Beginners (2010)
Genre: Comedy / Drama
Duration: 105 minuten
Country:
United States
Directed by: Mike Mills
Stars: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer and Mélanie Laurent
IMDb score:
7,2 (95.926)
Releasedate: 9 June 2011
Beginners plot
"This is what love feels like."
Oliver (Ewan McGregor) meets the unpredictable Anna (Mélanie Laurent), a few months after the death of his father Hal (Christopher Plummer). This newfound love inundates Oliver with memories of his father who – after a 44-year marriage – finally came out as a homosexual at the age of 75. Hal's reveal brought father and son closer than they ever were. Now Oliver tries to love Anna with all the guts, humor and hope he learned from his father.
Actors and actresses
Oliver Fields
Hal Fields
Anna Wallace
Arthur
Andy
Elliot
Georgia Fields
Young Oliver
Shauna
Liz
Reviews & comments
Onderhond
-
- 87450 messages
- 12489 votes
Pretty nice.
Basically just a drama, with some comic and romantic notes here and there. Finding core comedies is almost impossible these days, so I'm no longer surprised when I'm presented with yet another mix of drama and comedy. But admit it, this film by Mills is a bit more than your average drama.
The cast is doing very well, Mills is also regularly noticed in the direction and despite the fact that the film is mainly quietly meandering, the film also manages to choose its moments in terms of comedy and romance. It's all neatly balanced and feels like a movie from a director who clearly knows what he's doing.
However, that is where the only real criticism is hidden. Barely any lows, but otherwise it's all fairly flat. It is a little sharp and rather predictable film, in which characters and their drama hardly get real depth. Certainly not a bad film, but one of the "forgotten tomorrow" type.
3.0*
JJ_D
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- 3805 messages
- 1337 votes
Of both films, '20th Century Women' is definitely the better one: more mature, warmer, psychologically more definite, more complete from a narrative point of view… When it comes to budding relationships, however, a film doesn't have to be "exhaustive". . I mean: a plot can look for, just like the characters... In other words, the relationship between Oliver and Anna is told in a deliberately sketchy way, in bits and pieces, like a puzzle that the characters are also putting together, struggling with the ask if the pieces fit together like that.
The central idea, namely that one never gets rid of one's earliest impressions of relational relationships, is not new. Far from. Still, Mike Mills is credited for not portraying Oliver as a completely dysfunctional individual, but rather as someone who has learned to live and survive with or in spite of his baggage, although the axioms with which he approaches potential lovers seem to stand in the way of lasting relationships.
A too suffocating bond with a mother condemned to the hearth and a mild form of madness due to her loneliness, an absent father who dared not be emotionally available because his emotional life and his urges were denounced in the psychiatric armchair: it makes that Oliver learns to exist in stocking feet, until his father (posthumously) shows him that the only right approach to shame is to leave her far behind. Every person has the right to love, to closeness, to sex, to who he or she is – with Anna that is: hesitating, cautious, possibly traumatized, but full of desire to finally be able to give oneself integrally to someone.[/spoiler ] For me, short and sweet: a beautiful piece of human being.
Is 'Beginners' perfect? Certainly not. Neither are we at all. And that is exactly what the film does beautifully. A revelation!
3.75*
Robi
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- 2431 messages
- 2479 votes
Young man is still in the grieving process of his recently deceased father when he starts a relationship with a woman.
A beautiful film that only gets better and better as it goes along. Also, the acting is fantastic. Especially the scenes between man and woman are often magically beautiful. But the relationship between father and son also has very beautiful moments. A film that I will probably like even better the next time I see it.
By the way, I see that I had seen a film by the same director not so long ago. 20th Century Women (2016) That's pure coincidence. I don't know that director, but I already gave that other film 4 stars. So let's see what else Mike Mills has made. So not much. There's only one movie left that I still have to look for.
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