Beginners

I’d seen headlines buzzing with rumors about the excellent quality of Beginners. Imagining the film crafted from the story outlined in a summary, it’s easy to see where the brilliant performances germinated. What’s unexpected about Beginners is the unique way in which the relationships are revealed and developed. Writer/director Mike Mills has crafted an exceptionally beautiful picture of love and loss in contemporary (2003) Los Angeles. It’s about teaching an old dog new tricks; it’s about facing the challenges posed to the identity a person develops over years of experience, and deciding to change – even when change is difficult and life seems to point in a different direction.

At 38, Oliver Fields (Ewan MacGregor) has lost not one but two parents to cancer. His father Hal spent his last years relishing his revised identity as an openly gay man, despite having spent most of his life married to Oliver’s mother. Despite his concern for his father’s health, or perhaps because of it, Oliver is inspired by Hal’s vitalty and happiness. With Hal’s death Oliver is overtaken by sadness, becoming inseparable with his father’s dog Arthur and devoing himself to his job as a graphic designer. When his friends force him to attend a costume party (with Arthur in tow), one woman sees through his façade to the vulnerable man behind it. They’re made for each other, Anna and Oliver. She’s a French actress living in a hotel, and he’s a commitmentphobe waiting for The Right One. They’ve both run away from previous relationships but now confront the very real possibility of ending up alone.

In many ways, Beginners is an apt companion film to Tom Ford’s A Single Man. Flashbacks, loneliness, life in the fifties, the repression of the gay lifestyle and its effect on love in the now, Beginners as an illustration of what became of Firth’s peers in A Single Man. Stylistically, Beginners is completely different, often inserting documentary-style graphics to depict visually what Oliver is trying to express. But what’s truly exquisite about Mike Mills’ film is the bittersweet moments, the love and loss intertwined, enveloping love juxtaposed with heartbreak and suffering - and laughter. Whether it’s the humor found in an unexpected moment or an awkward truth hitting home, we all turn to laughter at one point or another, as we need a way to cope.

The performances in Beginners are excellent, with each of the starring quartet (Christopher Plummer, Ewan MacGregor, Mélanie Laurent, and the Jack Russell playing Arthur) earning their accolades. Plummer’s masterful navigation of difficult emotions is incredible, and Ewan MacGregor gives a beautifully comfortable performance as Oliver. A man with so much and so little to lose, determined to do better than his parents and unwilling to settle, Oliver is someone with whom most viewers can identify. Mélanie Laurent is both classic and foreign, a blend of Meg Ryan with Marion Cotillard, quite possibly capable of being anybody’s dream girl, nevermind Oliver’s. The dog’s appeal goes without saying - but the accompanying subtitles are priceless. More importantly, the role Arthur plays in the story is too important to be ignored. Arthur is love: undeniable, irrevocable love.

Love is a sort of baptism - once you’ve experienced it, you emerge anew, beginning again. It is eternal, remaining long after the object of one’s affections is gone. In Beginners, Mike Mills proves that you’re never too old to begin again, and that really, in life and in love, you’re never really finished.