Calvin Jarrett: Donald Sutherland
Beth Jarrett: Mary Tyler Moore
Conrad Jarrett: Timothy Hutton
Dr. Tyrone C. Berger: Judd Hirsch
Jeannine Pratt: Elizabeth McGovern
3 January 2005
by Jasmine Park
However pretentious and meandering Robert Redford has become as a director in recent years, Ordinary People - the Oscar winner for Best Picture in 1980 - remains an impressively affecting debut. Redford's subsequent work, including Quiz Show (1994), The Horse Whisperer (1998), and the inexcusable The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000), were merely failed attempts to recreate the intimate perfection of this film. It was released during a small golden era of Hollywood family dramas, including Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), On Golden Pond (1981), and Terms of Endearment (1983). All four films share variations on the theme of parental abandonment, but none rivals Ordinary People for its intelligence, rawness, or emotional sophistication.
The film takes place in a wealthy Chicago suburb during one fall and winter. A young, still-promising Timothy Hutton stars as Conrad Jarrett, a 16-year-old who has recently returned home from a psychiatric institution; we gradually learn that he slit his wrists after witnessing the drowning death of his older brother Buck the summer before. Conrad's cold, domineering mother, Beth (Mary Tyler Moore), has not forgiven him for Buck's death or for the humiliation of his suicide attempt. Donald Sutherland plays Calvin, the father and mediator who watches in horror as his wife - a woman with whom he is still in love - drives his son towards emotional ruin.
Moore's character is essentially a monster - a mother who despises one son after the loss of another, more beloved one. Like all great dramas, her motivations and psyche are entirely accounted for without being overstated. Through a series of flashbacks, we come to understand her adoration for Buck - big, blond, and toothsome like her husband - and her subsequent repulsion towards the mirror image that her younger, darker son provides. The scenes between her and Conrad are appropriately stilted and awkward - she brushes away his attempts at honesty with pat comments aimed to merely fulfill the role of a mother with none of the emotional give. The film is intercut with Conrad's sessions with a psychiatrist, Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch, in a role that was doubtless the model for Robin Williams's performance in Good Will Hunting), and their conversations eventually enable Conrad to come to terms with his guilt.
The struggles between Beth and Conrad provide plenty of psychological fodder for a weighty statement, but Calvin is the film's real stroke of genius, and its heart - the only character of emotional stability, and one of the most sympathetic father figures ever depicted on film, or any medium, for that matter. Calvin is torn between his love for his wife and son, and in the end, is forced to make an agonizing choice between them. Sutherland has two absolutely beautiful scenes - one in which he visits Dr. Berger and demonstrates a surprisingly deep understanding of his family; and the scene where he at last comes to terms with what his wife has become.
Ordinary People sets itself apart from its peers in American cinema by fully exploring the emotional abandonment of a mother, that last bastion of Hollywood love, and providing redemption through a father's love, so often the most blameworthy character in these types of dramas. This is generally the domain of French cinema, which has examined every possible permutation of parent-child relationships; one almost expects to read dialogue this good in subtitles. Detractors can criticize the film for its relentlessly downcast tone - moments of bliss or reconciliation are few, while absolutely gutwrenching dialogue abounds. But family dramas aren't meant to be easy, folks, and it's a small price to pay for a movie that so eloquently depicts a crisis almost too heartbreaking for words.
Directed by Robert Redford and produced by Ronald L. Schwary. Screenplay by Alvin Sargent.
Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton
in Ordinary People
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