The 1970s and 80s were fixated on the dissolution of the nuclear family myth. In general life, but in culture as well. The middle-class suburban mom and pop, son and daughter and maybe a pet idea of a content family life was having the layers pulled back. In part this was due to a changing culture in general -the 1960s had opened the floodgates on just about everything -but climbing divorce rates and a palpable shift in priorities where family planning was concerned prompted a lot of re-evaluation, not least in the movies. Two Best Picture Oscar winners in a row were themed around the break-up of the American middle-class nuclear family. 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer told the story of a divorce and custody battle, more relatable to a lot of families than any movie in years. And in 1980, Robert Redford made his directing debut with a movie about a family falling apart in the wake of the tragic death of its’ oldest son.
Ordinary People, in spite of its’ title, is not really about “ordinary people”. The Jarrett family of Lake Forest, Illinois are clearly of Reagan-era upper middle-class stock with a big house, a dependable income, some luxury tastes, and relatively high end social circles that they belong to. It was a sailing accident on Lake Michigan that tragically took the life of favourite child Buck. And yet the fact that this is a family of privilege works to the advantage of the story. Its’ more of a scandal, there are social as well as personal stakes on the line. What will the neighbours think if they see vulnerability or know that the younger son is in therapy, that he attempted suicide? These things simply aren’t supposed to happen to well-off conservative model families. And we see this reinforced time and again in the movie as the Jarretts, but especially Beth (Mary Tyler Moore) try to maintain composure and keep up the guise of being “ordinary”. But they never were.
In a time when every movie is “about grief” this one really got to it in a way and in a context not often seen in major studio films especially at that time. Each member of the family processes their grief differently, acts on or responds to it in their own ways. The movie may dwell in this, but it never feels too soapy or maudlin. Redford and Alvin Sargents’ script (adapted from a book by Judith Guest) keeps things in perspective, the tone is grounded and the drama honest in virtue if maybe not always in practice. Even the typical explosions feel curiously muted; the acting is incredibly subtle for a film like this and it’s exceptionally good all around. Redford the filmmaker may not be a stylist or a craftsman or an innovator, but he is a damn good director of actors.
The one at the heart of the film who has to carry it much of the time, and does a good job of it too, is nineteen year old Timothy Hutton. As the survivors’ guilt-ridden Conrad he does well to balance a lot of shifting emotions and mental states, often without the option to express them so profusely. He both understands the gravity of this trauma and how that damage manifests itself on a shy kid who was already living in the shadow of his brother before the accident. Thus, in Conrad we see a remarkably striking image of mental illness, one that feels intensely honest and once more subverts the suburban middle class family ideal the Jarretts would otherwise represent. He looks like the unassuming upstanding WASP family teenager (likely on his way to some good college), but he talks back to his parents and rejects the narrative they’ve laid out for him. Through Conrad we also see that pressure by outside forces to essentially do what his mother does and pretend that nothing is wrong. It’s just more convenient for everyone else that way. His friends, his swim coach, even to a degree the girl he’s dating, Jeanine (Elizabeth McGovern), whether consciously or not, reinforce to him the need to bottle up his trauma by their avoidance of the subject and generally disaffected attitudes. His front of acquiescence only makes the struggle worse. But crucially, through all this hurt, he tries to get better. His closest relationship is with his understanding therapist Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch), and through their engagements he comes into himself more and is able to rise above the trauma. Ultimately for being the most wounded, he is the healthiest member of the family, the only Jarrett who recognizes what is wrong and endeavours to treat it, hard though it may be. I think that makes him a very noble, even aspirational character.
Hutton won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the role, though it was quite obviously the lead. He was probably campaigned in that category because of the higher likelihood of a win –there was no way he was beating De Niro in Raging Bull or John Hurt in The Elephant Man. Also nominated was Judd Hirsch, who came to the movie at the height of Taxi and gave maybe the best performance of his career. Dr. Berger is the most endearing figure in the movie, and Hirschs’ charming combination of sincerity and pointed provocation mark him as a precursor to Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. But Hirsch wasn’t the only sitcom star to make the transition to dramatic cinema here.
