Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore Timothy Hutton, Judd Hitsch. Dir. Robert Redford, Paramount, 1980
I have been fortunate - I suppose that's the word - to see my story on the big screen. Twice. We talk of identifying with movies, with characters, of moviegoing being our identity, but I never went to the movies expecting to see my life reflected back to me. The second time it occurred, with Jonathan Demme's RACHEL GETTING MARRIED, it at least had the benefit of being about a woman, so I can't get all theatrical about how I totes get Rachel. I don't, but I went home from treatment for family events and man, it looked a lot like that movie.
The first time it happened, with Robert Redford's directorial debut, ORDINARY PEOPLE, it was a guy, and that guy, if older than my 13 years, lived a life that looked a whole lot like mine, minus the dead brother. In my case, my brother, my parents' biological son, is extravagantly the favorite, and my Mom & I know the same antagonistic relationship, and especially knew it then. We saw it second-run, late summer. I remember walking out of the theater into Oakley Square on that August night, saying to myself, "How the hell does Robert Redford know what's happening in my home?"
ORDINARY PEOPLE is one of my weird favorites, weird in that I saw it at the theater in '81, don't particularly remember seeing it on cable, saw it on dvd about 20 years ago, and got it for my birthday last week, a favorite film I will wax rhapsodic for yet have seen 3 times in 4 decades. After my third viewing, first as a middle aged guy, I still love this movie. It beat out RAGING BULL for Best Picture, which drives cinephiles nuts, but I don't mind. The Scorsese picture's a work of art, but it's not as emotionally enaged as Redford's movie. RAGING BULL is a triumph of stylization. ORDINARY PEOPLE, a very meat&potatoes movie, visually, brings, for me, anyway all the substance. Three times in four decades this movie has reduced me to a sobbing mess. Any given day, I'll say THE GODFATHER is my favorite movie ever, but stuff like ORDINARY PEOPLE I hold very close. I don't think it perfect, but I won't argue over it, either. You dig it or you don't. I do.
Back in 1981, I lived in a neighborhood that looked an awful lot like the unspecified Chicago suburb of ORDINARY PEOPLE. Dad was an exec at Procter&Gamble, Mom taught, my brother & I went to a private school and swam for our swim club team in the summer, and I for a Friar's Club team indoors over the winter. My brother & I did not get along. I blamed him for things not remotely his fault. Mom liked him. They did stuff together. If he asked her for new shoes for soccer, she got him Mitres without a word. If I asked for shorts for cycling, she told me to save half the $30 & she'd match me. That was the basic dynamic at our house. Mom was always angry about something. She took it out on me, not my brother, and she got - intense. Physical.
That's not the plot of ORDINARY PEOPLE. My third viewing made me curious about 13 year-old me, in a sense. I see why I identified with the film, but over the years the similarities have taken on inaccurate proportions. The truth is, I'dve been almost grateful for an emotionally-unavailable Mom like Mary Tyler Moore. My mother was terrifically disappointed with her marriage & her home life, and she vented her disappointment at/on me. My Dad had Sutherland's warmth, but superficially. He was at home all the time he wasn't at work, but he wasn't present. He told Mom his job was making the money, her job was the kids - all of it, all the time, don't bug him.
Again, not like Sutherland. Sutherland's Dad is engaged where Moore prefers to remain aloof. Sutherland's a man who has made a number of assumptions about his family and their life and those have turned out tragically wrong - he's father of a dead son and an attempted-suicide - and he's frantic to hold any of it together. He's an affable fool who hears his wakeup call. It's a great piece of acting, capping off a 1970s career of bigger & better picture to picture.
ORDINARY PEOPLE isn't a whole lot like my life, except superficially, but it still owned me. The first two times seeing it, I identified entirely with Timothy Hutton's Conrad. I was the swimmer, I had already been in therapy, me&Mom, yada yada. Last weekend, I found myself identifying more with the adults, Sutherland particularly, but I found true sympathy for Moore's Beth, whereas in the past I viewed her as nigh unto Cruella DeVille. She's limited, emotionally, but she doesn't really hide it. Whatever her faults, she says hey, take it or leave it, this is me. I find a grudging respect in myself for that.
Which says a lot, in a lefthanded way, about Mary Tyler Moore's performance. It is career-defining. She's perfect as Beth. She & my Mom may have been different, but she's the template, for Mom's manner and style. Watching Beth & her perfectly permed hair and perfectly permed public manner, her smart slacks & sweaters, her ready smile for all, still makes me squirm. When the facade disappears, and we see the emotional cipher she is, it's breathtaking. No spunky Mary Richards here - this is Acting.
Also true of Hutton & Hirsch. ORDINARY PEOPLE succeeds on the strength of its four principals. Period. M. Emmet Walsh, James B. Sikking, and young versions of Adam Baldwin, Diane Canova, and Elizabeth McGovern fill supporting roles, ably, but this movie is about the fracturing family and the doctor helping it and all four rise to the occasion. Hutton, in his debut performance, looked to me, at 13, like what I might reasonably hope to be in about 4 years. I liked him, personally, and I sure as shit got the feelings, the alienation, the need to feel loss, to grieve, and to have your love acknowledged and appreciated. I cannot imagine telling my Dad to get after me once in awhile, but it's a great moment and Hutton sells it.
Someone on twitter recently referred to Judd Hirsch's acting here as "tolerable scenery chewing." As the almost-stereotypical compassionate Jewish psychotherapist he's the movie's color, but his performance didn't strike me as overly theatrical. It would be noticeable, and not in a good way, here. Robin Williams owed Hirsch money after GOOD WILL HUNTING. It's the same performance, more or less, but I prefer Hirsch. He's not a warm-fuzzy as Williams.
ORDINARY PEOPLE did not look exactly like my memories of my life, but it looked close. Close enough that, though this time it was Sutherland & Moore's tragedy that affected me, I still respond to it as a vital American tragedy, a perfect snapshot of how a lot of us lived, and still live. Redford's avoidance of slick cinematography in favor of performance is the right choice, the kind of choice made by a great filmmaker. His other movies, MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR & QUIZ SHOW among them, have been decent, but he got it all the way right his first time out. Apologies to my fellow Scorsese fanboys, but I'm Team Redford all the way for ORDINARY PEOPLE.
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