Ordinary People

ORDINARY PEOPLE

(1980)
In 1980, Robert Redford made his directorial debut with Ordinary People, a film detailing the angst lying beneath the surface of an upper-middle class family in suburbia. It garnered Oscars for best picture, best director, best supporting actor (Timothy Hutton, who was really the focus of the movie), and best (adapted) screenplay. Mary Tyler Moore was nominated for best actress but didn't win. In 1999 American Beauty, a film detailing the angst lying beneath the surface of an upper-middle class family in suburbia, also garnered Academy Awards for best picture, best director, best actor, and best screenplay. Annette Bening was nominated for best actress but didn't win. What can we conclude from all this?

History does, in fact, repeat itself. At least in Hollywood.
Playing a male victim of societal roles pays off handsomely in gold statuettes.
Playing a cold, distant wife is a thankless job.
People have an incredibly short memory.

My real reason for bringing all of this up is to point out that American Beauty is really only a retelling of Ordinary People, varnished with a layer of postmodern cynicism. The Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey characters are identical in almost every respect to the Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland characters of the earlier film. I believe this is less a result of plagiarism than of the fact that although each generation likes to think it has progressed beyond that of its parents, the roles for men and women in our society have changed little in the past 19 years. We still find them every bit as confining, and stories about their suffocating effects on the human spirit still strike Hollywood as being timely and insightful. We may progress technologically, but emotionally we're dead in the water.

Timothy Hutton plays a senior in high school in an Illinois suburb. At such a young age, he's already experienced his share of trauma: his older brother Buck drowned when the sailboat they were riding in capsized, and subsequent feelings of guilt led Hutton to an earnest but failed suicide attempt by slashing his wrists. His mother, played by Mary Tyler Moore, remains emotionally distant from him and his father (Donald Sutherland), a coldness which has intensified since Buck's death. Her entire identity is based on the image others see of her, and all her efforts are channeled into making this image perfect. When the three of them have dinner at home amidst sterling silver napkin rings and crystal chandeliers, the entire mis-en-scčne eerily foretells the dinner scene in American Beauty.

When Hutton returns home from school one day and wanders into the same room as his mother, the conversation is like that of two strangers struggling to break the silence. Later, when he attempts to reach out to her by asking if he can help prepare dinner, she replies that he can go upstairs and clean out his bedroom closet. Ouch!

Hutton's father is a tax attorney, a job that conjures up images of reams of paperwork. It seems a job occupied by someone who has abandoned the hope of inner job fulfillment in deference to the socially valued attribute of high wages. Brings to mind Kevin Spacey's character in American Beauty, doesn't it?

It's interesting to note that in both Ordinary People and American Beauty, the lines of communication between the parents and their child are practically non-existent. But in both cases, the film accords the father much more sympathetic treatment than it does the mother. Both Kevin Spacey and Donald Sutherland realize the emotional and spiritual rut they've fallen into, and spend the better portion of the film trying to extricate themselves. Their wives, on the other hand, prefer to ignore the problems and pretend to the world that nothing is wrong. In effect, the wives' obsession with their roles in society causes a major part of the husbands' difficulties. Which raises the question of whether the high divorce rate in America is at least partially a result of the expected roles of men and women being fundamentally incompatible.

Okay, back to the movie. Hutton begins seeing psychiatrist Judd Hirsch, who ultimately leads Hutton to realize some important things about his inner feelings. The scenes between Hirsch and Hutton are always interesting, even if sometimes the conclusions Hutton arrives at seem a little too pat. Hutton and Sutherland both initially have great difficulty describing their feelings to Hirsch, presumably because society tells us men aren't supposed to show their emotions. Only after breaking down this barrier, does the healing in the movie begin.

As the film ends, Moore has decided to vacate the marriage indefinitely rather than face its problems. As Sutherland succinctly puts it, she can't stand messes. Sutherland and Hutton, for their part, take the first steps in reopening the lines of communication which have been closed for so long. Not a happy ending by any definition, but at least one with the beginnings of hope.