In a smattering of close-up pictures and jump cuts, Mike Mills accelerates us through time and history during his film “Beginners.” He points out the sun, the stars, the president and what emotions look like. These symbols have come to define us, but they’re endowed by someone else, by society. His story is about three people learning to communicate their own personalities and embrace the idea and feeling of happiness, not just the image.
Few films are truly about communication. Even “The Social Network” merely analyzes speech patterns, internal coding and societal trends. “Beginners” understands that the words and symbols themselves have no meaning except the meaning we assign to them. Society has branded Hal (Christopher Plummer) as the member of a happy American family, complete with a job, wife, child and home in the suburbs. But after his wife dies, Hal, at the age of 75, confesses to his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor) that he’s gay.
This comes months before Hal’s death, yet in the time before and after Hal’s death, Oliver is just as confused with the symbols of success and friendship he’s been presented with. He does not begin to change until he meets the lovely Anna (“Inglourious Basterds’” Melanie Laurent) and she asks him, “Why are you at a party if you’re so sad?”
The beauty of that question is twofold. Firstly, why would anyone even think to ask a question like that? Aren’t their emotions simply implied by the people around them? But secondly, she asks this question with a pad and pencil. She has laryngitis, but not by accident, and not for the filmmaker to be cute. Look at how clearly Anna learns how to communicate with Oliver without words and even without expression behind makeup at a costume party.
“Beginners” speaks without speaking at all, and it is eloquent and beautiful in its quiet.
And in the strangest tool of all, Mills conveys this same idea of imagining communication without the symbols that restrict us through a talking dog with subtitles. Hal and Oliver’s Jack Russell terrier Arthur never actually speaks, but Mills pulls off some of the toughest truths beneath that puppy’s blank looks.
We learn even the dog is suffering an identity crisis. He was bread as a hunting dog over a century ago, and now he is bread to be cute by the standards of society. How is he supposed to feel when chasing a tennis ball?
These are the sorts of charmingly philosophical questions that peg “Beginners” as a comedy but make it a much more subtle indie drama. Mills’ cast finds the ability to communicate less through jokes or cutesy moments and more through understated touches.
McGregor is by far the film’s best example of its low-key tone and hushed quirks. Often he is a dry leading man, but as Oliver he shows depth and maturity, sadness conveyed not through outbursts but an engaged attention to character. Plummer plays his opposite and his match as his newly found gay father. Without ever seeing him as a young adult, he demonstrates through poise and mild charisma a radical growth of self.
These understated performances serve as a parable for the film’s message and feelings toward communication. It is a thing to be treasured when a director and his cast are so in sync.
“Beginners” teaches us that the details in life don’t matter; only the ideas we assign them carry any weight. So if Mills’ film is not a cinematic masterpiece or the most breathtakingly immersive of screenplays, there is still much to be drawn and discovered from this elegant film.
4 stars