Ordinary People (1980)
Directed by Robert Redford
Beth, Calvin, and their son Conrad are living in the aftermath of the death of the other son. Conrad is overcome by grief and misplaced guilt to the extent of a suicide attempt. He is in therapy. Beth had always preferred his brother and is having difficulty being supportive to Conrad. Calvin is trapped between the two trying to hold the family together.
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What critics compared Ordinary People to
The various and venerable spirits of “The Sweet Hereafter,” “Ordinary People” and “In the Bedroom” may hover over this movie in wintry setting and theme, but “Manchester by the Sea” is very much its own singular, seething creation.
It isn’t a weepie, although its classical score tugs it close to such tastefully lachrymose classics as Robert Redford’s Ordinary People.
If this film had been made in conventional three-quarter-shot fashion with an overlaid music score, it might read like a groovier Ordinary People.
But neither of them is a match for her mother, Abby (Debra Winger) whose distance from her children is rivaled only by that of Mary-Tyler Moore in Ordinary People.
She goes to therapy (with Shailene Woodley's therapist giving Judd Hirsch/“Ordinary People” vibes), and she does not feel anything.
Timothy Hutton also has what feels like an appropriate cameo, given the similarities between this film and “Ordinary People,” which also dealt with the struggles of an upper-middle-class family through a troubled son and his confused parents.
Beautiful Boy opens with David’s visit to an unseen authority on drug addiction who turns out (in later scenes) to be played by Timothy Hutton — a nice reveal given Hutton’s triumph as the maladapted teenager in Ordinary People , but amounts to little more than an in-joke.
Back in 1980 Hutton, the Chalamet of his day, also played the disturbed son of a middle-class family in Ordinary People, winning him an Oscar (and one for director Robert Redford).
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The bonding between these two troubled men recalls "Ordinary People," albeit with much rougher edges and darker humor.
Teaming up with director Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, To Die For), the two have forged a fitfully engaging saintly-misfit fable glazed with Hollywood-therapeutic ''sensitivity'': It's Searching for Bobby Fischer meets Ordinary People as reimagined by Oliver Sacks.
Actually, one doesn�t seem to be suffering much: Neil (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, resembling Timothy Hutton circa Ordinary People), who realized he was gay while watching his mother give a boyfriend a blow job, relishes the attention that Coach (Bill Sage) showers on him that fatal summer.
What if, in Ordinary People, Timothy Hutton were secretly an alien?
There’s a lot on the line, and Heder strings it all together in a mainstream package that recalls everything from Ordinary People to Save the Last Dance and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before .
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The climactic scene in which Conor finally confronts his horrible dream echoes a similarly tortured Conrad Jarrett’s revelatory confession in the psychiatrist’s office near the end of Ordinary People.
I cannot speak to the particulars of speech therapy, but it seems convenient that, according to “The King’s Speech,” speech therapy mirrors the psychological theatrics of “Ordinary People” or “Good Will Hunting” or….or….let’s…