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Beginners (2010)

105 min  -  Comedy | Drama -  9 June 2011 (Germany)

Meet Hal (Christopher Plummer), his son Oliver (Ewan McGregor), and Oliver’s new girlfriend Anna (Melanie Laurent), they are all beginners. In what? In matters of Love and Life.

Beginners, Mike Mills’ second feature-length film, is a movie about the importance of the choices one makes to fill life with joy, rather than sadness. It tells three stories in three different timelines, interwoven with each other. The fil rouge that links each story is Oliver, a 38-year old artist. Through his eyes and voice (and the use of some clever graphics by the director), we go back and forth in time: we are shown glimpses of Oliver’s Mom and her unhappy marriage with Hal, a museum director and a closeted gay in a society that considers homosexuality an illness in desperate need of a cure; after his wife’s death, 75-year old Hal decides to begin a new life, we see him finally embracing his homosexuality freely and unabashedly; the third story is about Oliver himself: few months after his father’s death, still mourning for his loss, he meets Anna, a French actress, at a costume party. It is a particular moment in Oliver’s life, he’s trying to make sense of his own past, his own present, and decide which shape to give to his own future. Continue reading »