Beginners is quiet and thoughtful

Beginners (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Mike Mills. Starring Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Mélanie Laurent.

Modestly provocative art house drama from writer/director Mike Mills.

Beginners tells three different stories from three different time periods in the life of Oliver (Ewan McGregor), an artist in a professional rut. The first of these focuses on Oliver's 80-year-old father (Christopher Plummer) coming out of the closet after the death of his wife and attempting to live out a missed life in the few months he has left. The second covers Oliver's childhood relationship with his mother and the impact of her sham marriage to Plummer's character. The third follows Oliver coping with the death of his father and meeting a French actress (Mélanie Laurent) with an offbeat, damaged personality to match his own.

This is a film that cannot be summarized; it's a story told with a sad smile, light enough to be enjoyed with a surface viewing but dense enough for serious analysis by those with the inclination. It may be occasionally a little too preoccupied with conspicuous navel-gazing, but there's no denying that every scene drips with creamy symbolism and chocolaty meaning. Seeing the significance of minor events in one time period revealed later by a flashback to another is particularly rewarding.

The story of Plummer's character is the interesting one; his efforts to reinvent himself during the final stage of his life make for a novel premise that brings out the best of both Plummer and McGregor's talents. By comparison, the "main" plot about Oliver's new relationship with Laurent's character, and its inevitable breakdown due to Oliver's fear of commitment, feels a little stale and predictable.

But these two threads can't be taken as entirely separate; the film is structured well enough to make us believe it is a single cohesive tale, with events from different eras influencing Oliver's outlook before our eyes.

This is a film in which little changes from beginning to end-we are told the outcome of at least two of the plot threads in the opening narration, after all-but when it's over it leaves a certainty that, somewhere between the frames, a story has been told.

Rated R for offending busybodies.

4 out of 5