Plummer gets out of his comfort zone
Beginners is a sweetheart of a film. That doesn’t mean it’s fluff. It’s a cheery, bright-eyed jaunt through the much-plumbed depths of love, loneliness and sexuality. Ewan McGregor plays a 38-year-old artist, Oliver, whose father Hal (Christopher Plummer) comes out of the closet after his mother’s death. How Oliver reconciles his parents’ passionless marriage to finally find love constitutes the rest of the film.
Christopher Plummer, who has been nominated for the Best Supporting Actor is cast against type. He’s made a career playing authoritarian patriarchs, so it’s refreshing to see him inhabit the skin of Hal, a gay museum director. Plummer plays Hal perfectly. He’s gay, but without the affectation because he’s lived his entire life pretending to be straight. Hal is also figuring out how to position himself within a whole new culture that has opened up to him in the winter of his life. He has a boyfriend for the first time in his life and in some ways he’s like a teenager, giddy in love and unsure what to do. Hal is also dying. Plummer peels through Hal’s various layers with a natural dignity, never once turning it camp. It’s a bitch of a role to get right, and Plummer gets it spot on.
Beginners is a sweetheart of a film. That doesn’t mean it’s fluff. It’s a cheery, bright-eyed jaunt through the much-plumbed depths of love, loneliness and sexuality. Ewan McGregor plays a 38-year-old artist, Oliver, whose father Hal (Christopher Plummer) comes out of the closet after his mother’s death. How Oliver reconciles his parents’ passionless marriage to finally find love constitutes the rest of the film.
Christopher Plummer, who has been nominated for the Best Supporting Actor is cast against type. He’s made a career playing authoritarian patriarchs, so it’s refreshing to see him inhabit the skin of Hal, a gay museum director. Plummer plays Hal perfectly. He’s gay, but without the affectation because he’s lived his entire life pretending to be straight. Hal is also figuring out how to position himself within a whole new culture that has opened up to him in the winter of his life. He has a boyfriend for the first time in his life and in some ways he’s like a teenager, giddy in love and unsure what to do. Hal is also dying. Plummer peels through Hal’s various layers with a natural dignity, never once turning it camp. It’s a bitch of a role to get right, and Plummer gets it spot on.
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