Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. Ordinary People is the fifty-third film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. Over the years we have seen a sort of tug of war with Best Picture winning films. Often the Academy wants to reward something epic and important, then it retreats into something more crowd pleasing or reactionary. Sometimes though, the Oscars can shift the terms of what is, not just acceptable but, honorable on screen. With Ordinary People, Best Picture reflected a radical shift in discussion of mental health, albeit in a wholly traditional way.
Conrad Jarrett (Timothy Hutton) is wealthy suburban teenager who, on the surface, looks like any other WASP-y kid set up for success in life. He’s a burgeoning swim star with a loving father (Donald Sutherland), a cold but present mother (Mary Tyler Moore.) What he also has is a deep struggle with depression following the death of his brother in a boating accident and the stigma of a failed suicide attempt. Freshly out of the hospital and trying to navigate complex feelings of guilt and shame circulating his whole family, Conrad begins to see Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch), a therapist in town. Robert Redford steps behind the camera for the first time to direct this adaptation of a Judith Guest novel of the same name. Ordinary People is one of the first major Hollywood films to tackle mental illness and therapy in such a nuanced and thoughtful way. Hirsch is tremendous in one of cinema’s more admiring portrayals of the psychiatry. Conrad struggles with many of the same issues as any other teenager, from starting romantic relationships and dealing with parents that just don’t understand him, but he is never demeaned by Redford’s direction for his mental illness. Those parents are really something to watch as well. Sutherland is as gentle as he’s ever been trying to hold this family together. All the while his Calvin is trying to hold himself together and struggling to reveal the cracks in his armor to his grieving wife and son. Playing against type, Mary Tyler Moore is steely and cold blooded, giving the film more of a villain than it realistically needs. And such is the ultimate fault with Ordinary People. As put to screen, this is a film that doesn’t always understand where the sympathy of its characters lie and where they need to. Moore’s narcissistically tyrannical matriarch is well performed but a more of a foil for the men in her family than a real, aching person in her own right. Every single person in this film — aside from Berger, maybe — is just comically wealthy. Not to say that folks with multiple dining rooms in their suburban Illinois mansions don’t go through profound struggles like the Jarretts do in this film. There just seems to be much more sympathy for their mental struggles than when someone with far less means experiences mental health crises. Still, Redford’s debut has its heart in the right place and treats such sensitive subject matter with the appropriate generosity. He shows early a knack for intimate direction and drawing the best out of his performers. Ordinary People is far from a perfect distillation of its central themes but it is a step forward for what Hollywood deemed notable and worthy of honoring. 6/10
Comments
|