Movie Review

The Beaver

— The Beaver, while it’s probably not a movie everyone will want to see, is probably the best Hollywood movie of 2011 to date. It is a remarkably smart, observant picture about a common species of mental illness, and while the one-sentence synopsis - a terribly depressed man gives his life over to an alter-ego hand puppet - seems absurd and perhaps silly, there’s a tough and bitter truthfulness at its center.

The movie reminds me very much of Sam Mendes’ American Beauty mashed up with one of Charlie Kaufman’s high-concept oddities. But director Jodie Foster has opted for a realistic approach, a toning down of the surreal (and maybe magical) elements in favor of a clean, neutral style that feels a little like Philip Roth, were Roth a Gentile filmmaker. It’s disturbing and elegiac, touched here and there with sparkling comic grace notes, and a trace of bittersweet hopefulness in the finish.

And like American Beauty, it’s a movie about the kind of people whose problems we don’t imagine could amount to much - handsome, upper middle-class white Americans living in comfortable suburban circumstances. Which is another reason that some people might dismiss it as an overly sensitive, self-regarding movie.

I don’t think it’s that - I think it’s a story that can be transposed into any human key, and that the relative affluence of the sufferers here adds to the poignancy. All families, it has been said, are at least a little bit crazy, and only the dullest among us are completely free of the kind of soul-eating anxiety experienced by Walter Black, the spiritually impoverished, darkly damaged toy company executive played by Mel Gibson.

Gibson’s casting, of course, is the chief reason a lot of people have problems with this movie - he is why it will not make as much money as some studio executives thought it might. He is a controversial and divisive figure and I don’t know what you think abouthim - I don’t know what I think about him. I do think he’s “good” in the movie, that his performance is probably the best he has given in maybe 30 years - and that he handles the puppet extremely well.

On the other hand, I’m not sure casting Gibson was a necessary measure - although it’s certain his tabloid history informs how we view his character. Gibson was - and maybe is - as lost as Walter Black. His performance here could be read as penance, or as therapy, or as a bitter, not-so-inside joke. Certainly other actors could have handled the part - it feels like a Kevin Spacey or John Malkovich part, and the disaster would have been Jim Carrey - but director and costar Jodie Foster wanted her old friend Mel. (Moviemakers on set become a kind of family, with their own dysfunctions.)

Maybe she sabotaged her movie’s commercial chances by insisting on him. Maybe his casting was the only way to imbue the project with the sort of emotional ballast it needed to be more than a hip “black comedy.” We can only watch - and review - the movies we have.

Anyway, The Beaver is basically the story of how the deeply wounded Walter loses everything, then is pulled back from the literal brink of the abyss by the titular hand puppet, a tough-love-dispensing rodent who speaks in a Michael Caine-ish East End accent and believes more in action than reflection. He gives himself over to, and loses himself in, the character at the end of the arm.

It’s rather like the oldsalesman’s saw - “Act enthusiastic and you’ll be enthusiastic.” As long as Walter listens to the Beaver, things seems to go right. But while crutches are sometimes necessary, sometimes we come to lean on them too hard.

Because, for better or worse, Gibson owns this movie, I haven’t even mentioned a relatively obvious but beautifully realized B-story involving Walter’s son Porter (Anton Yelchin) and his high school’s valedictorian Norah (Jennifer Lawrence). These kids are tremendous actors, and it would have been niceto see them in their own movie, but don’t worry, we will.

It is hard to know what to make of Gibson, but we shouldn’t confuse an artist’s work with the state of his soul. Picasso, they say, was a little monster. But he made great art.

And if The Beaver isn’t quite that - it’s a little tooeasy to make out the seams in the screenplay, and there are other nits that could be picked - it’s as close to it as you’re likely to see in a theater near you.

The Beaver 90 Cast: Mel Gibson, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence, Jodie Foster, Cherry Jones Director: Jodie Foster Rating: PG-13, for mature thematic material, some disturbing content, sexuality and language including a drug reference Running time: 91 minutes

MovieStyle, Pages 33 on 05/27/2011

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