The Jarrett family are an upper-middle class family living in Chicago, consisting of parents Calvin (Donald Sutherland) and Beth (Mary Tyler Moore) and their son, Conrad (Timothy Hutton). But what becomes abundantly clear is that they are grieving the loss of their elder son, Buck, who died in a boating accident that Conrad survived. Torn apart by guilt from not saving his elder brother, Conrad’s mental health has spiralled out of control, he has tried to kill himself, ended up spending some time away in a mental health institution, and now consults a therapist (Judd Hirsch). And his parents aren’t dealing too well with it all either…
Doug says...
One of the strangest things about this project is how neatly the decades encompass radically different styles and themes within the winning films. In the ‘50s it was all glamour and witty phrases, in the ‘60s it was bright bubbly musicals and in the ‘70s it was dark, gritty analyses of masculinity.
Here, opening our study of the 1980s, is an extraordinarily different beast. Ordinary People is much like How Green Is My Valley in that I’ve never heard of it in any circumstance. It is also like How Green Is My Valley in that it is exceptional.
The film explores a wealthy family after the eldest son dies in a boating accident. While it focuses mainly on the younger son Conrad - who is severely traumatised - it also deals with the mother and father played by Mary Tyler Moore and Donald Sutherland respectively. Conrad receives next to no sympathy from his mother who is cold through and through, and while his father is desperately trying to help him, he is suffering. Enter the therapist - and while it’s now a little obvious to have the therapist be a very human, ordinary person, I can’t help feeling this film was setting a precedent.
The obvious comparison is Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams made it clear just how brilliant an actor he was - but here the therapy is a strand of the story not the whole thing. It verges at times on being too sentimental, but there is a scene towards the end where Conrad finally starts talking truth, and it’s electrifying. Everyone here is pulling their weight, and it’s bizarre that it was Robert Redford’s directorial debut because the shooting and precise piecing together of this feels the work of a far more experienced director.
I’m also delighted to say that contrary to last decade, we already have two contenders for Best Actress for the 1980s straight out of the gate. In her film debut Elizabeth McGovern (better known now as Lady Cora of Downton Abbey) is remarkably assured and also looks weirdly like Stockard Channing. But the film’s real talent is Mary Tyler Moore who moves beyond any performance I’ve seen her give previously, and captures the mother who is unable to express sentiment despite occasionally desperately trying to. There’s a scene where she comes out to sit by her son in the garden and you just feel her trying to work out how to connect with him - and then her ultimate inability to is depressingly real. Also - the fact she never says that she wishes Conrad had died instead of her other (favourite) son, and yet it’s all you can think about when she’s on-screen is testament to the performance she gives.
It’s also a film that doesn’t play to the obvious. When the therapist tells Conrad he has to forgive a certain person in his life, we assume (along with Conrad) that it is obviously Conrad himself (I mean, obvious right?). Wrong. And when we find out who the therapist is actually talking about, it’s both surprising and very accurate. If this was a film made now, there would be a moment when the mother finally breaks down and everyone starts to heal. Here, they take a more realistic path that is more upsetting but also more valuable for its truthful angle.
What’s bad about it? Not much, but there are a few too many hammy moments, and I’m wondering (from what I know of the ‘80s) whether this may be a constant issue. This film felt refreshingly modern most of the time (I drew a lot of comparisons with 2018 Oscar nominee Lady Bird) and so the moments that it proved its age were jarring.
As an opening to this new decade? Cracking. It was powerful, made its points well, addressed things like suicide and social pressures with ease and real truthfulness, and I didn’t want to check Instagram or stare out of the window once.
Highlight
Mary Tyler Moore proving her acting chops was an unexpected delight. It’s a brilliant, savage performance and better than anything the ‘70s provided.
Lowlight
A few too many hammy moments (people sighing too dramatically or overacting in the background) kept this from being flawless.
Mark
9/10
Paul says...
I thought the more obscure Best Picture winners were far behind us, but here comes another one just 9 years before I was born. Despite its high regard, Ordinary People is not an '80s movie that gets discussed much, unlike other Best Picture winners from around this time such as Chariots of Fire, Out of Africa and Platoon. Perhaps it has become overshadowed by its fellow nominees such as The Elephant Man and Raging Bull, both stiff competition and are much more publicly known amongst younger generations.
