Ordinary People

Rating:
Summary: not an ordinary film
Review: I read the book years ago and then recently watched the movie. excellant performances by everyone. timothy hutton, donald sutherland, mary tyler moore(she plays such a witch). the movie is about an accident that leaves a family unable to deal with their emotions. the mother, father, and son in their own way are dealing with their grief. the ending is great. moore deserves what she got. recommended highly.

Rating:
Summary: Wretched celebration of dysfunction
Review: An unbelievably bad movie that revels in the emotional swamp of completely dysfunctional and unrealistic characters.

Gross overacting by most of the cast.

A movie for people who have no understanding of real human emotions and/or who are so dead to real human emotions that they are attempting to jump start their emotions with this overly melodramatic cinematic train wreck.

Rating:
Summary: "Aaaaah, you're just saying thaaaaat!"
Review: This film came out in 1980 and won 4 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director(Robert Redford), Best Supporting Actor(Timothy Hutton), and Best Adapted Screenplay. Its primary competition that year was from another great film, "Raging Bull." I first discovered this movie when I was 18-years-old (How perfect is that?), and I was just simply blown away by the authenticity of emotions shown here. This is one of those rare successes: a character-driven movie that garners critical praise as well as being embraced by the masses. The acting by the entire cast is some of the finest in film history! That may sound like a biased opinion, but considering the amount of honors bestowed on this film, I know I'm right. What makes this film particularly remarkable is that, while it was made in 1980 and set in that time, watching it now it looks more like a period film than say, a film from a certain decade that has lost its vitality through the passing of time. It is still fresh and vibrant, the connections that are made between the characters are as univeral as ever. This film has superb acting, a magnificent screenplay adapted from the novel by Judith Guest, and a first-time director's inspiration in Robert Redford. This is a priceless treasure in my collection. I urge everyone to see this excellent film at least once. Thank you.

Rating:
Summary: Grief is a journey
Review: The true strength of Redford's first work lies in his ability to give the actors the room to feel and the permission to breathe. As an actor himself, I'm sure he knew how important it is to pull back as a director.

All of the individual performances are superb, especially Moore, Hutton and Hirsch. At times I fear the performances are too remote, too distant. We get only glimpses of how things "used to be" in the Jarrett household. I didn't find Beth and Connie's relationship as heartbreaking as I should have simply because I had little context for it or ability to compare it with life before Buck's death. The distance now overwhelms any since of what has been lost.

The film is truly frozen in the moment of their individual griefs. These individuals move through their own journies of grief drawing closer and pulling back.

I hate to suggest making a film longer, as doing so usually makes it more ponderous. However, if we had been allowed to linger just a bit more in some of the flashbacks, I think the emotional impact would have been that much greater. So much unfolds in retrospect, and THAT is not like real life. For instance, we do not know until very late in the film that Lazenby, Buck and Connie were "best friends." I found it a very emotional scene, but it informs backward into the film a fact that all of the characters already know.

Certainly this film was ground-breaking, opening the way for some of the powerful family therapy-dramas that have followed. Kudos to Redford and to a uniquely powerful cast. ****1/2

Rating:
Summary: Highly successful debut of Robert Redford as a director
Review: Honest to God, I didn't remember that this was Robert Redford's directorial debut till I rented this DVD for maybe the 3rd time. It's based on another debut: Judith Guest's first novel. Superlatively successful, in both arenas.
Ordinary People concerns a well-to-do family's painful adjustment to the death of the elder son by drowning. The book begins when the surviving son, who blames himself for his brother's death, has just returned home from a stay in a psychiatric unit after recovery from a suicide attempt. The family is wealthy but dysfunctional: grief is weighing each of them down, but no one talks about their pain openly. When the son starts seeing a shrink, the sugar coating begins to crack, and the repercussions of the repressed emotions they've all been stuffing down come bubbling to the surface.
Excellent, intense, heartbreaking - and ultimately hopeful.

