The Beaver
The Beaver (2011), written by Kyle Killen and directed by Jodie Foster, was marketed as a feel good, uplifting movie, a rising from the ashes, which on first glance from only the description seemed like it couldn’t get past anything surface level, B list kind of flick, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. It is a beautifully crafted movie about depression, the dreadful task of coping with and working to overcome it, with a secondary story about finding love.
It opens up quietly, serene and yet malicious, with the slow-moving water in a pool, and Walter Black (played by Mel Gibson) floats across as a monologue told by, who we come to understand is, the Beaver’s voice. “This is a picture of Walter Black…” The ending of the film is momentously different while being a mirror of the same, as Walter says the same sentence but he doesn’t end the monologue with, “everything is alright.” He says, “so maybe it can be alright,” over the rapid movement of he and his family on a roller coaster, finally enjoying life. It bodes to the feeling the movie gives off that everything is not always alright but the significance in the choice that we make to acknowledge this, accept it, and learn to live with it can be.
The discovering of a relationship that Walter’s son, Porter, has with Nora (played by Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence) is beautifully realistic. It shows how things can go from being fantastic, high on life, to the worst feeling imaginable. It is crafted in such a way that it makes us think back to the first time we fell into a relationship. It is scary and exciting. But Porter is just a side character. The main character, Walter, suffers severely. Because of his depression, he tries to commit suicide only to find himself using a beaver had puppet to start talking to his family and taking control of his life again. The beaver at first, was the way for his life to get better at home, work etc. but it turns into a kind of mania, he loses his mind in this dual personality and the beaver takes control of it, suppressing Walter and the times he possibly could have opened up to actually solve his problems. It’s terribly sad at times, but does not take us to the point that we become depressed as well, ruining our day.
Walter and the Beaver spends time on the Today Show and other news shows, where we are given a monologue into the reality of depression, really cutting deep to the feeling of it. Perhaps now that Walter has been separated from his family for the second time it’s allowing him to start to look deeper into his mind, to try and fix what’s wrong, only now that he is alone with himself and this puppet. The beaver inevitably turns into a part of him that hates Walter and tries to kill him, and we find ourselves feeling afraid for Walter’s life and sanity. The filmmakers effectively made a stuffed beaver stuck on this man’s hand into a terrifying, abusive, controlling relationship and Walter ends up cutting off his forearm, killing the Beaver. He had to become lost enough to be taken over by the beaver in order to become strong enough to live again.
I do question as to why Walter’s wife, Meredith (played by Jodie Foster) sent Walter away when he was severely depressed and suicidal at the beginning of the movie rather than sticking with him. One could argue that it was too much for someone to live with, but they could’ve gotten some better way of sending Walter away, because it made Meredith’s love for Walter seem less everlasting, despite a wonderful performance and arc from her the rest of the film. And that, I believe, was part of the majesty Foster and Killen do. It is a wonderful job of playing with our emotions and really know how to make you feel loved, lost, depressed or uplifted.
We also don’t find ourselves rooting for one person or the other, we can see that all sides make their mistakes and act out of goodness but some shit just doesn’t work out the way that we would like to believe that it should. These characters are not unmoving characters, though the youngest son, Henry (played by Riley Thomas Stewart) and at times Meredith, don’t get delved into all that much, Walter, the beaver, Porter, and Nora are deep characters and share the spotlight of importance effecting each other’s lives totally, and directly even if we are very aware the main focus is on Walter.
The Beaver has beautiful editing and multiple times when the moving camera continues moving as we cross into different locations, allowing us to see how multiple scenarios mirror each other. The shots are fantastic with no real “ABAB” cutting back and forth between two shots for a three-minute scene. They are interesting, using multiple dimensions and the three grounds as often as possible. These aren’t bland or unthoughtful shots. The music is exquisitely crafted to blend into the background, so we don’t really notice it all too much, while at the same time, being unique enough to stand out as a certain feeling and likeness. The shots, the music, the technical craft of this movie means something. They add to the feeling of insecurity or whatever Foster want us to feel, which befits most movies that depict the standard, white suburban upper-to-middle-class. It’s not the standard midlife crisis movie. This is meaningful and deeper than most movies all together.
The Beaver really tries to question the idea that, ‘everything is going to be ok.’ It says that ‘I’m not ok’ and sometimes trying to achieve happiness doesn’t work. Other times we don’t let it work. The Beaver does have some kind of uplifting feeling to is, as it depicts how we work and work and work in order to overcome, and that we are not alone. Working in the sense that we don’t delve into our financial work, or career, but work into the soul. This movie says, “you do not have to be alone.” But they’re never saying, ‘it’ll all be ok.’ It looks at the reality of life, that there are tough things, but there are good things too. It proves that movies can still be uplifting and sweet while not glorifying the standard tropes we tend to see from movies that breeds a sense of black and whiteness, all on or all off, all good or all bad. The Beaver tells an honest tale, one that is refreshingly realistic which still gives us, what I think, is a more satisfying uplifting ending.
Sept. 27, 2018