While it might be the oddest comparison to make, I feel it’s more than warranted to bring up here: a few eons ago, I posted a short blurb on Jean-Luc Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her, one of the French auteur’s more radical films which chronicles the prosaic day-to-day activities of an especially hollow housewife. My biggest gripe with the film was that any substantial plot that could have possibly livened up the housewife’s characterization was completely buried by Godard’s intrusive social commentary. The distance he places between his focal lead – the housewife – and his audience is vast and not once are we allowed the opportunity to feel any sympathy toward this woman's plight. Instead, we find a narrative dressed up in sermons that never hit home as hard as they should; largely because said sermons are being delivered to us in a wet, soggy cardboard box that we have no interest in opening because the subjects within are flat and stale.
During the first few minutes of Mike Mills’ Beginners, I might have wondered myself what any of the rambling above had to do with the romantic dramedy. But as the film progressed and its dry tone settled, I couldn't resist likening Mills’ approach in Beginners with the same approach Godard adopted whilst shooting Two or Three Things. While Beginners lacks the incredibly imposed documentary-feel most Godard films seem to pride themselves on, there's still an excess of fluff: mentions of the Bush Administration, social issues and adversities faced by gays and Jews and heaps of pop culture references to fit the film’s 2003 setting. These are all harped on by Oliver Fields (Ewan McGregor) in intermittent segments that don’t necessarily disrupt the film’s flow in the exhausting fashion Godard’s narration does in Two or Three Things, but bogs the film down a bit (needlessly) nonetheless.
Beginners is something of a mishmash of three different relationships that unfold over the span of nearly five decades. All three are recounted by Oliver and done so in a manner that is never sequential. The first – an account of his parents’ marriage – is somewhat vague as we never catch a glimpse of his father Hal Fields (Christopher Plummer) interacting in the mix. Instead we follow Oliver and his half-Jewish mother Georgia (Mary Page Keller) as they learn to cope with Hal’s questionable absence from home. It’s revealed shortly after Georgia's death that Hal is gay and has been aware of this since the age of 15. The second “romance” involves Hal and his younger lover Andy (Goran Visnjic) and could be considered a waste of an arc; its only purpose is to illustrate Hal’s experience embracing his new gay lifestyle as well as the emotional toils that come with being out at the ripe old age of 75.
Thankfully, this narrative isn't too domineering. The third arc between our protagonist Oliver and well-traveled French actress Anna Wallace (Mélanie Laurent), however, is. Naturally so, of course, but it’s this arc that stems right back to my initial gripe with Two or Three Things; the romanticism and humanity of this relationship is lost at the cost of Mills’ desire to quirk-ify the story with historical anecdotes – from Harvey Milk to Adolf Hitler – littered with still photographs and illustrations that, sure, have a place and a point to make, but this shouldn't come at the expense of our chief characters’ development. These gimmicks sort of quashed any interest I had in seeing Oliver and Anna wind up together in the end. I found myself remembering Beginners more for Mills’ stylish frills than any of the characters on hand. The silver lining: the deadpan contrivances here won’t leave you as arctic cold in the way Godard’s hate letter to consumerism does.
7/10
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