Writer and director Mike Mills drew from details of his own life to make his newest, Beginners. While that kind of knowledge can be distracting, constant questions of where reality and fiction separate plaguing and pulling the viewer, it’s the film’s unique use of often rote methods, like non-linear storytelling and voice over, that draw you into the film and in to the lives of its characters.
The film tells the story of Oliver (Ewan McGregor), a 38 year old graphic artist whose life is simultaneously rocked by the coming out of his 75 year old father, Hal as portrayed by Christopher Plummer, and his subsequent death four years later. These events, catapults for Oliver, are told to us moments into the film.
We only experience Oliver’s moments with his father as flashback, the new and frightening for both romance of Oliver and Anna (Melanie Laurent) propelling his memories forward. It’s a method that works here in so many ways, first and foremost to show us that love, be it between a man and a woman, two men or a father and son, travel on a parallel line.
In this way, the film’s title, Beginners, is perfect, the word a broad yet aptly precise bind for all the film’s themes. It shows us beginners at love and at life, advocating for living your time fully, even at its end. That this kind of change, like the one Hal makes, doesn’t only translate into sexuality, but that the freedom to be who you really are allows you to become the man, or in his case, the father, you meant to be.
Beginners is quietly charming and quaint, almost to an extreme and at times teeters on the edge of pandering. However, if there is any man that can be as eccentric, introspective and quirky as Oliver, without ever becoming less desirable because of it, Ewan McGregor is that man. Where other actors would come off as saccharine, McGregor manages a sensitive and human interpretation. An equally great performance is had from Goran Visnjic as Andy, the much younger lover to Hal. A stereotype that never succumbs to stereotype, Andy provides as much comic relief as he does heart rendering moments. That is the nature of this film, however. It is at both times about the absurdity of life and its situations, as it is about the tragedy of love and loss.
Beginners is playing in theaters now, and will be out in UK theaters July 22nd.
Sarah McBride is a self-proclaimed pop-culture enthusiast. Her thoughts on music, film, lit and life can be found at sarahism.com. You can follow her on twitter @sarahism.