Beginners

Mike Mills’s Beginners entertains viewers with two essential questions of classical philosophy: What is The Good Life, and how does one live it?

Oliver Fields (Ewan McGregor) is emotionally at sea. In his mid-thirties, he feels his life has yet to start and he has no idea where even to begin. He is a graphic designer who has had a series of girlfriends. He knows for sure only that he does not want a marriage like his parents Hal (Christopher Plummer) and Georgia (Mary Page Keller), which he witnessed as 44 years of passionless duty that ended when Georgia passed away quickly from cancer.

But his mother’s death brings an unexpected development: His father, a retired museum director aged 75, discloses to his only child that he is gay:

“I don’t want to be just theoretically gay,” Hal adds with fervor, “I want to do something about it.” And Hal sets about doing so. He finds a boyfriend, Andy (Goran Visnjic), becomes socially and politically active in the gay community, and radiantly happy.

Hal’s new life feels true to his nature—The Good Life. He lives this new life to the full in his remaining years, particularly in the genuine affection he shares with his younger partner that he never had with his former wife. In this time Hal gives Oliver his last and truest parental lesson: How to get on with his own life. (Plummer earned an Oscar for best supporting actor in this role.)

Scores of graphic images and references from popular culture fly by in Oliver’s narration throughout the film, both in the background and illustrating his thoughts; Arthur (Cosmo), the Jack Russell terrier he inherits from his father, gets subtitles. These devices speak for the “meta” state of mind which may be one source of Oliver’s confusion, in which things reference other things ad infinitum rather than existing each in and of itself and he projects his feelings on things outside himself.

Enter Oliver got up as Sigmund Freud at a Halloween costume party with friends from work. His Freudian beard and mustache extend the irony in that they enhance his similarity to his father. (McGregor and Plummer are a good father-son match.)

Oliver’s Freud sits at the head of a couch holding a pipe, engaged in a meta-ironic psychoanalytic interview with a man lying on the couch dressed as a witch. The “meta” gets a twist when a woman in a short wig and a man’s jacket, tie, and waistcoat—Anna—takes the witch’s place. Anna (Mélanie Laurent) tries to communicate with ‘The Doctor’ in short handwritten notes, claiming that she has laryngitis; Oliver surprises her when he seems disinclined to play along. Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe.

 

“Why are you at a party if you are so sad?” Anna writes Oliver. And when he asks her how she can tell he is sad, she draws two eyes. This is one of many short, lovely, understated and unspoken moments between pairs of this fine cast that make the film a gem, moving and effective moments which reveal things-in-themselves and people as individuals and not characters or demographic identities.

Looking to solve her own life problem, Anna, a French film actress free so long as there’s another hotel but afraid of ending up alone, finds common cause with Oliver, who learned from his mother how to take refuge drifting inside himself, keeping the world out while remaining a part of it. Oliver and Anna live in a present unsure as to what comes next as they work out what does.

The narrative, told from Oliver’s point of view from the present with flashbacks, opens with him clearing out his father’s house. It shifts smoothly between present and past as Oliver considers the puzzle of his life: as a child with his mother and watching his parents interactions; as an adult watching his widower father, his partner Andy, and their gay friends; alone after his father’s death; and his time with Anna.

Parfois ceci est vraiment une pipe.

The story has a clean, simple finish and shouldn’t be missed.

Beginners 2010 U.S. (105 minutes) Universal/Focus Features/Olympus Pictures/Parts and Labor. Written and directed by Mike Mills; cinematography by Kasper Tuxen; editing by Olivir Bugge Coutté; casting by Courtney Bright and Nicole Daniels; production design by Shane Valentino; costumes by Jennifer Johnson.

(4 Aug 2011 review revised with photos 16 Dec 2022)