming out, the way he threw himself into Gay Pride, found a new circle of friends and embarked on the second act of his life the way he had always wanted to live it. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with lung cancer and died 4 years after coming out. But during those 4 years, he lived his new life joyously, calling Oliver up in the middle of the night to talk about his visit to a gay bar, his discovery of house music, and discussing the personals ad he wrote to find a man who would be interested in a relationship with a newly gay man in his 70s. It's both ridiculous and sublime, and it's little wonder that Plummer got a Golden Globe nomination for his work in this film. You've never seen a man happier than Hal is to come out of the closet.

Oliver is much more quiet and subdued, but he clearly adores his father. He is supportive, loving, indulgent, and takes great care of him till the very end. He is also an artist who tells his story more through his art than his actions. Throughout the movie, whenever Oliver mentions a year, e.g. the year his father was born, he will further illustrate it with photographs that reveal, "This is who the President was," "This is what the sun looked like," "This is what 'pretty' looked like," etc. It is surprisingly effective to see whole swathes of history reduced to these still images that do such a wonderful job of capturing the essence of their era. And really, that's what Beginners feels like. An attempt to capture this moment in history with a series of beautiful images, warm characters, and love stories.

The movie is actually autobiographical for writer-director Mike Mills, which lends a valuable dimension of authenticity to the story. Beginners is a loving tribute to his father and also an ode to the visual spectacle of cinema as a storytelling medium. Sometimes these slice-of-life stories can be a drag, but by giving us slices out of the lives of so many extraordinary characters, Mills has crafted a much more intricate movie that reveals how much things can change in the course of a lifetime. And that you are never too old to begin again.

Hal & Oliver: a father-son duo that will gladden your heart