Ordinary People

In my undying love for Robert Redford, whom I feel like I know personally after he came to Pitzer twice, I've been watching all the movies he's directed, most of which have been pretty excellent. So I decided to watch his directorial debut, the 1980 film "Ordinary People" which won for best picture, director, screenplay, and supporting actor for Timothy Hutton (though really i think it should have been best main actor). It was so good!!!! I can't remember a film like it that had such realistic portrayals of parents in a while. Not that my family is like that at all, but Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland were so good, they really deserved to have won something for it too.

So, the story is about this suburban family, where the favored older son died in a accident that he younger son witnessed, and then the younger son (Hutton, looking mighty fine) tried to kill himself and was committed for four months. So, the film starts after he's been home from the hospital for a month, but he is clearly still working through a lot of stuff, and has not really figured anything out. His parents are trying to get on with their lives, his mom through focusing on domestic suburbany things, and his father by worrying all the time and doting on his remaining son.

A big part of the drama came from when the son goes to therapy with Judd Hirsch (I wish he was my therapist). Apparently, it was one of the first times that therapy was shown in depth in a good light (not Nurse Ratched style). Maybe I was just in a mood to be emotionally wrought, but wow, i was so wrapped up in hoping the son could figure out his problems. And hooray, he did! Not that that makes for a happy ending, but it was resolved as it should have been.

I think a film is truly great when it makes me sympathize and feel like I understand a situation which I clearly have never encountered. I don't know what its like to lose your brother and be hated by your mother, but I understood Timothy Hutton's character, and I understood how Mary Tyler Moore was trying to cope with it by ignoring it. Thanks Robert Redford for another gem. You totally deserved beating out Scorsese for "Raging Bull" for this.