"You will."
Mike Mills wrote and directed this film, which lends it an air of intimacy and painstaking craft. The key relationships explored in the film vary considerably: the central father-son relationship is deftly handled and juxtaposes the father's joyous coming out and subsequent succumbing to cancer (a hugely dignified performance by Christopher Plummer) with the broken emotional legacy of both parents on their son's passage through life (a dour and introspective but nicely observed turn from Ewan McGregor), but McGregor's burgeoning affair with French actress Anna (Melanie Laurent) challenges belief by being one of those stereotypical relationships that only seem to exist in movies, with inevitable stilted and theatrical exchanges that undercut the credibility of some scenes. As an examination of grief, the film packs quite a punch, especially in its near-silent opening sequence, but its other overt themes of communication and identity are often laboured. Beginners is a mildly interesting tale, supported by some good performance work, and falls somewhere between being a chore to endure and a thoughtful consideration of life, love and family.
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