The Beginners is an Enchanting Movie About Love

We meet 38 year old Oliver Fields right away, in a depressing situation - he's cleaning out his father's house after his father has died. This includes going through the detritus of his father, Hal's, life and deciding what should go to the dump, what should go to Goodwill and what should remain. It also includes Arthur, a Jack Russell terrier that pines for the company of a human being; ANY human being. Hal goes through the movie as the narrator - he is an artist that is striving to figure out what happiness and love looks like - in both 1955 (when Hal's father married Hal's mother) and 2003, when Hal dies.

The movie seems to be named "Beginners" because Hal and Oliver both seem to be beginners at finding and keeping love. Hal, even though he was married to Oliver's mother until she died approximately 6 to 9 months before we meet them, was never really happy in that relationship because, it turns out, he was gay. And Oliver is simply unhappy because he can never seem to finding a lasting romantic relationship with anyone, male or female. At least until he gets dragged to a costume party by co-workers and during which he meets a young, devastatingly beautiful French blond, named Anna whom he immediately starts to fall for. Will this be the end of melancholia for Oliver? Well, I guess you'll have to see the movie to figure out if the relationship survives the movie and beyond...

The movie itself was a little slow starting but became appealing as time passed and I ended up enjoying the movie as a whole by the end. Mills, a burgeoning director, often skips back and forth in between different time periods. We are left making the connection that the sexless, emotionless marriage between Oliver's parents is directly to blame for his seeming ineptitude in finding love and happiness as an adult. Ewan MacGregor is typical MacGregor and he doesn't do anything spectacular necessarily in this movie; he is reliable in the sense that he is melancholy and depressed just enough, but not too much so as to be overbearing or boring. Christopher Plummer was fantastic. His matter of fact bluntness lends credibility to the role that he plays and you find yourself smiling as he talks to his son, his new boyfriend and their friends about his blossoming sexuality. But I truly couldn't keep my eyes away from Melanie Laurent, who plays Anna (the young lady that MacGregor meets at the party). She's beautiful and charming and wistful and spunky and smart.

Wonderful movie that everyone should watch.