Ordinary People

Dr. Robert Redford Plaza

If ordinary American people take trips to London for Christmas, have holidays at their relatives' golf-course 2000 miles from home and pay $50 an hour to see a shrink, then Ordinary People is aptly named. I tend to think however that this movie is about a group of not so ordinary people who through their reactions to a family problem demonstrate in stark relief the spiritual poverty of middle class American family life.

Interspersed with colourful shots of the Lake Forest, Illinois countryside, the quest of the Jarrett family for normality unfolds. The story revolves around Conrad, who is shattered by his brother's death in a boating accident a year previously. Conrad, a survivor from the same accident, blames himself for Buck's death and has only recently been released from a psychiatric hospital where he spent four months after trying to kill himself. Conrad has been encouraged to resume his normal life -hence he participates in the high school swim team and the local youth choir. As the story develops the irony of this is seen as he declares in moments of honesty that he finds swimming boring and doesn't believe in God.

His mother, (Mary Tyler-Moore), insists that Conrad has now recovered. She is impatient with him at any sign of unhappiness and is greatly angered with her husband, Calvin, for telling a friend at a party that their son is still receiving psychiatric help. With her own friends she maintains silence on the issue, convinced that it is a private family affair.

It is in fact due to the father's influence that Conrad again seeks psychiatric help. Whereas the mother's prime concern seems to be with trying to ignore the problem, Conrad's father is genuinely concerned with his son's welfare. Calvin is played by Donald Sutherland, better known for his more horrific roles in movies like Ken Russell's Casanova. However he suited the more passive role admirably, perhaps aided by the fact that his was the most well-rounded character in the movie.

Motherlove

The characters of both the mother and the psychiatrist were less developed. The mother (Beth) was the only woman with a major part in the movie and unfortunately can only be described as the villain of the piece. Apart from one fleeting attempt to talk to her son which ended in anger and intolerance, I found her without redeeming features - a cold fish totally incapable of giving love. This was annoying, because although I disagreed with her statement "Mothers don't hate their sons", I wanted to understand why she seemed to dislike Conrad so strongly. However there was little attempt to develop her character. The scene when she enters her dead son's bedroom evoked sympathy but this was completely dissipated by her violent reaction to Conrad when he unwittingly startles her in the room.

Stereotyped Role

Some of the best scenes were undoubtedly the interchanges between the psychiatrist and Conrad. Judd Hirsch brought a lot of life to a stereotyped role - drawing plenty of laughs from the audience at his blunt and brutal honesty. The scenes in the psychiatrist's office were handled superbly by Timothy Hutton whose timing was near-perfect.

"Don't shelve your emotions," the psychiatrist says. "Let all your anger out, for until you allow yourself to feel pain you won't feel anything else either." With this in mind he goads Conrad to the point where he shouts "Well fuck you then." He is so unused to expressing his anger however that the words die on his lips halfway through.

At this point Conrad is on the road to recovery, and his family is simultaneously on the road to total disintegration. At a family photo session shortly afterwards, the father insists on taking a shot of his wife and son together. The mother is flatly against this and repeatedly urges her husband to give her the camera so she can take one of him and Conrad. Instead of sending him into his typical depression, this has the effect of angering Conrad to the point when he screams at his father: "For Christ's sake give her the camera!" The subsequent scene of the mother having broken a plate after her retreat to the kitchen symbolises the breaking up of the family.

The father desperately tries to retrieve the situation but, not fully understanding it, is powerless. "I just want to understand what's happening to us" he says in anguish and to this end seeks psychiatric advice himself. His wife on the other hand pleads with him that "all we need is a bit of time together" and she finally persuades him to go away with her to her brother's.

Regression Sparks Recovery

While his parents are away Conrad regresses. Faced with rejection and hostility from school mates and hearing of the devastating news that an old friend from the psychiatric hospital has killed herself, Conrad goes into a frenzy. Fortunately he seeks out his psychiatrist who, in a moving scene, finally forces Conrad to come to terms with the fact that it was not his fault that his brother died.

Marvellous use was made of flashbacks throughout the movie. They flowed well, and helped to both build tension and increase the audience's understanding without being corny. There were several flashbacks to different stages of the boating accident, culminating in the climactic moment when Conrad lost contact with his brother in the water -this moment coincided with the moment that Conrad went temporarily insane. Perhaps the most powerful of all the flashbacks was when Calvin and Beth were frying home after their golfing holiday. Totally without dialogue, the scene depicted Calvin staring fixedly at his wife while his mind took him back to a scene in the past of them waltzing round a ballroom. Calvin seems to be seeing his wife for the first time and not liking what he sees.

Moment of Truth

Indeed it is that very night that the moment or truth occurs for the family. Beth once more rejects her son's affection and the showdown between herself and Calvin follows. In a slightly soapy but nevertheless convincing scene, Calvin tells his wife that he now sees her for what she is. "It seems as if you buried all your love with Buck and now that I can see what's left I don't known whether I love you anymore."

The wheel has come full circle - the movie opened with a glimpse of a theatrical performance in which the husband on stage said to his wife:,"l've made love with you 227 times - I worked it out on my calculator. And yet I still don't know you at all."

Beth does the only thing possible in the great American tradition - packs her bags and leaves. The family has been her life - if not her love - yet her own insistence on keeping their problem to themselves ("This is a private family affair.") has ultimately meant its destruction. The individualistic ethic of working things out by oneself has inevitably proved impossible - psychiatric help may have saved Conrad's sanity, but without full co-operation from all the family and without support from the rest of the community, the family unit itself simply did not have the resources alone to survive.

Ordinary People is a good start to a directing career for Redford. As a movie it undoubtedly has all the requisite elements for award winning - most importantly of course. The typical romance, which although not adding anything to the movie, was not significant enough in itself to provide anything worse than a slight diversion. A movie well worth seeing.

Paulette Keating