Right from it’s opening minutes it’s clear that Beginners is going to be a character piece exploring the recent events in the life of a guy named Oliver (Ewan McGregor), and not much more. We have an unreliable narrative from the start. Oliver, in voice over, explains to us his current situation. As he describes a scene to us, what we’re seeing on the screen will change depending on what he’s telling us. This isn’t a movie that’s about a faithful recreation of a series of events; it’s about coming to understand the thoughts and feelings of Oliver. This is a character piece, a getting to know you. The events of Oliver’s life aren’t told to us chronologically, the timeline jumps around from a current romance, to a period during his father’s illness, to time spent with his mother as a child. The jumbled up timeline keeps you on your toes, it makes you feel a bit like a detective trying to suss out the details of who Oliver is and what his life has been like. It’s an effective tactic to use, because it keeps you actively engaged in a film that doesn’t have much of a developing narrative. The problem with movies like this that are long on character and short on story is that if the protagonists aren’t pretty darn engaging, it’s easy for a viewer to tune out completely and write off what you’re doing as a waste of time. I wouldn’t go so far as to call Oliver a waste of time, he’s actually kind of a charmer, but I don’t think he’s an engaging enough character to anchor a film like this either. Luckily for us, Beginners happens to have more to offer than just a jumbled up look at one man’s life; it’s also got a subplot about a gay dad (Christopher Plummer) that goes a long way toward saving the day.
Oliver is a 38 year old repressive. He’s the type of person who mostly just lets life happen to him, and takes things as they come. When we first meet him he is cleaning out his father’s house after the man has passed on. When we meet him for the second time he is listening to his father’s confession that he has been gay his entire life, which comes soon after the death of his mother. When we meet him for the third time he is a quiet young boy, trailing behind a mother who has a sarcastic, absurdist worldview. For a guy who mostly sits stone faced as life happens to him, Oscar has had a lot of life happen to him over the years. The central conflict of the film seems to be a supposition that eventually Oscar will break, let his emotions pour out, and learn to not be such a trod-upon depressive. There’s even a scene where his mother sends him into his bedroom to let out a minute or two worth of cathartic screaming. Unfortunately the boy isn’t able to muster up anything, he just doesn’t want to scream. For some people, learning that your father has been a homosexual man his entire life might be a challenging thing to get past. There might be some discomfort or awkwardness in helping him pick out a new wardrobe, meet a new boyfriend, and host gay movie nights. But Oliver just puts his nose to the grindstone and helps his dad out, both with his new life and his new cancer, sans complaining. Both parents dead, one parent gay, none of it seems to be enough to get a smile or a tear out of Oliver’s face; but those aren’t the only things that he has to face over the course of this film. He also finds himself in the midst of a surprise romance with a pretty French actress named Anna (Mélanie Laurent). Like him, Anna is the type of person that pushes others away. She’s always on the road; she hardly has a permanent residence, let alone permanent relationships. When they first meet, Oliver is the sad faced Sigmund Freud at a costume party, Anna the laryngitis suffering mute in drag. It just might be a perfect recipe for love. And if it isn’t, there is still the matter of the dog. After his father dies, it comes down to Oliver to take care of his father’s Jack Russell Terrier Arthur. If the girl isn’t enough to melt this guy’s heart, then surely the dog will have to be.
Sometime during his courtship of Anna, Oliver remarks, “It’s embarrassing, I’m 38 and falling for a girl again.” It’s a telling line that gives us a glimpse into his character. Is it really embarrassing to be falling in love with a girl at 38? Or is it just a little less likely than falling in love with a girl at 28? What about the act of falling for someone does Oliver find embarrassing; is it the inherent vulnerability that comes with it, the unseemly airing of emotions that he thinks are supposed to be personal? Probably it’s a little bit of both, but maybe that’s just me projecting my own feelings on the film. When you’re this entrenched in someone else’s head it gets hard to not equate their feelings with your own. A situation that Oliver seems to know all too well after growing close to and losing two parents. When we see him as a young boy he appears to be inseparable with his mother. They have a relationship so much closer than the one he has with his distant father. Until later on in life, when Oliver helps Hal through his period of simultaneous sexual exploration and illness, and spends so much time with the man that they must have come to a very complete understanding of one another. On several occasions we see Oliver pick up habits from each of his parents. He plays a game where he drives anywhere that his passenger points that he lifted from his mom. He has conversations with inanimate objects much like his father. Oliver is very much a product of his parents, and their deaths have a crushing effect on him. He seems to be wrestling with questions of identity; where their influence ends and his own personality begins.
