Beginners
It's been a while a film has touched me the way Beginners has. As the credits rolled and the lights gradually came on to cast a soft glow in the cinema, I remained in my seat, awash with mixed emotions while scenes from the film re-played in my mind.
To me, Beginners essentially explores how people cope with life and the life-changing changes it brings. The departure of a loved one. The departure of the familiar. Coming to terms with self. Falling in love. Falling out of love. Learning to love.
Ewan McGregor delivers an outstanding portrayal of protagonist Oliver, conveying his spectrum of emotions from wistfulness to tenderness with equal skill. Just months after the passing of his mother, Oliver has his 75-year-old father Hal coming out to him as a gay man and living life unabashedly, including finding a young lover. Christopher Plummer plays Hal with such ease and elegance that I found him often overshadowing Ewan McGregor whenever they appear together. Oliver ends up grappling with losing the people he holds dear, failed relationships and journeying through life alone, with only his father's pet dog Arthur for company and solace. At a party, he begins taking on the biggest gamble of his life - a chance at love with a quirky French actress named Anna, who somehow reminds me of his equally quirky mother. To Anna, Oliver ventures his highest stake - his heart, one ridden with scars from four failed relationships and deep-rooted misgivings about love.
Beginners unfolds in an atypical fashion as it slips back and forth between the present and the past, between scenes of mother and son, father and son, and Oliver and Anna. Like a jigsaw puzzle, the initial pieces of Oliver's memories and his life at present offer a hazy glimpse of the larger picture at first. As more shards of Oliver’s recollections surface, triggering new ones and reinforcing others, what eventually emerges is a collage depicting his life, the lives of those around him, how their lives intertwine as well as the joys and sorrows they lay upon one another. It is a poignant picture that perhaps mirrors somewhat the struggles, heartache and conflicts we face in our own lives.
I guess the pensive, melancholic tone depicted in Beginners that still manages to express glimmers of hope was why I found it achingly and hauntingly beautiful. The film demonstrated that in life, we are all beginners, regardless of who we are or how far we have come. Although nothing can better prepare us for the good and the bad that come our way, the film appears to dare us not to be restrained as beginners at living life but to live life in the best way we know.
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