Beginners
Written and Directed By: Mike Mills
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurent, Goran Vinsijc, and Mary Page Keller
Director of Photography: Kasper Tuxen, Editor: Oliver Bugge Coutte, Production Designer: Shane Valentino, Music: Roger Neill, David Palmer, and Brian Reitzell
Rated: R for a little language and some situations only adults will enjoy
Beginners, a new film from Mike Mills and starring Ewan McGregor, is in no rush to get anywhere, while jumping all over the place at the time. The film’s narrative zooms back and forth in time, from childhood, to middle age, to a slightly older middle age of its protagonist, the sad but lovable Oliver, but does so in a casual business. This is the same way that Mr. Mills approaches the quirk side to his film—a series of Wes Anderson-styled cutout shots, a dog that talks through subtitles, and a manic pixie dream girl played by Melanie Laurent—but without calling attention to itself.
What separates Mr. Mills, whose last film Thumbsucker was a bottle of quirk mixed in with teenage angst that came out as a mess, from other quirk directors is the melancholy he brings to Beginners. With its autobiographical touches, the film reaches out with a slight hand to grab you into its narrative, but it never forces you into a world of farce. It instead soothes you into its story of a man essentially trying to find himself and connect to others in the process.
