I’m going to come right out and say it, and please reserve your anger and disdain for the comments below: I am a bit of hipster. I wear skinny jeans, and I like thrashy noise-rock, and I’m turned on by the prospect of discussing the Criterion Collection and the newest book being released by McSweeney’s. It has taken me a while, a long while, to come to grips with my sense of hipster, but I have and with it I’ve been able to extricate myself from the darker aspects of the self-designation. Especially in terms of film. As the term "hipster" has become more and more a recognizable aesthetic, the film industry has quickly followed. Many would argue that Wes Anderson is the grandfather of the hipster aesthetic in film, but now years after the spinning books and perfectly-stage close-ups of Rushmore, the look has pushed its way in to the hands of a new breed of directors. Some of these directors are able to balance the inherent twee of the aesthetic, while actually making a solid film, and others, well, others are not. Mike Mills, the director of Thumbsucker, is a strong member of this new class of hipster-types, and if anyone should be bearing their flag, it should be Mills. Beginners, the second film from Mike Mills, is easily the best film I’ve seen this year, almost entirely in part because of Mills' ability to balance the borderline cute aspects of the film with a solid emotional package that will bowl you over.
Late in his
life Mike Mills’ father, only months after the death of his
wife, confessed to the director that he was gay, and that he
didn’t want to hide it anymore. Beginners is that
story, told in flashback in the aftermath of Mills' father’s
death (here played with wit and sadness by the amazing
Christopher Plummer). Ewan McGregor plays Oliver, the
stand-in for Mills, a graphic designer adrift after the
death of his gregarious father. The film bounces back and
forth in time between the days after Hal’s (Mills’ father)
announcement, and his subsequent diagnosis of Stage 4
cancer, and his eventual death with Oliver’s life in the
present, haunted by the loss of his father, but staggering
towards a new relationship with the absolutely gorgeous Anna
(Melanie Laurent). Mills brings an ingenious rhythm to the
film through the usage of a droll narration by McGregor that
compares the events on screen to the events of, well, the
world. Mills' memory is suspect at all times in the
remembrance of his father, and the narration helps to
showcase this while injecting it with the personal touches
filmmakers so often lose track of when crafting a film as
gorgeous as this. And gorgeous this film certainly is.
Backlight but what seems to be the perfect mixture of
sunlight, streetlight and ambient light, every scene in the
film glows with what might be described as emotional
resonance.
|
