"Ordinary People" (1980)

 

“Isn’t it time we got back to normal?”  Beth Jarrett (Mary Tyler Moore), a cold, grieving mother denying the turmoil around her, in ‘Ordinary People’

How many of us have desperately uttered the above quote lately, months after Covid-19 has upended almost everything?   And how many, in positions of power, have said it prematurely in the midst of the chaos of the pandemic, which is not yet ready to let that inevitable normalcy return.

Back in April of this year, I read accounts about how the pandemic took its toll on healthcare professionals.  The war-zone atmosphere, and the overwhelming illness and death around them, with little personal protection for themselves or their families, produced intense feelings of anxiety, guilt, and loss of control.  Some workers took their own lives in despair.

There was even a brief story about a hospital that was so short on rooms, that patients who were admitted for suicidal depression were kept for observation in the corridors.

I just happened to re-visit “Ordinary People”, the hit 1980 film based on Judith Guest’s best-selling novel, during Suicide Awareness Month.  Today, especially during the health crisis, depression and suicide are increasing, especially among young people.

There are many possible reasons for this: fear of the virus and its effects, including death of family and friends; disruption to a period of significant growth and development; a sense of hopelessness about the future; and the anxiety and loneliness of forced isolation, during a time in their lives when social interactions are crucial.

“Ordinary People” was a critical and popular success at the time, and was unusual in its depiction of the effect of attempted suicide on an American family.  It also stood out for its sensitive, positive portrayal of psychiatry, addressing the stigma around it while demonstrating, in a concentrated fashion, its potential to heal.  

The film has fallen out of favor in some circles, I assume by those who are uncomfortable with any film that has the power to honestly touch one’s deepest emotions.  Because of that power, and because it provides a way to identify with a young person struggling with feelings of guilt and hopelessness, “Ordinary People” might be more important today than ever.

The directorial debut of actor Robert Redford, “Ordinary People” is a compelling story and an actor’s showcase.  Its tone of somber control, and its explosive emotional release, moved audiences and members of the Motion Picture Academy alike.  The film won four Oscars, including Best Picture and Director. 

Conrad Jarrett is a quiet, anxious, good-natured high-school student, a singer in the school choir and member of the swim team. He lives with his parents, Calvin and Beth, in an affluent North Shore Chicago suburb, with all of the comforts that one might expect, even take for granted.  Bad things don’t seem possible here, or at least they should be easy to overcome by people who have it all.

Conrad’s life seems quiet and normal, almost excessively ordered and polite.  The film opens with typical domestic scenes and school activities.  Still, something is just a bit off; even the most commonplace dialogue seems fraught with subtext.

When it is finally revealed that Conrad has recently spent four months in a psychiatric hospital for a suicide attempt, the calmness and forced normalcy of the opening scenes seem almost grotesque.  Right away, we discover that Conrad is troubled by nightmares of a boating accident which he survived, and which his charismatic older brother, Buck, did not.    

His parents try in completely different ways to move on from the tragedy, or, more accurately, they devise ways to ignore their pain; and they have opposing strategies to deal with Conrad’s presence.  Theirs is a life of stock markets and golf games, Christmas spent in Europe and cocktail parties with show tunes around a piano.  Conrad is a constant reminder that the easy routine of their life cannot be recaptured. 

His father, Calvin, is openly loving, and tries hard to encourage Conrad, but his enthusiasm is almost naïve, and he can barely hide his worry and inability to truly connect.  

Conrad’s mother, Beth, is in a private hell of loss and an inability to feel.  She keeps Buck’s room intact, almost as a shrine; there are hints at an unhealthy closeness with Buck, and her deep pain over his death can’t disguise her resentment for Conrad having survived.  She is perfunctory, even cold, with Conrad, and he correctly reads it as hostility. 

When Conrad sees a psychiatrist at Calvin’s urging, to help deal with his unresolved anxiety and sorrow, the resentment between Beth and Calvin comes to a head.  She is ashamed of the idea of her well-bred, Protestant, keep-up-with-the-Jones’s family needing a psychiatrist---especially Dr. Berger, a Jewish psychiatrist—while Calvin himself visits Dr. Berger, at first to check on Conrad’s progress, but really to discuss deeper issues he must face with his marriage.

Robert Redford is not a flashy director.  He wisely pays attention to his characters, places them front and center, and closely observes the nuances of their expressions and body language to reveal truths about them that are otherwise difficult to portray on screen.  His filmmaking style is clean and professional, at times somber and controlled to reflect this material. 

