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Rating: 4.25 out of 5
What is an ordinary family? What is the perfect family? Is it one where the kids are doing really well in school, the parents have fancy jobs, and the family lives in a really fancy house that looks straight out of Home and Gardens? Beneath the smiles and perfect smiles are their problems that aren’t showed on the surface. What will a family do to make sure they keep up the illusion of the ideal family? Directed by Robert Redford, Ordinary People is a film that follows an upper-middle-class family that begins to collapse after the death of one of their sons and the attempted suicide of the other.
In suburban Chi-Town, upper-middle-class family, the Jarrett are trying to return to a normal life. Four months earlier, the beloved older son, Buck, died in a boating accident. The youngest son, Conrad (Hutton), attempted suicide. Conrad has recently come home after spending four months in a psychiatric hospital. Conrad’s father, Calvin, is a good man who cares deeply about his son and well-being but says little. Conrad’s mother, Beth (Tyler Moore), is now an emotionless woman who genuinely loved Buck and despises Conrad by blaming him for the family problems. With the oldest son lost, Beth tries to maintain the illusion that she still lives the perfect life with the ideal family. Conrad starts seeing Dr. Berger (Hirsch) to help him through this tough time in his life as he blames himself for the death of his brother as they were sailing in bad weather. During the sailing trip, one of the ropes jams in the block, and Conrad cannot free it, which causes the boat to capsize. As Conrad goes back to school, he soon sees that he has difficulties re-establishing relationships with his friends and soon quits the swimming team. Conrad meets and gets some life advice from Karen, who was committed with him in the same psychiatric clinic also for attempt suicide. She tells him to smile and states that things will be different by Christmas. Conrad’s life soon gets a tad bit of hope as he starts dating a girl named Jeannine (McGovern). During this time, his relationship with his mother has become painful as she shows no love to him. Conrad soon sees what his mother is really like with the help of Dr. Berger and if he will ever feel love from her again.
I don’t know if this film should’ve won Best Picture, but it was still freakin good. It will make you think about what is going on behind the scenes of a family that seems perfect on the outside but just as messed up on the inside. I thought the story was amazing because you had a kid who had issues and survivor guilt from his brother dying and homeboy tried to commit suicide. The central theme of this whole movie is love. You would think that love would be one of the easiest things to give and show to your last remaining child who survived a suicide. Yet almost no one in the family shows love for each other. The mother seems to despise her youngest son for living and taking away one of the best things that happened to her. She truly LOVED her eldest son, and with him gone, she has zero to give to her youngest son. The dad loves the youngest son, but it comes off as forced, and he really doesn’t know how to express himself to his son. Then we have the parents who seem to love each other, but once stuff really goes down and people start exploring their feelings, you see that maybe they don’t love each other. The ending scene tells it all.
Now for the other theme of finding acceptance. I thought the whole therapy sessions were excellent and spot on. As someone who has been going to therapy for a while now, you sometimes have to just accept some of the cards that life has dealt you and come to terms with it. As in the Frozen song, sometimes you have to let it go and be free. Seeing the therapy sessions between Dr. Berger and Conrad is spot on. I love how Dr. Berger told it how it was and saw past the bulls**t and told Conrad to just let it out. Each person in the family didn’t want to accept what happened and how it messed up with their life.
Now, this movie works because, like before, what is “ordinary” in the world? The film shows how a family tries so hard to keep the outside appearance as ordinary and perfect as possible. First, let’s take Conrad. His brother dies from a boating trip and couldn’t hang on to the boat. During this guilt, dude tries to commit suicide. When he gets out of the mental hospital after four months, he keeps to himself. He tells his therapist that he shouldn’t show any emotions because they are too much. This leads him to quit the swim team, and his life is a mess on the inside. The father wants to support his son and tries to display an outward showing of it. He goes to parties with his loving wife and keeps up with his job, but he is sad and hurt and doesn’t know what to do underneath it. Then we have the mother, Beth. She is all about keeping up appearances. Nothing is more important to her than seeming like the perfect family. I’m like, “Come on, girl. Your family is beyond messed up.” When I say Beth goes to extreme lengths to keep this appearance up, she does. She gets in an argument with Calvin when he told a woman at a party that Conrad was going to a therapist when she should know that all those rich people go to a therapist. She also gets mad at Calvin when he wants to talk about the reaction and death around Buck, only for her to quickly change the subject and get around it. Also, there is Conrad’s friend Karen, who he met in the hospital. She seems cheery and has no problem in the world. She even states that her family doesn’t think therapy is good for her. Yet, this one character is the breaking point for Conrad’s world and mental state.
As far as the acting goes, each person does a masterful job, and some even go out of the persona they have in other roles. First, at the center of the story is Timothy Hutton as Conrad Jarrett. Hutton was great as Conrad. Hutton played Conrad as a high school kid with a lot of pain on the inside. Hutton showed it with gestures of not looking as he didn’t sleep or sitting outside in the cold. He had that awkward appeal to him. Hutton actually won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and was one of the youngest winners in history. That is big time. Donald Sutherland as Calvin Jarrett was also great, and I can’t even believe he didn’t get an Academy Award nomination for his role. In the beginning, I thought Calvin was a pushy father because he kept always asking Calvin questions and see how he was. Then when the movie progressed, you see he starts to question his love for his wife and how everything in his life is not normal when his son died. It was like the veil of normalcy was stripped away.
Mary Tyler Moore as Beth Jarrett. My god, was she one of the most heartless women, and this was completely a role out of the nice and loving Tyler Moore. Moore showed Beth as a woman who didn’t want to accept her reality and keep up the appearance of having a perfect life even when her son died. She runs her house like it was in one of those home and garden magazines. She is highly active in her community and, on the outside, is an ideal loving wife and mother. Yet, homegirl is extremely selfish and shows that she doesn’t even want to be bothered by Conrad. She seems to not even want him in her presence because he “took” away her precious first son. Finally, there is Judd Hirsch as Dr. Tyrone C. Berger. In a role that Hirsch was also out of his element, he did a masterful job as Conrad’s therapist. He was straightforward and told it how it was. He didn’t pull any punches but also had a gentle touch when dealing with Conrad. I really thought this character was outstanding.
Finally, let’s give a big up to Robert Redford. For his first-ever movie that he directed and to win best picture and best director at the Academy Awards should be applauded. Actually, when I was watching it, I was like, “Robert Redford directed a movie?”
Ordinary People is an excellent movie that shows no matter what is happening on the outside of a family, behind the scenes, s**t could be going down. It brings into question what is ordinary for a family and person to act? The acting was spot on from all the actors. No one person was out of place. Definitely watch this movie and compare it to your family.
