Movie review: "Beginners' is an intimate story told with heart

Losses have left a man named Oliver (Ewan McGregor) adrift in “Beginners.” In his late 30s, Oliver still mourns the loss of his mother, who died of cancer five years before the picture starts. He also is mourning the loss of his father, another casualty of cancer whose death is only two months in the past.

As the picture opens, Oliver is boxing up his father’s things. He’s talking to his dad’s dog, Arthur, an alert and preternaturally sympathetic Jack Russell terrier. The dog replies, in subtitles, though only the audience knows that, adding a note of gentle whimsy to the proceedings.

Oliver is taking stock. He’s sorting through his feelings. In particular, he’s looking back on the final five years of his father’s life, when, shortly after his wife died, he came out of the closet and told his son he was gay. During those final five years, the father found a much younger boyfriend and lived life to the fullest with great exuberance.

“It was the first time I saw him really in love,” Oliver says in a voiceover. Yet, his father (Christopher Plummer) also confided in him that he loved his late wife, who knew he was gay even before they married in 1955 in Los Angeles.

Oliver spends “Beginners” trying to make sense of his disordered emotions. How does he really feel about his father, who kept so much concealed from him when he was growing up?

He also is tentatively embarking on a romance with an intriguing French actress he met at a party, Anna (Mélanie Laurent). He’s happy, yet wary. “Before Anna, I had four serious relationships,” he says. “I let all of them fall apart.” He wonders why, and wonders if this latest relationship will end in the same way, undone by his inability to commit sufficiently to keep it going.

Despite being beset by so much inner confusion, Oliver is surprisingly dispassionate as he analyzes his feelings. Under the direction of writer-director Mike Mills, McGregor gives a warm and sympathetic performance of a man who’s yearning to connect with the world but cautious about doing so, a man’s who is waiting for his life to begin anew.

The picture is a very personal one for Mills. It is essentially his story. After 40-plus years of marriage, his father came out of the closet at age 75 after his wife died.

Mills’ writing is astute and his director’s touch is delicate. He uses his parents’ situation to trace the evolution of social attitudes in the United States from the ’50s when they married and gay people were banished to the closet, to the early 2000s (most of the picture is in 2003), when that closet was largely a thing of the past and the father could be out and accepted.

He marks the passage of time and evolution of attitudes in quick, quirky flashbacks. “This is 2003,” he says at the beginning in voiceover. “This is what the sun looks like” – quick snapshot of the sun – “and the stars” – snapshot of the cosmos – “this is the president” – snapshot of George W. Bush – “and the sun in 1955” – snapshot – “and the stars” – snap – “and the president” – snapshot of Ike. Stars and sun stay unchanged, but down here on Earth, the changes from Ike to George W. are immense.

The picture proceeds on two tracks, one of them following Oliver as he revisits his family’s past, the other following developments with Anna. The family track is more involving, with McGregor and Plummer deftly illuminating the complexities of their relationship, with the son’s love for his father deepening as he learns more about who he is. It deepens further as Oliver becomes caregiver in his father’s dying days.

“Beginners” is a melancholy film, but a hopeful one, almost magical in its quiet sensitivity as it explores the inner lives of its characters. ‘Beginners’

* * * *

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Mélanie Laurent, Goran Visnjic

Director: Mike Mills

Running time: 1:44

Rating: R; language, sexual content, brief nudity