In fact, it was one of the movies’ big selling points that it marked the major dramatic role debut of Sitcom First Lady Mary Tyler Moore. And when you watch the movie the hype makes a lot of sense as Moore’s Beth Jarrett is a very different character from anything she had played previously. As the repressed matriarch in denial concerned with the family status and bearing a thinly veiled disdain for her younger son after his suicide attempt, she is often a de facto villain of the story. But of course that would be too easy a characterization, and besides any character played by Moore cannot be altogether despicable, she’s just too inherently winsome. Both Moore and Sargent tap into Beth’s deeply human side, belying a twinge of her inner struggle without revealing it too much. Beth would much rather run away from her problems and her emotions than confront them head on, and there’s something extremely sad in how committed she is to doing just that –and how vividly Moore embodies that mindset. By the end it’s clear that just as Conrad is the most healthy, Beth has the most unresolved trauma of anyone, and we see that the actions she takes to ensure she doesn’t have to address it is what drives people away from her –not only Conrad, but her husband Calvin, who for being the plainest and most sensible-minded character in the ensemble still manages to be interesting and engrossing thanks to an unusually subdued performance by Donald Sutherland. That scene where he somberly asks her about why a small detail in his attire from the funeral was so important to her is superb. However, I think it is Moore who gives my favourite performance of the piece, especially given how stark a departure it is from the roles she’s most known for –and yet is also a kind of pastiche of them. Perhaps that is why she lends herself so perfectly to a dark approximation of the idealized suburban housewife. A sterner, more prideful, less conscientious Laura Petrie.
Beth is the only member of the family who doesn’t at some point go to therapy with Dr. Berger, something which does help both Conrad and Calvin, and is depicted in a wholly positive light without any stigma -even if Dr. Berger is maybe a bit too accommodating, hosting sessions with Conrad at his own house for example. The films’ attitude to the whole issue is impressively sensitive, and its’ emotional honesty allows for some gut-wrenching moments that are still really effective -such as Conrad’s catalytic discovery that a friend he’d made in the psychiatric hospital had killed herself, her having been seemingly a model of control and well-adjustment. Redford is smart also in his integration of scenes of flashback that showcase the fatal episode, never quite depicting the late Buck clearly and keeping the attention there on Conrad’s point of view. He does well too with a lot of the small moments that say so much, such as Calvin falling to his knees while on a run or Beth attempting to maintain dignity in the face of Conrads’ off-colour comments, or Conrad’s small heartbreak at Jeanines’ going along with a hooligan stunt while in a diner. Plus that family photo scene, in spite of the drama surrounding it, is wonderfully awkward and relatable. And I had no idea that this was the film that popularized the use Pachelbel’s Canon, a fittingly doleful music choice.
In addition to the aforementioned Oscar nomination for Hirsch and the win for Hutton, Moore was deservedly nominated as well (she lost to Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner’s Daughter), but Sargent won for his screenplay and Redford won Best Director for his first time behind the camera. And of course there was Best Picture as well. Ordinary People is not the most memorable Best Picture winner of this era. Before seeing it I used to get it confused with James L. Brooks’ Terms of Endearment, another family drama that won three years later. Kramer vs. Kramer has arguably demonstrated a greater lasting power. But Ordinary People I think had much the same effect. It’s a film that ends on an implicitly broken family but with the bittersweet consolation that at least two of its members have healed or are on their way to doing so. It undeniably destroys the nuclear family but posits that this is okay, perhaps even mundane, as Calvin and Conrad engage in very typical reminiscing, sharing a bond they hadn’t before where the latter coaches the former in fatherly wisdom. There is nothing to be ashamed of, nobody to blame, and life can move on. With family dynamics changing into the 1980s, perhaps the Jarretts could be ordinary people after all.
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