Posted on Wednesday, 26 October 2011

BEGINNERS (Mills, 2010) - This one had less whimsy and more pathos than expected, which came as a happy surprise to me but less so to the friend I saw it with. Christopher Plummer is simply amazing as Ewan McGregor’s late-out-of-the-closet dad, and many details are elegantly and lightly sketched. As much as I enjoyed it in a moment (and got a little choked up more than once), I do have some slight criticisms looking back. The choice as a gay man to marry a woman and act straight for 45 years is a poignant one, but also a fairly understandable one. The choice to knowingly marry a man you know is gay, and to persevere for 45 years while being clearly unhappy, now THAT’s the choice I wanted to learn more about. Mary Page Keller is great as McGregor’s mother, but the fact that we see everything through his eyes has the drawback that we never get close to her, always see her through doorways and filtered through memory. Melanie Laurent, likewise, remains an outline in the other half of the story, a charming outline, sure, and enough of a separate person that I wouldn’t call her a MPDG, but an outline nonetheless, and her problems with her parents are only mentioned in passing. I really like the film, don’t get me wrong. But it made me want to see a parallel one in which the men are the supporting characters,

BEGINNERS (Mills, 2010) - This one had less whimsy and more pathos than expected, which came as a happy surprise to me but less so to the friend I saw it with. Christopher Plummer is simply amazing as Ewan McGregor’s late-out-of-the-closet dad, and many details are elegantly and lightly sketched. As much as I enjoyed it in a moment (and got a little choked up more than once), I do have some slight criticisms looking back. The choice as a gay man to marry a woman and act straight for 45 years is a poignant one, but also a fairly understandable one. The choice to knowingly marry a man you know is gay, and to persevere for 45 years while being clearly unhappy, now THAT’s the choice I wanted to learn more about. Mary Page Keller is great as McGregor’s mother, but the fact that we see everything through his eyes has the drawback that we never get close to her, always see her through doorways and filtered through memory. Melanie Laurent, likewise, remains an outline in the other half of the story, a charming outline, sure, and enough of a separate person that I wouldn’t call her a MPDG, but an outline nonetheless, and her problems with her parents are only mentioned in passing. I really like the film, don’t get me wrong. But it made me want to see a parallel one in which the men are the supporting characters,

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  1. notesonfilms posted this