Rating:
Summary: Still one of the best movies of all time...
Review: This is one of the best movies of all time. For those interested in the process of healing, grief, and family dynamics, this is a must see movie. In particular, those involved with the helping professions as therapists or seeking therapy services, this is a great watch.

Rating:
Summary: Another Dysfunctional Family Story
Review: The best performance of this film was Timothy Hutton's, for which he was awarded best supporting actor (he was only 20 when this film came out.) Similar in character and tone to The Ice Storm, it is more subtle, and does come to a resolution of sorts. The script is believable, the scenes flow from one to another without distractions, and it's moving without going over the top (as, for example, Love Story or On Golden Pond or Terms of Endearment did.) It's bleak, without being devastating like Chilly Scenes of Winter. It is one of those movies I can say is good without necessarily wanting to see it again - more effective in its treatment of content than as a compelling story. It is recognizable as a product of the time period in which it was created.

Rating:
Summary: No ordinary movie
Review: "Ordinary Peole" deservingly won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1980. It desplicts realities of those in such living turmoil. It proves that such awful feelings toward oneself can strike those with the seemingly perfect life. It explores the after-effects of a family once they lose a child, and once the other attempts suicide. Robert Redford makes his Oscar winning directorial debut, leading the cast and crew to create a flawless, unforgettable masterpiece.

Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore(Calvin and Beth Jerrad) play the lead roles as the supporting father and the selfish non-loving mother. Their marriage is on the verge of divorce due to Beth's lack of support of their living son Conrad, played by Timothy Hutton. Conrad faces guilt after losing his brother, Buck, in a boating accident a year ago. His psychologist forces him to confront every life aspect.

Every actor portrays their character delightfully, forcing every drop of emotion to the audience, even those with limited screentime. Timothy Hutton deserved his Oscar win for Best Supporting Actor. Mary Tyler Moore and Judd Hirsch deserved their Oscar nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor. Why wasn't Donald Sutherland nominated for his best role of his career? Who knows.

Those looking for a serious drama should watch "Ordinary People". One may have to think about the events after the first watch. Those who've watched it twenty times still discover new interesting details.

Rating:
Summary: A major environmental source for parents of adolescents
Review: The narration of the psychosocial movie is based on some serious challenges they face in raising their adolescent son since his adult brother died in the auto accident. In the middle of the movie, the teenager felt somewhat solemn for short periods of time but his choir school helped him with most of the deep struggling relief of his psychological pain. In many sessions, he went to visit his psychiatrist alone who works extremely hard in evaluating his current knowledgeable status that sometimes affect his ability to perform well academically in school. Until the solution has finally resolved, his painful emotions were superbly cured, a part to his final suicide attempt.

In particular, it was so tough for the young man to relate to his parents during the painful, perilous time. In this situation, his mind acts like the storm rages in his brain and the hormones do actually go nuts too. Therefore, at the end of the film, it was their decision for his parents to seperate prior to the adolescent wanting to be completely joyful again.

The End

For those who are still raising adolescents but expriencing serious difficulty relating to them must get this soulful, educational film for you to remember all your lives.

Rating:
Summary: Without peer in its unflinching honesty and poignancy
Review: Has any film offered a more honest and gut-wrenching look at an American family than Ordinary People? Ever since I was 16 in 1980 -- the year it came out -- I have been lost in admiration for this film. The reasons are legion.

From its exquisite screenplay to its uniformly fine performances to its sensitive direction, Ordinary People is (this sounds excessive, but I am speaking carefully) among the most finely realized and exacting dramas ever put on film. It is deliberate and precise in its effects, as all great dramas are.

