Caught in the Carousel

Mike Mills

By Kelsay Myers

Mike Mills

Mike Mills's latest movie Beginners is a love story. Focus Features branded it with the tag line, "When it comes to relationships, we're all beginners." It seems so simple (and not at all rom com-ish) to say that when it comes to life and love, we are all beginning.

But where are we beginning? In the movie, there is Oliver Fields (Ewan McGregor), a 38-year-old graphic artist who has just lost his father to cancer and discovers a new kind of love; Oliver's father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), who came out of the closet at 75 after his wife of 44 years passed away; Oliver's mother, Georgia (Mary Page Keller), a lonely half-Jewish half-actress who died five years before his father; Oliver's father's dog, Arthur (Cosmo), who speaks in subtitles and a spontaneous, lonely Jewish French actress, Anna (Mélanie Laurent), with laryngitis.

As in life and love, simplicity is deceptive and not nearly as interesting as what we actually end up with. Beginners isn't just a love story about the relationships that form between people (or between people and a dog, for that matter), it is a marker of our present post-postmodern condition: a search for meaning and connection with others and a constellation of moments and images that go beyond pastiche.

One of my favorite scenes is when Oliver and his best friend, Elliot (Kai Lennox), decide to take a can of spray paint to the streets of L.A. Elliot paints "LIOT" on a wall and jumps back into the car. Oliver looks at him as if he's the biggest idiot in the world for simply "copying something someone else did 30 years ago!" Elliot says that he's part of a tradition of civil disobedience, something larger than himself. So Oliver gets out and writes, "1985 Bush finds Jesus" on the wall," saying that it's historical consciousness, something larger than himself.

Born and raised in Berkeley in 1966, Mills is obviously no stranger to traditions of civil disobedience and historical consciousness. His movie is historical consciousness. The British novelist Jeanette Winterson once wrote about art:

"What is certain is that pictures and poetry and music are not only marks in time but marks through time, of their own time and ours, not antique or historical, but living as they ever did, exuberantly, untired."

Beginners is a love story told through snapshots of the lives of its quirky and endearing characters out of time and yet through time. The year is 2003, but Mills takes us back to Oliver's childhood, then farther back to 1955 when his parents' got married, then he fast forwards to what it's like to be in love in 2003, all in one rapid, image-laden voiceover.

The voiceover puts the audience inside the mind of Oliver, so that we identify with the characters from his perspective. If the year were 1977, the setting was New York City, and Mike Mills had cast himself in the lead role, this could be a Woody Allen movie. The year, however, is 2003 (or 2011 perchance), the setting is Los Angeles, and Oliver is more morose and introspective than neurotic and inflammatory—a mark of the changing times or perhaps the writer/director himself.

Beginners is semi-autobiographical. Mike Mills is an accomplished filmmaker, graphic designer and artist, whose father came out just like Hal Fields did with a renewed sense of life. Mills's first feature film, Thumbsucker, was released in 2005, but he has also done several documentaries including: Paper Boys about six boys growing up in rural Minnesota, a short about Ornette Coleman's jazz music theory, and Eating, Sleeping, Waiting and Playing, a documentary tour with the French band, Air, to name only a few.

Music is important to Mills. He had a (he claims very small) hand in helping to compose the original score for the movie, which was created by Roger Neill, Dave Palmer and Brian Reitzell. In his blog, he says:

"We recorded on a beautiful old Bluezner stand-up piano that was a favorite of Henry Mancini's. Once we had the Beginners Theme the other score work, Anna's song and "I Want To Be Here" flowed out of the chords and feelings, somewhat broken but hopeful."

Somewhat broken but hopeful is the message I got. Anna tells Oliver that the world is full of people who are in love just like them: half of them think that things will never work out and half of them believe in magic. With Beginners, Mills seems to be saying that in a fragmented modern world, we can look to the stars for connection, or the history of humankind (which is a history of sadness), or within ourselves, or to other people. Some people will find only the same, tired sadness and some will find a living, breathing exuberance.

Mike Mills, photo by Ray Pride

Mike Mills was kind enough to give CITC his Consummate Top Ten Albums Of All Time:

Leonard Cohen - Old Skin For The New Ceremony
Iggy Pop - Lust For Life
Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines - Vol. 4
Jelly Roll Morton - Library Of Congress Recordings
Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
Erick Satie - The Early Piano Works
The Beatles - The White Album
The Clash - Sandinista
Velvet Underground - Loaded
Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings And Food

Further Reading: http://mikemillsweb.com