Wire Haired Fox Terriers

The reinvention of the biography: Mike Mills and 'Beginners'

You quickly get the sense that its not actually the dog talking, but, instead, that the dog's new owner, a graphic designer named Oliver (played by Ewan McGregor), is imagining what the dog might say. The talking dog could be a problem in this film; for some people it may still be. It's a rather precious detail, and it might feel too precious. But it isn't just precious; there's a quality of commentary in the talking dog — the dog's comments are thoughtful and often maudlin, just like his new owner.

Oliver has quite a lot to be thoughtful and maudlin about. His mother died not too long ago, and, immediately after, his father, played by Christopher Plummer, came out of the closet. Almost immediately after that, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and quickly died from it. This isn't a spoiler, by the way — the first image of the film is Oliver cleaning up his father's house after the man's death, and remembering his mother's death, and mentioning how, in her last days, because of dementia caused by her illness, she seemed to have become unmoored in time, to borrow a phrase from Vonnegut. Just before her death, she seemed to float freely through her memories and the present, with all feeling equally real. This is also the structure of the film, although, in this instance, it isn't based on dementia, but on grief. I talked with filmmaker Mike Mills, who wrote and directed "Beginners," and based it on his own mother's death, his father's coming out of the closet, and his father's subsequent death. He described the experience as being one of constantly going through old memories, sorting them and searching for meaning in them. "It's always the way I intended for this film to be structured," he said.

It's a fascinating approach. There are three stories here.

The first is the young Oliver's relationship with his mother, who has a deadpan daffiness that Oliver adores and seems to make everyone else nervous. The second is his father's coming out and subsequent death, which the father experiences as a sort of explosive and joyous — if temporary — liberation, and Oliver experiences as bewildering.

And the third story is Oliver's troubled relationship with a young actress, played by Mélanie Laurent. They meet cute, and almost everything about the relationship stays cute, but Oliver is still in shock at the death of his parents, and Laurent's character must deal with frequent calls from her own father, threatening suicide. Additionally, neither are temperamentally predisposed to commitment. As with the talking dog, the sheer cuteness of the relationship might be too much for some audience members, but it struck me as a sort of overcompensation from two characters who don't really know how to have a relationship, and so are play-acting at having a relationship. Mills progresses each of these stories through association, rather than any traditional narrative technique. Something about Laurent will call to mind something about Oliver's father, which, in turn, will cause a memory of Oliver's mother, and so it goes through the film. And the memories are unreliable — Oliver admits this early on, in a voiceover, when he describes his father coming out. He remembers the father wearing a sweater; in fact, his father wore no sweater. And so we can't be sure how accurately Oliver is revisiting his past.

Wire-haired Fox Terrier - Reuben Ward Binks (1930's?) | Flickr ...

I am happy to hear you like it too! I tried something new with the photo, using flash in a totally dark room.....the only way I got an image with no relections in the glass. The notes on the back read: R. Ward Binks, Appleby, Westmorland, England. I haven't taken it out of the frame yet. I have the two terrier watercolours hanging together and it is a marriage made in heaven!! Actually, all three are on the same wall now. Don't recall if you've seen my watercolour of three smooth Fox terriers worrying a hedgehog? It's by William Cassels who exhibited at the Royal Academy before he emigrated to Canada. That one was a thrift store find given to me by my best friend.

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