But whatever the reason, it’s an unfair one, because Ordinary People is a lovely, emotional movie. It displays a transition period between the '70s and '80s, because it is both an intense psychological study of a family falling apart due to grief, but we’re seeing much bigger expressions and occasional movements into melodrama that are much more reflective of the 80s ethos (we are, of course, in the Dallas/Dynasty era now).
It’s odd that Timothy Hutton was nominated for and won Best Supporting Actor rather than Best Actor (fun fact: he is still the youngest ever recipient of this award, at just 20 years old). The film is far more focussed on Conrad than on his parents, but I suppose Sutherland and Moore had more cultivated careers, hence their top billing. Hutton is outstanding, perfectly displaying the extreme forms of grief. I was totally convinced that we were watching someone so riddled with guilt, trauma and helplessness, that he feels he has no option but to take his own life. He swings wildly between putting on a brave face, and having a panic attack, and this is helped by Redford’s controlled direction, in which we discover this character’s past through rapidly-cut flashbacks and literally seconds of memory. It’s a deserved win for Hutton, but really his volume of screen time should have got him more than Supporting Actor.
I also loved the character of his therapist, Dr Berger, played superbly by Judd Hirsch, who was also nominated for Best Supporting, and 90s kids may recognise him as Jeff Goldblum’s panicky father from Independence Day. The beauty of the scenes between him and Hutton are that they steer clear of the sentimental. Berger is a confrontational, hard-hitting therapist, who isn’t afraid to ask uncomfortable questions, challenge his patients and force them to face up to their own faults as well as those of people around them. I feel like we all need a Dr Berger in our lives, whether you’ve just watched your elder brother drown or not.
I’m also tremendously excited that Mary Tyler Moore has made her way into this project. For me, she can do no wrong, neither as a ditzy 60s housewife in The Dick Van Dyke Show, or as a plucky single career woman in her own groundbreaking '70s sitcom, the aptly-named Mary Tyler Moore Show. Here, she plays totally against her Bridget Jones-esque type, as the sort of upper-middle class house-proud wife who desperately wants to maintain her image of control, affluence and serenity. She sees pitying Conrad as “indulging”, and is furious when her husband tells a friend that Conrad is seeing a psychiatrist. To her, mourning and bad mental health is shameful. The film’s biggest failing for me was the way in which the script lets her down. Hutton gets so much time with Dr Berger that we see the full spectrum of his character, and Donald Sutherland gets a huge amount to work with too. Moore, even by the end of the film, remains a cold, emotionally-stunted wife, and has no breakthrough moment. I see that the film was meant to do this, to show that sometimes people don’t change regardless of the consequences of their actions. But I wanted to know more about her- why is she like this? What are her memories of the family’s past events? What is her background here? It’s a testament to Moore that she conveys so much, when the script gives her character so little compared to her husband and son. It was totally dissatisfying to see their characters so well-rounded and hers being so simple. Nonetheless, she got a Best Actress nomination that is well deserved- she lost to Sissy Spacek.
Ordinary People, as Doug says, is a great way to start off the '80s. It’s a touching dissection of a family under great emotional strain and teaches audiences that sometimes, the best way to deal with grief is to discuss it rather than avoid it. It’s a less-known winner, but a strong one.
Highlight
Any of the scenes involving Judd Hirsch as Dr Berger. I almost wanted the film to be entirely set in his office, with every character getting a moment with him. This would at least have fleshed out Mary Tyler Moore’s character more satisfyingly.
Lowlight
The film steers dangerously close to '80s-style platitudes. A prime example is when Conrad is on a date (with Cora from Downton Abbey, no less!). She asks him what it’s like to try to commit suicide, and he embarks on a speech about it feeling like a “deep dark hole” or something like that. I find it hard to believe that someone as downtrodden as he could so eloquently use this imagery to describe suicide. But I feel this is something that becomes fashionable during the overstated '80s.
Mark
8/10
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