Beginners | Little White Lies

Begin­ners

21 Jul 2011 / Released: 22 Jul 2011

Close-up of a couple embracing intimately, gazing at each other.
Close-up of a couple embracing intimately, gazing at each other.
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Anticipation.

A strong cast, working with an uncommon concept.

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Enjoyment.

Beginners drones along in a state of melancholic navel-gazing.

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In Retrospect.

Despite a stand-out performance from an old pro, it keeps the audience at a distance.

Despite a stand-out per­for­mance from an old pro, Begin­ners keeps the audi­ence at a distance.

Despite hit­ting the age of 81, it seems that noth­ing is slow­ing down Christo­pher Plum­mer. He still man­ages to find bold, dis­tinc­tive roles that dodge the stereo­typ­i­cal cast­ing for old film folk, from voic­ing heart­bro­ken grouch Charles Muntz in Pixar’s Up, to appear­ing in the title role in The Imag­i­nar­i­um of Doc­tor Parnassus.

How­ev­er, while Begin­ners seems to be yet anoth­er show­case for the octo­ge­nar­i­an – here star­ring as Hal, a wid­ow­er who, in his final years, admits to his fam­i­ly that he’s gay – it is in fact sur­pris­ing­ly slip­pery, and some­what disappointing.

Begin­ners, the sopho­more effort from Thumb­suck­er writer/​director Mike Mills, focus­es on the man’s son, Oliv­er (Ewan McGre­gor), who sub­se­quent­ly has trou­ble com­ing to terms with his father’s death. Mills cre­ates a psy­cho­log­i­cal land­scape, mild­ly Prous­t­ian in its asso­ci­a­tions, in which Oliver’s mean­der­ings through the lives of both his par­ents fades into lit­tle glimpses of years pri­or. Mean­while, in the present, he makes ten­ta­tive moves towards his own emo­tion­al reha­bil­i­ta­tion by court­ing a coquet­tish French actress (Mélanie Laurent).

As if to remind view­ers of his own indie pedi­gree, Mills ties togeth­er these threads with a brood­ing nar­ra­tion from Oliv­er, illus­trat­ed with his own faux-naïf sketch­es from a book called The His­to­ry of Sad­ness’, and slideshows pro­vid­ing his­tor­i­cal con­text (“This is what pret­ty looked like in 1938!”). But these flash­es of style are of a piece with the film as a whole: Begin­ners is too often super­fi­cial, unable to tease any insight out of its com­pelling cen­tral conceit.

Per­haps it’s telling that where Begin­ners finds its most com­fort­able con­fig­u­ra­tion of com­plex­i­ty is in those flash­backs, where Oliver’s par­ents’ own idio­syn­crasies rise above quirk­i­ness. Mary Page Keller deserves more than the very minor role she has here, as a wife and moth­er bored out of her wits, with her fan­ci­ful, impul­sive rela­tion­ship with Oliv­er hint­ing at an inter­nalised torment.

How­ev­er, most delight­ful is Plum­mer. He rev­els in the camp of a char­ac­ter excit­ed­ly gob­bling up a pre­vi­ous­ly for­bid­den cul­ture, but he espe­cial­ly shines when bat­ting away the onset of can­cer with a still-hand­some grin, with­out mask­ing the mor­tal­i­ty behind it.

It is yet anoth­er prime late-peri­od per­for­mance from the star. If only Mills had giv­en us a more straight­for­ward look at this man’s life, instead of mere­ly exam­in­ing the remains.

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