Ordinary Movie

I recently decided to cross another Oscar winning Best Picture off my list, watching 1980's Ordinary People. This film marked Robert Redford's directorial debut -- and he too won an Oscar for his efforts. The cast included Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore (another nominee, for Best Actress), Timothy Hutton (winner, for Best Supporting Actor), and Judd Hirsch (nominated in the same category as Hutton). In short, it was a major line-up of people making a much-esteemed picture.

But, as is unfortunately often the case, I cannot see today what all the fuss was then, 30 years ago. It's certainly the sort of dramatic mine field that actors and directors love to march boldly into, explaining how all these people were attracted to the story. It revolves around a family who has lost the older of two teenage sons in an accident. It has shattered the family, leaving the mother cold and distant, the surviving son stricken with guilt and unable to cope with profound psychiatric problems, and the father unable to figure out how to help or connect with either of them. Angst ensues.

The thing is, it's very awkwardly paced angst. The story doesn't quite unfold in an order that makes sense. It's certainly a deliberate narrative device, withholding the context for the stilted family drama we see in the opening act. But the device goes too far for my tastes. Effect precedes cause as a matter of course for this movie. Characters seem too easily able to articulate exactly what's going on in their minds for the sake of the plot; yet you can't help but wonder why, if they all can be so honest with themselves, they're having such great difficulty with one another.

The editing of it is noticeably jarring -- and not in a way I think was intentional. In the first 15 minutes of the film in particular, I noticed multiple occasions where it seemed that scenes were cut into too early, or left too late. You could see actors standing in place as though waiting for the call for "action," before suddenly starting their movements in a most unnatural way. I wondered if perhaps I was imagining things, but in my subsequent research about the movie, I learned this bit of odd trivia: Ordinary People is actually the only Best Picture winner ever to not receive a nomination in the Best Editing category at the Academy Awards. On the one hand, I'm surprised I even noticed; on the other, that's how bad the editing seems to be.

But though the movie is awkward on the page and even more awkward in the editing, it's not without merit. The acting really does pull it all back from the brink. In particular, the scenes with Timothy Hutton (as the surviving son) in sessions with Judd Hirsch (as his psychiatrist) are really the spine of the entire two hours. It's understandable why both men received nominations for the work. (And similarly understandable why Hutton, with the emotionally showier part, won over his fellow actor.)

Still, I found it a mostly tedious film overall, a very much overrated piece that covers the same emotional terrain as other movies have done more effectively. I rate Ordinary People a C-.