But Redford is anything but bland.  Aside from his work with the actors, each one of whom gives a career-best performance, Redford pays attention to small details that give scenes and characters a surprising depth, for those who look closely. 

The casual, lived-in feel of the 1980s hairstyles, clothing, and beat-up cars of the high school students is very authentic; and some of the thick Chicago accents are surprisingly right.  Conrad’s nervous tics, captured almost accidentally without drawing attention to them—like his knee bouncing under the dining room table, or his fingers flicking during a quiet conversation with his doctor—tell more truth about him than any dialog. 

In a brief but meaningful shot, with the camera directly above a kitchen table, two orange juice glasses are placed in unison, followed by a third glass almost as an afterthought, a perfect symbol of the complicated feelings of a broken family.  Ditto the three napkins in their napkin rings, in a drawer as Beth lingers over them. And Beth constantly climbs the stairs of her desperately well-ordered home; the muffled sound of her footsteps on the carpet is like her repressed rage.

Redford’s laser focus on his characters, with help from a no-frills screenplay by Alvin Sargent, gives “Ordinary People” an unusual dual distinction: it has an undercurrent of melancholy, and also a sense of things about to explode from under the surface.  The almost suffocating atmosphere of home and family, and the heartrending missed opportunities for honest feeling and communication, is like a silent cry.  

One moment, when Beth and Conrad almost connect before the phone interrupts them, is filled with regret. As the film progresses, the intensity of the exchanges between characters is riveting, and both tragic and cleansing.

The score, based on themes adapted by Marvin Hamlisch from Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major”, works by drawing out feelings of sorrow, and then absolving us from them.  It is used sparingly, and given a high dramatic charge when Conrad has a breakthrough.

Timothy Hutton, who won a Supporting Actor Oscar in his film debut (even though he is basically the lead character), is refreshingly natural and open on-screen.  We can’t help but like him and suffer with him, as he tries to re-enter a life whose tragedy he feels responsible for.  Hutton’s smile reveals Conrad’s pure joy, and his moments of confusion and heartbreak are real.  Hutton’s father, actor Jim Hutton, died before the filming began, which might have given Timothy a reserve of emotion to draw upon.  

In the climactic scene with Dr. Berger, Hutton escalates the intensity, and the scene is almost too painful to watch, but you can’t look away.  The final effect on the audience is like a catharsis of therapeutic psychodrama.

As Dr. Berger, Judd Hirsch, known best as a comic actor on TV sitcoms, gives the film a jolt of subversive energy.  When he comforts Conrad after the difficult breakthrough, it is real and stirring.  In just a few crucial scenes, Hirsch creates a great character, played with sensitivity and devil-may-care directness.

Donald Sutherland shows his versatility in the more low-key role of Calvin.  I loved his vocal inflections as he labels Conrad’s most mundane achievements as “great”.  During his slow self-discovery with Dr. Berger, his sense of nervousness almost parallels that of Conrad's. 

In a small but important role, Elizabeth McGovern (“Downton Abbey”) is a charming breath of fresh air as Conrad’s school friend and fellow choir member at school.  She is completely awkward and believable as she helps Conrad back on the road to finding love.

The most difficult role, that of Beth, was cast against type with famous sitcom star Mary Tyler Moore.  It is a remarkable portrait of a woman in denial who cannot let herself feel any more pain, with a level of mourning and self-loathing in her portrayal.  

We may dislike Beth for her coldness toward Conrad, but we understand her, too, her losses and her desire to maintain whatever semblance of a life she can, shallow as it may be.  Moore has a stunning moment near the end, silently gasping and struggling to say something she is physically unable to say: maybe “I love you.”  Moore was deservedly nominated for Best Actress.

There’s a scene where Conrad meets up with Karen, a girl who he befriended in the hospital.  She tells him “let’s have the best year ever”.  His smile hides his trepidation.  It is a line that we might all wish for in the coming year, even if it feels hard to believe.  Karen’s eventual suicide precipitates Conrad’s difficult self-revelation and healing.  

In some odd way, “Ordinary People” may represent a wish fulfillment for us all.  In spite of the global tragedy of this year, along with the other disasters, conflicts and indignities, and against all indications to the contrary, we all hope to heal, get our lives back, have the best year ever.  

Or, at least, a more normal one.