Interview: Mike Mills of ‘Beginners’
Posted on June 1, 2011 at 8:00 am
Mike Mills is a graphic designer-turned film-maker. His new movie, “Beginners,” is inspired by his own experience. Ewan McGregor plays Oliver, a graphic designer whose father, at age 74, came out and declared that he would spend the rest of his life as an openly gay man. The film goes back and forth in time as the father, played by Christopher Plummer, thoroughly enjoys his new life, even after he becomes ill with cancer. After his death, Oliver begins to explore a relationship with a French actress (Mélanie Laurent of “Inglourious Basterds”), both haunted and inspired by his father’s late-life changes.
I spoke to Mills about grief, dogs, and falling in love without talking.
I loved the authenticity of the portrayal of the designer, very rare in movies. Was that you in the close-up of the hand doing the lettering and drawing? It was clearly someone who was both talented and experienced.
It’s me and Ewan. I taught Ewan to draw a bit. He wanted to learn. He’s really crafty. He builds bikes and motorcycles and cars. He started drawing and he was very quick to figure it out.
And when he did not want to do what the client wanted for the album cover — that was very true not just for artists but for any creative person.
Especially when you are in that grief place, where you don’t really want to compromise. You feel like life is short so you want to go for it the way that seems right to you. You can be unreasonable and uncompromising and not even aware of it. It’s sort of a beautiful thing. It’s a weird gift of grief.
Tell me about your decision to structure it the way you did, impressionistically rather than chronologically.
It started because that was what grief was like for me. You’re walking around in the present, but bits of conversations and memories keep coming back to you. All those emotional exchanges are still so alive, constantly slipping in time. All the assumptions that we assume all day long become impossible to sustain. Incredibly un-complacent and uncomfortable. And as a film-maker, I like movies that do that, like “8 1/2” and “Stardust Memories” or “Annie Hall.” They’re very formally playful. I’m more comfortable if I can work on a story in a more broken-down, multi-viewed way. I’ve got the history monologues, the conversations with the dog. The denser and more multi-platformed it is, the freer I felt.
The dog is wonderful!
Animals are really important to me. I have a boarder collie and it is one of the most important relationships in my whole life. We talk all the time. Obviously, in the movie, it is Oliver projecting what the dog is saying. It’s a way for him to express his feelings. It became a neat, sideways way to get into Oliver’s brain. Dogs are wonderfully mysterious. We don’t know what they are thinking. It’s that otherness that fascinates us. They love us across the species divide and we love them. The same thing with the drawings. It wasn’t me trying to get my drawings into the film. It worked as a way to show Oliver’s emotions. I could go from a memory to cut to a drawing and it made sense emotionally because you’re seeing his reaction, his world.
I’d like to know where the idea came from that when Oliver meets the girl he falls for she can’t talk and can only communicate by notes.
That came from Lou Taylor Pucci, who was in my last film. He plays the magician in the party scene — partly because I got that whole idea from him. He met a girl when he had laryngitis and he couldn’t talk. He met a girl and fell in love in a way that he wouldn’t have if he was talking. He couldn’t be superficial and take the easy route. He got really vulnerable really fast. He told me that story and I asked if I could use it.
Gary Cooper won an Oscar for his portrayal of WWI hero Alvin York, the pacifist from the hills of Tennessee who carried out one of the most extraordinary missions in military history using lessons from his life on a farm. He captured 132 men by himself, still a record for a single soldier. In addition to the exciting story of his heroism in war, this is also the thoughtful story of his spiritual journey. He is a pacifist, opposed to fighting of any kind. By thinking of what he is doing as saving lives, he is able to find the inspiration and resolve for this historic achievement.
Director Steven Spielberg salutes his father and the greatest generation with this story set in the D-Day invasion of Normandy. It frankly portrays the brutality and carnage of war and its wrenching losses, but it also portrays the honor, sacrifice, heroism, and meaning.
There are battles — and heroes — of all kinds. Henry Fonda plays a Naval lieutenant assigned to a cargo ship during WWII who feels very far from the action. He learns that his defense of the crew against a petty and tyrannical captain (James Cagney), on behalf of “all the guys everywhere who sail from Tedium to Apathy…and back again, with an occasional side trip to Monotony,” is an important and meaningful contribution.
Set during the Korean War but released in and very much a commentary on the Vietnam War, this is the story of surgeons stationed at a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. The emphasis is on war’s essential absurdity — these are doctors whose job is to heal soldiers to they can be sent back into battle — and on the ways that different people respond to those situations, responses that often escalate the absurdity. See also “Captain Newman, M.D.,” with Gregory Peck as a sympathetic Army psychiatrist during WWII as well as the long-running television series this film inspired.
The Civil War 
An all-star cast shines in this sincere re-telling of the events of the invasion of Normandy D-Day, one of the transformational moments of WWII. Many of the military consultants and advisors who helped with the film’s production were actual participants (from both sides) in the action on D-Day, and are portrayed in the film.
This 10-part miniseries produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg is based on the best-seller by Stephen Ambrose about the WWII experiences of E Company (“Easy Company”), the members of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, United States Army 101st Airborne Division and one of its officers, Richard Winters (played by Damian Lewis), from basic training through the American airborne landings in Normandy, Operation Market Garden, the Battle of Bastogne and the end of the war.
George C. Scott won an Oscar for his portrayal of WWII General George S. Patton. The film also won six additional Oscars, including Best Picture. Its screenplay, co-written by Francis Ford Coppola, frankly portrays Patton’s mistakes and faults as well as his leadership in turning the tide of the war.
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This underrated gem from Francis Ford Coppola about the “Old Guard,” the regiment responsible for the funerals at Arlington National Cemetery has beautiful performances from James Caan, James Earl Jones, and D.B. Sweeney and subtly but powerfully explores some of the deepest and most troubling questions about the price we pay — and the price we call on others to pay — for our freedoms.