Session 017 - Ordinary People
Who saw it and what are your thoughts on it?
Friday, April 4, 2008
In the Screening Room - Robert Redford's
Ordinary People
Session 017 - Ordinary People
Who saw it and what are your thoughts on it?
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2 comments:
The Best Picture-winning Ordinary People is probably best known nowadays for infamously being the film that prevented Martin Scorsese from winning his first Best Director’s award (an award that he would have to wait another 5 nominations and 26 years to receive).
And no, in the year that brought Raging Bull, Ordinary People probably shouldn’t have walked away with the statuettes it did… but maybe I can see why it would have.
This is a very well told and well acted, suburban, upper middle class story of depression. With the Jarrett family still recovering from the death of the eldest son, Buck, his brother Conrad (Timothy Hutton) finds it difficult to cope and attempts suicide. He can’t deal with the memories of what happened to his brother, how he feels responsible for it and his mother’s inability to connect with him anymore, leaving him feeling unloved by his own mother.
The majority of the story takes place in the aftereffects. The tragic wake. As Conrad tries to better deal with the accident and the knowledge that everyone around him knows he tried to kill himself. He begins by trying to repair his psyche through consultations with a therapist (the amiable Judd Hirsch). I initially thought these scenes would be a drain on the film, but director Robert Redford really makes it feel like a safe haven for Conrad. His ability to say what goes unsaid in the household makes these scenes vital towards the whole of the film. And the breakthroughs here allow the rest of the film to play out as it should, with varying moments of bottled up emotion and fits of anger between people who no longer know how to behave towards one another.
The entire cast is good here; from Hirsch and Donald Sutherland as Conrad’s father to the Academy Award-winning Timothy Hutton (although I have serious issues with considering him the “supporting actor” in this film considering it’s his story). But the real revelation to me was Mary Tyler Moore as Conrad’s mother.
Yep, that’s right, the bright and vivacious TV icon of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and her own “Mary Tyler Moore Show” downright flattened me here. Her Beth is the polar opposite of anything I’ve seen her take on in the past, a woman who is so closed off that even she doesn’t really understand what she wants. Beth only knows that she wants to be on vacation, to get away, and she retreats from any sort of confrontation. Her face is a happy façade, a mask, preventing her from showing true emotion or allowing herself to open up. But Moore is honest and completely believable as a mother whose son has passed and no longer knows how to conduct herself, even amongst her family.
Yes she treats everyone miserably while never allowing herself to break down, always soldering on instead. She's entirely icy and aloof, and maybe that's why it works so well to have cast Moore... because we as an audience know we've seen her happy before. She used to be that charming and friendly and lovely girl we'd see on TV. But maybe that’s the added tragedy of it all, the accident didn’t just take her son, it took her spirit too.
Raging Bull definitely deserved the trophy, but i was surprised just how much I liked this film.
The cast is fantastic. Everyone does a great job particularly Moore and Hutton. Their relationship is so fascinating. We don't necessarily see good/bad guys, though I think Moore is painted to be the villain, but Redford makes her human. We see her flaws and her motives for her actions.
Hutton deserved Best Actor. He is in 95% of the film. It's his story. No wonder he won, nobody else probably seemed as significant to their tale as he is here.
Redford isn't flashy, but he lets the actor's faces tell the story. He doesn't betray that. Let their grief and triumphs express the themes you wished to explore. It was a very poignant picture and I was glad I saw it.
Suggestion Mulligan. Hows about we do a screening room of the original Solaris. Keep meaning to see it and never get around to it.
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