The Beaver (15) (This review on FilmJuice.com)
Mel Gibson is a good actor. Whatever the truth about his personal life, it isn’t relevant to that fact, and The Beaver features one of his best performances to date.
He plays Walter Black, a deeply troubled soul caged deep within a hardened shell of depression. His wife Meredith (Jodie Foster) has lost all hope of rediscovering the wonderful man who she married, having struggled through years of Walter’s ever increasing moroseness. She kicks him out, and of course that has no positive effect on poor Walter’s state of mind.
Enter the beaver. In a scene both hilarious and sensitive, Walter finds himself incapable of committing suicide and is finally talked out of it by... himself! Strangely drawn to an old hand puppet, Walter begins conversing with himself via the furry toy, and Gibson’s performance makes this potentially ludicrous turn of events seem not only plausible, but entirely convincing.
Jodie Foster also directed the picture, and it is her first effort behind the camera in sixteen years, much of which she must have spent practising! The story unfolds with a mature mixture of heartfelt respect for families torn apart by mental illness, coupled with a healthy injection of humour and wit.
Anton Yelchin plays Walter’s son Porter, and proves himself once again as a fantastically talented young actor. Hard as he tries, Porter finds it impossible to rid himself of his father’s every mannerism and trait, as he fights to escape the shadow of a dad who to him seems pathetic and helpless. Yelchin comfortably handles this complicated character, and clearly has a big career ahead of him.
Gibson’s soulful, naturalistic portrayal is likely informed by his rumoured personal battles with depression, but whatever his method he dominates the screen and makes you feel Walter’s pain. Being something of a shunned name in Hollywood these days his turn here is unlikely to garner the recognition it deserves, but it certainly is one of note.
The film has a distinctly European flavour to it, partly thanks to the darkly playful score by Marcelo Zarvos, characterised by its accordion tangos, but also due to the crisp and summery cinematography by Hagen Bogdanski, which helps to lend the heavy themes a softer, more digestible quality.
Inevitably the plot is tainted with some measure of Hollywood cliché, and particularly later on in the film some strands of the story risk getting lost in the realms of wishful thinking. However as a whole the tale rings true, the finale for example being far from as pat as it could have been, and for that writer Kyle Killen and the director deserve credit.
Killen’s ingenuity lifts The Beaver way above the cesspit of films full of trite and obvious metaphors, and without preaching delivers a timely message about accepting the unexpected, not judging the apparently strange, and however painful making the effort to keep your family under one roof.
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