Ordinary People, Exceptional Movie

A Mother/Son Disconnect - Pic courtesy of Paramount

by blogSpotter

Before I embark on my movie review, I ‘d like to touch on a couple of things...

The blog lives -- Much as the Mayans miscalculated when the world would end, I miscalculated when this blog would end.  I still have some poorly expressed ideas to get out there.   Clumsily, herkily and jerkily -- I will share my point of view.  For a while longer anyway... you lucky few readers.  :-)

Sandy Hook and the NRA -- It looks like the National Rifle Association wants to turn every public school into a preadolescent version of Dodge City.  The idea that every school house should be turned into a military encampment is frighteningly stupid. Enough already -- let’s restrict the sale of assault weapons and be done with it.   

Chromebook -- This blog is being typed on a beautiful silver-green Acer Chromebook.  In my previous blog entry, I errored on the price. It’s only $199.  An iPod Touch costs more than that; accessories for the Surface tablet cost more than that.   My Chromebook has the light, sleek feel of a Macbook Air only at ⅕ of the price.  It boots in 14 seconds.   The Hexxeh USB drive that I used for my Chromium trial was not an officially supported distribution -- thus its problems with Adobe Flash.   This beauty runs everything fine and receives regular updates.  There are of course, limitations. You can’t install “normal” software with drivers -- no Quicken or iTunes.  But, I’m willing to explore options for something so light, beautiful and fast.

AND NOW THE CINEMA...

I took a walk down memory lane yesterday and watched 1980’s Ordinary People, directed by Robert Redford.   The movie stars Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore as Calvin and Beth Jarrett; they play an affluent couple grappling with the boating death of their older teenage son.   The younger son, Conrad is played perfectly by Timothy Hutton; Judd Hirsch plays a psychiatrist who guides Conrad and Calvin through the Hellish grief and confusing, sometimes destructive thoughts that accompany such a tragic event.  

The stand-out performance is Mary Tyler Moore, who superficially seems like the perfect Highland Park wife.   But her glib elegance and beauty conceal a vindictive ice queen who hasn’t come to her own terms -- that of losing a favored son and feeling a secret resentment toward the already guilt-ridden surviving son.   She comes across as a surface-level person who is mostly concerned about “how things look” and not ever “how things are”. Such a cognitive disparity creates a giant fissure in a family that needs to move toward forgiveness and not frigid divisiveness.  

The performances are superb in this milestone movie. Ordinary People was ahead of its time by about 10 years -- it dealt intelligently and sensitively with topics of recovery and personal discovery.   It has aged extremely well in 32 years -- the music and styles evoke affluence and traditional comfort in an upscale area. If not for a few scenes with cars you might think it was made in the 1990’s or 2000’s. I found the movie on iTunes, for $2.99 -- a bargain for a truly thought-provoking excursion.   We live in a self-help society -- Ordinary People sheds some light on why we need so much help.

© 2012 blogSpotter