johnpmoseley
The review title's about all I wanted to say, except this is definitely a film that needs two separate ratings, one aggregating the love, the other the hate. If you're not someone who likes to take it slow, you're going to hate it. For those of us who like slow, it couldn't be much better.
diego-09091
Beginners is about the story of Oliver (Ewan Mcgregor), an about to be middle-aged man as he falls in love, loses someone, and goes through life. A slow but charming set of memories, experiences and decisions that is gonna make the spectators feel sometimes related to the dynamics of nostalgia and regret, but also about happiness.Beginners is a rare, witty and sentimental film which wanders through memory, nostalgia and life. This piece subtly shows its viewers how romance, parenthood, and childhood are rather a single sentimental experience, which occasionally expresses itself through nostalgia, desire, happiness and fear.
ElMaruecan82
There is one truth that Mike Mills' "Beginners" quietly and patiently explores, which is that many people know exactly who they are, what they want and even what they need to be happy, and yet, for some reason, never try to fulfill these very needs, lacking courage, honesty or maybe is the act of recognition significant enough not to move forward? Either ways, they are their own collateral damages.Or maybe I'm looking at the half-empty glass, and the message of "Beginners" is that it's never too late to start a new life and make your dreams come true. But tone-wise, I'm not sure the film is an invitation for optimism, there are a few shades of happiness in a few episodes of the father's life but the main feeling is one of a big waste of time for pointless misunderstandings. Indeed, there are many moments in "Beginners" when you don't exactly know why things have escalated so negatively, except if you accept that some happy events can reveal sadder truths and vice versa.But I'm talking too abstractly and make the film sound like some philosophical essay. "Beginners" is actually based on Mike Mills' life, for what it's worth, but we're all free to tell our stories and this one has a catching set-up. Mills' parents were born in the 20's, they belonged to generation where family and love where conditioned by very strict and specific archetypes. After his mother's death in the 90's, his father revealed that he was gay ever since he was married, and the couple lived and built a family on that secret. The father lived a few years in an openly gay life before succumbing to cancer. Now, the question is why did he wait such a long time to come out of the closet?It is a legitimate question because in the 80's and 90's, people embraced homosexuality and let's face it, a man who's interested in men can never be a proper lover to his wife, so why preventing her from a satisfying sexual life? The movie doesn't give direct answers but we see the effects this life made of secrets and lies had on the son: Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a perpetually malcontent artist, incapable to live relationships to their terms. He doesn't drink or do drugs, he has a steady job and a nice apartment, but somewhat he seems incapable to get over a constant state of dissatisfaction. And the film is as much about his sadness (the word sad is quite recurring) than about his father's happiness."Beginners" is made of three intersected stories, one about Oliver's childhood where he spent most of the time with his mother, a free-spirited unconventional woman with some weird habits like pretending to shoot Oliver so he acts dead, Hal's cancer-stricken twilight of life, and his death's aftermath with Oliver trying to pull himself together and find a girl in his life. The only link to his father is his memories and a cute Jack Russell terrier named Arthur, a dog who talks in subtitles and seems to know the hidden truths about Oliver; a little gimmick not overused enough to undermine the film's realism.The story swings back and forth between these time-lines and the only real bits of happiness belong to Hal, this is a man who totally found himself at 75, and lived the last four years of his life to the fullest. Maybe it's because he knew more than anyone the burden of secrecy that he could finally implode all his repressed feelings and lived a life of joy. But again, why wait until you become a frail old man? Maybe it took the marriage to know exactly what went wrong and try to fix it, and maybe it's because Oliver doesn't know what's wrong with him that the situations seems more hopeless. The film is like a time travel in different societies, each one with its own approach to happiness, marriage and priorities. Oliver's parents belonged to a time where war was a priority, where having a house and a job wasn't to be taken for granted, where people fought for their rights. Oliver and Anna, his French love interest, played by Mélanie Laurent, had everything served on a silver platter, they're open-minded, but they never experienced privations and repressions, and perhaps, this is what goes wrong with our whole generation, if we knew what we were missing, we would know what we need.Oliver doesn't know how to be happy, but this isn't a caprice of some sort, it's a true disability to share and communicate. And I guess the point that "Beginners" tries to make is that we can't experience the exhilaration of something without having lived in its core its absence. When Oliver lives some joyful instants with his father, it's maybe to make up for the lack of warmth that structured his childhood, having a father that is finally true to himself, paved the way to a new life, even for him. Mike Mills would also reveal that his father's coming out opened a whole new perspective in his life and created an even richer relationship with his father.And without Hal, it's up to Oliver to find out what kind of life he wants to build, and the existential block he goes through is like suspending dots… we can provide answers but we know the right mindset to have. "Beginners" is an interesting existential movie that proves that sometimes, happiness is about filling gaps, but one must have to experience these gaps to identify them, that's the catch. The film's minimalist format and the great performances especially from Christopher Plummer makes it easier to follow, but sometimes, the film is victim of its tricky subject.Indeed, if the feeling of wasted time and boredom reflects the viewer's opinion, it might be because the film worked way too well for its own good.