And it is a drama, not a melodrama as some here suggest. It's an important distinction. Except in superficial ways, Ordinary People shares nothing with movie-of-the-week "dramas" that shine no real light on human relationships. In fact, even fine films like American Beauty and In the Bedroom -- both clearly influenced by Ordinary People -- cannot avoid the melodramatic element of murder, and it is dispiriting to watch a film like In the Bedroom fall apart in its final act. Fortunately, there is nothing disappointing about Ordinary People. It is a drama in the classical Greek sense, with three carefully constructed acts, a finely honed story arc, and a sense of thesis-antithesis-synthesis in its dramatic movement.

Its noblest quality, however, is its complete lack of sentimentality. Filmgoers accustomed to the easy mawkishness of most films may have a hard time with Ordinary People, but filmgoers open to a richer, realistic, even transformative experience will be amply rewarded.

The screenplay is flawless. Not a moment, nor character, nor word is wasted. Everything counts. I think of the elegance of Conrad's (Timothy Hutton) interrupted description to his would-be girlfriend Janine (Elizabeth McGovern) of the mindset that led to his attempted suicide. Or the poignancy of Calvin (Donald Sutherland) confessing to his wife Beth (Mary Tyler Moore) that he doesn't love her. Or this exchange: A departing Janine yells to Conrad "you're really a terrific tenor," to which the usually self-doubting Conrad joyfully bursts out (singing in his tenor), "Oh, you're just saying that!" Or, in the film's final touching scene, Calvin's response to Conrad's statement of admiration: "Don't admire people too much -- they'll disappoint you sometimes." And on and on.

Each performance creates an indelible impression. To my way of thinking, this is the underappreciated Sutherland's finest work. Judd Hirsch is perfectly cast -- he nails the cool detachment but subtle sensitivity of a psychiatrist with pinpoint accuracy. Mary Tyler Moore's Beth, the antagonist of the piece, inspires a fair degree of loathing (as she should), but the acting and writing offer a subtle portrait of a woman lost in grief, unable to truly connect with her family or even her own feelings. Hutton's Conrad needs no defense: Along with James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, Hutton's is the finest depiction of teenage despair ever put on film. Every supporting performance shines, too.

This is the kind of film that demands, deserves, and rewards the careful attention of the audience. As Ordinary People begins with its choral music, it almost feels like attending church: The film summons forth your immediate attention and respect. Within minutes, you then feel like you're engrossed in a very personal, confessional novel about a troubled family. And finally, as the film's careful first hour builds to the overwhelming, gut-punch, so-real-it-hurts emotion of its second half, you feel like you are PART of that family as it disintegrates before your eyes.

The conflict in this film has a brute force to it, and there are few films that use profanity so effectively: "Give her the god***n camera!"; "Buck never would have been in the hospital!"; "You're determined, Beth, but you know something? You're not strong." Despite all the pain, though, the cathartic effect of traveling along with Conrad on his journey of self-realization offers a powerful and life-affirming payoff as the film concludes.

Taken on the whole, the film isn't so much a film as it is (or feels like) a life lived and a journey taken. In this sense, it is not as cinematically groundbreaking as its excellent Best Picture Oscar competitor, Martin Scorcese's finest film, Raging Bull. Rather, the film is "classical" in its effects -- direct and uncomplicated in its style.

While Raging Bull (though it started as a book) is inconceivable except as a film, Ordinary People made an excellent novel and would make an excellent play. But there are many great studio (and indie) films that fit this mold -- All About Eve and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest come to mind, among others. If Ordinary People is less "cinematic" than Raging Bull, it more than compensates through its finely honed sense of drama and the uniform excellence of all aspects of its production (performances, cinematography, and understated use of music, to take three examples), and its Best Picture Oscar is richly deserved.

Somehow, Ordinary People manages to be fiercely intelligent without being cold and unfeeling, insightful without being too "psychological," emotional without being sentimental, and truly special without being cloying or precious.

An immensely touching film, draped in melancholy and sadness yet uplifting, often sublime in its observations, elegant and spare in style, perfectly in-tune with its own intentions, respectful of the faculties of its audience, never less than completely engrossing, and as dramatically rich as is conceivably possible, Ordinary People should not be missed.