Beginners

Percolating a playful, creative, laid back, inquisitive aesthetic, wherein a son convalesces after his father's death thanks to the assistance of a gentle, curious partner, friendly and caring, challenging and supportive, Mike Mills's Beginners evocatively examines freedom through a palliative lens and a spontaneous framework.

Oliver (Ewan MacGregor) didn't know his father was gay until he came out in his seventies after his wife's death. Hal (Christopher Plummer) had enjoyed being married but with his wife's passing decided to openly explore other sides of his personality. Oliver responds with surprise and confusion but due to his open-mind isn't bogged down by bigoted preconceptions. Hal's terminal cancer complicates matters as he refuses to acquiesce to his doctor's corresponding prescriptions.

Oliver remembers these moments along with many from his childhood as he comes to terms with his father's death and falls in love with partner Anna (Mélanie Laurent). The story mimics the thought patterns of a melancholic mind as it searches for an indecipherable stratagem from which to rediscover joy.

As refreshing as Ghost World, Beginners lacks the predetermined bells and whistles that accompany so many polarized narratives and comfortably occupies the middle ground. It doesn't definitively judge, it doesn't segregate, unless the character in question happens to have been consistently segregated and has trouble not definitively judging as a consequence.

Its relaxed pace and sympathetic deliveries mask an unfaltering ingenuity disguised as a lackadaisical reflection.