Americans don’t really use the expression ‘cinema de papa’, invented by critics and French filmmakers followers of the New Wave to define everything that characterizes the film-making ways of previous generations, from which they wanted to move away. It would be about productions filmed mostly in studios, elaborated scenarios which were often adaptations of novels or plays, a style of directing very attentive to detail and relying on the quality of the actors, avoiding improvisations. According to these criteria, ‘Ordinary People‘ (1980) would be a classic example of ‘daddy’s cinema’. It’s also an example that this way of making films can generate remarkable, deep creations with heroes that stay with their viewers long after the screening is over. It was Robert Redford‘s directorial debut and remains to this day one of the best, if not the best, film he directed.
The title is justified from the first scenes. We see the comfortable home of an American couple somewhere near Chicago. The Jarretts are an ordinary family, but we quickly understand that things are not going well, and that this is due to the trauma of losing their elder son in a boating accident. Conrad, the younger brother, has feelings of guilt and is in recovery from a suicide attempt. Calvin, the father, displays a permanent and fake contentment, while Beth, the mother, emotionally represses her feelings, if she has any. The three do not want or cannot communicate with each other. For Conrad the only way to express his thoughts and anguish is through the psychiatric therapy sessions that he attends with Dr. Berger. The teenager’s return to high school studies, friends and the activity of a performance swimmer or the start of an idyll with a girl he meets at church choir rehearsals are constantly threatened by the trauma he cannot leave behind. The family, far from being a refuge, amplifies the anguish through non-communication.
Robert Redford moved to the director’s chair after two decades of acting in which he had become one of the most famous and highest paid stars in Hollywood. Understanding and guiding actors was his strength and his main quality as a filmmaker. All the actors in this film give strong and believable performances and for many of them it is one of the best films of their careers. This is certainly the case of Timothy Hutton who won theAcademy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, as Conrad. The classification is debatable, the teenager Conrad being the main character of the story in my opinion, but the award is justified. Donald Sutherland may apparently seem a miscast, with an atypical role for an actor often ready to go to extremes, but here, he finds resources of sensitivity little explored in other films. Mary Tyler Moore transcends her television star status in the mysterious and complex role of mother incapable of emotions or expressing them. Judd Hirsch takes on the role of Dr. Berger, a key character in a plot that can also be seen as a film advertising and promoting the profession of psychoanalyst. Finally, we have in this film the debut on the big screen of Elizabeth McGovern, young (at the time), talented and sensitive. The psychological depth of the story reminded me at its best moments of Ingmar Bergman. Even if today some dialogues seem a bit long and a bit theatrical, ‘Ordinary People‘ is a smart and deeply moving film that successfully launched Robert Redford as a director and won four Academy Awards, all of which were deserved.