Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
6/7/11
Each
year, film development executives are surveyed to list their favorite unproduced
screenplays, and the result is published the first week of December as
the “Black List”. There are, of course, a lot of reasons great scripts
don't get produced, and it's pretty clear why Kyle Killen's debut screenplay
The Beaver both topped 2008's list and took years to be filmed.
The Beaver has a wicked high concept and is a fascinating, multi-leveled
exploration of an important topic. That topic, alas, is mental illness,
and pretty much nobody wants to pay to see a movie about it. Luckily
for Killen, his script turned out to be an utterly perfect vehicle for
the publicly troubled movie star Mel Gibson, whose close friend Jodie Foster
directed and co-stars. Gibson is sensational in a lot of different
ways, and Foster's quiet, Old Hollywood approach to a very edgy story creates
just the right balance to keep it grounded in the dark realities of depression.
Add strong performances by Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence as what
could easily have been stock characters, and you've got a really impressive
family drama hiding in plain sight behind a wacky comedy about a crazy
guy with a hand puppet. Or is that a horror movie about a crazy
guy with a hand puppet?
Walter
Black (Mel Gibson) has battled depression for years, and no therapy has
worked. He sleepwalks through life as the CEO of his family's toy
company and as husband to Meredith (Jodie Foster) and father to sons Porter
(Anton Yelchin) and Henry (Riley Thomas Stewart). Finally, she can
stand no more and asks him to leave. Walter checks into a hotel and
promptly attempts to first hang himself and then jump from the balcony.
But something calls out to him: a beaver hand puppet he'd fished
out of a dumpster moments earlier. The next day, he turns up back
home with a story about his psychiatrist telling him to use The Beaver
as a “therapy puppet”. It will do all the talking while Walter sits
back and disengages from his life. The Beaver, with its salty accent
and endless energy, is everything Walter hasn't been; Henry is charmed
and Meredith dares to hope that a transition to recovery is underway.
But Porter, who's been cataloging all the signs of the family's history
of mental illness in himself, is horrified to have his father back in the
house, doubly so as a blatant madman. But The Beaver is the success
Walter never was, getting the toy company back on track and becoming a
train wreck celebrity with his Self Help mantra of leaving everyone who
cares about you behind as you seek your own happiness. While Porter
struggles to make things work with the troubled valedictorian (Jennifer
Lawrence) he's fallen for, Meredith fears for her family as Walter's insanity
grows, and a showdown is brewing between The Beaver and the man whose life
he's taken over.
It's
easy to miss just how amazing Mel Gibson is in The Beaver.
The Mel we know spends most of the movie hiding in the periphery of the
frame, his face hollow and sunken, his eyes pinned to the floor in despair.
All the while, a perfectly designed hand puppet is living large, charming
his son and lashing out at anyone who tries to reach the man whose arm
is manipulating him. But that's Gibson too, who had to master all
the intricacies of puppeteering for the movie. And even if his puppeteer
wasn't visible on-screen, even if he wasn't giving his own performance
at the same time, The Beaver is a very memorably performed puppet, with
his perfectly friendly/disturbing voice and very well-done facial expressions.
Making it all the better is how well Gibson syncs up his and The Beaver's
faces, and the fact that his and the puppet's mouths are always moving
in sync (it's a great decision Gibson and/or Foster made to not try to
hide his lip movements: the fact that he and The Beaver speak in
unison is quite disturbing). Not only is it one of the most unique
performances you'll see this year, but the degree of difficulty is off
the charts. Gibson has always been underrated as an actor, and this
may be his finest work ever.
It's
interesting to watch how Killen, Foster and even composer Marcelo Zavros
set you up with a first act that's mostly comic and conventional (the setup
for the subplot with Porter being hired by cheerleader/valedictorian Norah
to write her graduation speech is right out of a bad 80's John Hughes knockoff)
and then keep broadening and darkening the canvas until a third act that
will inspire more gasps than grins. Walter and The Beaver are two
different faces of mental illness. The man despairs and grinds down
those around him who can't grasp why he doesn't simply stop it. The
puppet is that manic “crazy person” who everyone loves until they go too
far (Charlie Sheen, if you will). All of the major characters cover
one kind of depression or another, with Meredith cracking under the weight
of her daily trials, Porter battling the weight of the issues hard-wired
into his DNA by heredity, and Norah struggling with a tragedy in her past.
It's interesting to watch the filmmakers grapple with finding the right
notes to close these stories on while understanding that depression tends
to be a lifelong battle rather than a quick fix. For the most part,
they succeed, although you do have to listen to the wording of the movie's
final line carefully lest the last scene seem to come completely out of
left field.
The
performances in the subsidiary roles are very good, particularly Yelchin,
who navigates an initially stock character into more intriguing territory
with great skill and doesn't waste the rare “teen who hates his Dad” role
that allows you to see where the kid is coming from. Foster also
walks a nice line, because there's only so much anyone can be expected
to tolerate, but lashing out at the broken man with a puppet on his arm
just seems so cruel. That the screenplay hands Lawrence a cheerleader/valedictorian/graffiti
artist and she makes Norah both believable and heartfelt is a testament
to one of our best young actresses.
I didn't
get to see The Beaver until its die had already been cast at the
box office: given the double difficulties of marketing the controversial
Gibson and the challenging subject matter, it's no surprise it failed.
But I hope audiences discover the movie on video. After all, giving
ambitious movies a chance is the only way we'll ever airlift those poor
scripts off that black list. |