Seeing as this is largely Oliver’s story from Oliver’s perspective, Anna’s character remains more of a mystery to us. I wasn’t exactly sure what she was struggling with, what she was running from. We hear that she has a suicidal father, one that engages her in a rather one-sided, co-dependant relationship. That begins to explain why she would be drawn to the guy who looks sad at a costume party, but we never really get a sense of what her own issues are, or what it is that drives her. Mostly she is just a specter that enters into Oliver’s life, charms him, perplexes him, and raises questions as to whether or not he could ever maintain a permanent relationship. There is a sequence in the film where the two try their hand at living together with miserable results. They don’t seem to know how to share a permanent space, how to behave when there’s someone around to bare witness to all of your formerly private moments. But we never get any insight into why Anna is so uncomfortable with the arrangement, or why Oliver feels the need to run from it. Instead we just watch them eat dinner in silence.
And largely, that was my biggest problem with this movie. I spent far too much of it asking myself where it was going, and whether or not what I was watching was ever going to amount to anything. Oliver’s struggle had no forward momentum; as a matter of fact, I hesitate to call it a struggle. Identifying any sort of conflict in this film takes a close viewing and an extra bit of analysis. Without any rising tension, or a clear understanding of what the stakes of Oliver’s travails were, the pacing of the film really starts to crawl after a while. I saw a theatrical trailer for this movie before I went to see it, and what they gave away in that bit of advertising was mostly just the events of the first act. Normally I would have been ecstatic about that. Finally, a movie that leaves something for the viewer to discover! Once I got past the first act of this film I was left wondering what could possibly come next, but it wasn’t in a good way. It was in a lack of confidence that this movie really had anything to say or a story to tell way. Oliver is a likable enough gent, despite his melancholy, Anna is an adorable lady to spend some time with, even though she’s pretty ill defined on the page, even Arthur managed to be the most charismatic dog I’ve seen in a movie in a long time, despite the fact that he can’t really talk. Spending time with these characters wasn’t at all unpleasant. But it became hard to escape the feeling that the movie was meandering around on the screen with little agenda. It got to the point where I wanted to yell at the screen, “No loitering! Buy something or leave!”
Despite all of that, there is one thing that’s open, and accessible, and alive in this film, and it’s Christopher Plummer’s Hal. Hal is at a point in his life where he is going to unabashedly go after all of his wants and desires. For the first time ever, he’s an open book, a free spirit who wants nothing more than to buy books and clothes, throw garden parties, and meet guys younger than him. There’s giddiness to him, a youthful enthusiasm that is just infectious to watch. We should all be lucky enough to know so clearly what it is we want out of life. If there is any real climax or moment of catharsis in this film it might be when Oliver and Anna find and read Hal’s personal ad. It’s so open and honest it might as well be a wound. Hal knows his weaknesses, and he’s at an age where he completely accepts them. He knows his desires, and he’s reached a point where he refuses to be ashamed of them. He’s unthinking about the way he opens up his life and heart to others. It’s a state of being that the other characters in the film aren’t even close to achieving, one that a lot of us will probably never get to. If there’s anything concrete to take away from this movie it’s that being horny, looking for sex, but still remaining optimistic about the possibility of friendship or love, is not a bad way to be. It certainly beats being conflicted about a cute French actress living in your house.
How warmly you respond to this film will largely depend on what your reaction usually is to indie film quirkiness. If you can’t get enough of things that are precious, or good hearted outsiders, then the fact that this movie spins it’s wheels a bit might not be so much of a problem for you. Mélanie Laurent makes one of the most alluring manic pixie dream girls that I’ve ever seen on film. Ewan McGregor has never been more charming and adorable than he is during his lengthy conversations with Arthur the dog. The meet-cute between the two main characters is probably too cute for its own good, with McGregor playing the therapist and Laurent communicating solely by writing on a pad of paper. Never has an indie romance been more of an indie romance. For some people, the target audience let’s say, that will be enough for them to fall in love with this film. But I was left wanting more. The title itself, Beginners, should have been enough to clue me in on the fact that I wasn’t going to be completely satisfied by the end of this one. This is a movie about people who don’t know how to be in relationships. We’re not going to get to the point where they actually change or grow; we’re just going to be privy to their first couple false starts. This is little more than a protracted first act. It’s like watching The Graduate if all of that older woman stuff was cut out and all you got was Ben and Elaine going on a handful of dates as the entire movie. While there’s nothing overtly unpleasant about watching Beginners, the only thing that keeps you from walking out of it without a bad taste in your mouth is Christopher Plummer’s character. This should have been his film.
