Beginners
From what the poster says, it looks like it’s a Eastern European (Polish?) poster of “Woman Times Seven”*, a film I have heard mixed things of and am therefore not sure if I really want to see it. But now that I feel like I have stared at an illustration of Shirley MacLaine’s butt for two hours, I actually got curious about the film.
Strangely enough, I have no idea why I wanted to see “Beginners”. Nobody recommended it to me, and I am not even sure if I have put it onto any of my to-watch-lists myself. I just had the film, and it was lying around there for so long that I don’t remember why it was there in the first place. I suppose I kind of like Ewan McGregor, but he mostly played in silly romantic comedies, and I definitely have no bias for Mélanie Laurent like Shii does. So why? Oh yeah, the old father got an Oscar for the supporting actor role. But really, that role wasn’t much of a big deal.
“Beginners” was a lovely little film whose melancholy reminded me a lot of “Elizabethtown”. It’s one of these slightly artful little films heavily focusing on the main characters who are extremely aware of the sadness in the world – even though this sadness is mostly just in their heads. They don’t have trouble with money, or any other serious issues, they’re just sad. In both cases this is at least partially due to the death of the father, and both films feature another old character who goes through some major crisis in life. Wow, these two movies have a surprising amount of things in common.
Apart from that, “Beginners” is rather quirky. That starts with the main character’s extremely artsy graphic design job, and does not end with Arthur being a talking dog. Everybody lives in extremely hipster-ish stylish rooms that just scream “luxury problems” to you. I liked every character in the film, and that is definitely a great plus. At the end of the day, however, I am not sure if this is a film that needed to be made, even if I really liked the premise. It was interesting and enjoyable enough to see, but besides creating a melancholic atmosphere and musing about life in a way that feels almost irrelevant to me, I don’t think the film has contributed that much to the world.
Also wow, today I saw this amazingly old 1901 adaptation of the Christmas Carol, and it looks so… Méliès except without the supernatural stuff? Fin de siècle style film-making is so fascinating, it even made me enjoy this little film by the same guy from the same year. I think the Muppet’s Christmas Carol is my favorite children’s movie of all times, and I watch it again and again whenever I can. I would like to believe that those are enriching things in life which make me less melancholic and so strangely empty as the characters in the film.