Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is a cipher for the author in this highly autobiographical film telling the tale of a son’s acceptance of his father’s (Christopher Plummer) decision to come out at the grand old age of 75 in the immediate aftermath of his wife’s death. The film splits its attention between the remarkable alacrity with which Oliver accepts his father’s newly-declared sexual orientation with its attendant lifestyle changes and the way his life is impaired by the grief he feels at the loss of his father to cancer a few years later.
Mills is admirably playful with this deeply personal material. The timeline jumps about with a confidence which suggests that Mills has a lot of confidence in the audience’s willingness to provide the concentration required to make the disparate strands to cohere into something substantial. This effort is well-rewarded by a film which engages with complex characters imbued with a refreshing depths of decency. Everyone we meet is worthwhile and the only villainy is provided by the inconstancy of life itself.
McGregor’s understated screen presence is perfect for Oliver. His easy acceptance of his father’s astonishing revelation and all that it presages appear to be representative of a tendency to allow life to wash over him. He goes along with what others want even when it doesn’t suit him and this easy-going nature even extends to bending his life around the needs of Arthur, the Jack Russell dog he inherits from his father.
It’s no surprise then that Oliver is completely in thrall to Anna (Mélanie Laurent) as a free-spirited actress drawn to Oliver because of the sadness she sees in his eyes. Oliver appears to recognise that Anna represents an opportunity to break free from his slavish acceptance of life’s vagaries but the moment there’s any kind of challenge to the momentum of their burgeoning relationship, his old habit resurfaces and he supinely accepts the idea that their union is doomed.
Interlaced with this charming depiction of redemptive love is one of the most tender displays of filial devotion ever seen in the cinema. Despite realising that he’s finally been given for his mother’s unhappiness and that it doesn’t necessarily reflect well on his father, he unhesitatingly embraces the old man’s decision. The questions behind Oliver’s eyes as his father forms a relationship with a younger man prone to childish displays of affection remain unasked as he fully accepts his father’s choices. Oliver even remains sanguine at the discovery that his father sought sexual encounters outside his new relationship to avenge his partner’s lack of commitment to monogamy.
As Mike Mills once did, Oliver works as a graphic designer and this enables his drawings to provide another strand for the film. Comedy is provided by Oliver’s determined effort to persuade a music industry client to incorporate a graphical series of idiosyncratic musings on the nature of sadness into the CD cover art he’s been commissioned to produce. It’s an example of the extent to which Mills is willing to experiment with conventional narrative structures and elsewhere in the film he even incorporates a dose of magic realism and this could have jarred if the film as a whole wasn’t already a patchwork quilt of some audacity.
‘Beginners’ is as touching as it is dazzling and has given Ewan McGregor an opportunity to remind us what it was we liked about him before he donned Alec Guinness’s discarded robes to help George Lucas sell plastic merchandise to a new generation of undiscerning filmgoers. It also provides a fittingly poignant role for Christopher Plummer in the twilight of his career and the dynamic created by these two will linger long in the memory.
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