"And What Was The One Wrong Thing You Did?"

I should warn folks who have not seen "Ordinary People" and have a desire to do so - you shouldn't watch this clip, unless you don't care about knowing what happens near the end.

This scene with Timothy Hutton and Judd Hirsch is the emotional center of the film - it is where Conrad finally begins to come to grips with his guilt, and by surviving an awful blow to his pysche, comes out the other side stronger for it.

It is a great performance by Hutton, one that - notwithstanding the successes he has had - he's never equaled in his career. There are nay-sayers today who decry his victory and argue that the Oscar should have belonged to Joe Pesci. I don't see it, myself - as much as I enjoyed the Scorsese films that featured Pesci in a prominent role, it's always seemed to me that he's played the same role, over and over. But no matter.

Kudos are also due to Judd Hirsch, one of those guys who has always seemed to be good in anything that he's in.

Donald Sutherland as Calvin Jarrett in "Ordinary People"

When you examine Donald Sutherland’s page on the Internet Movie Database, you see that he’s had 156 acting credits since 1962, which averages out to a little more than three projects a year. A long time ago, I remember reading an interview with Sutherland where someone asked him what kind of projects interested him, and his response was along the lines of “the ones that pay money.” Obviously, this is a man who likes to keep working. What it also means is that when you consider the course of his career, you can’t help but notice that while he’s been in a lot of famous and/or great movies, he’s also been in a lot of stuff that you’ve never heard of.

Of the three leads in “Ordinary People,” Sutherland was the only one who was not nominated for an Academy Award. I don’t see that as being a reflection on his work, but rather recognition that the role he plays – steadfast, strong father Calvin Jarrett – is the least “showy” of the three. But of the three, it is the one on which my own view has changed the most.

The first time I saw the movie, I was a junior in college, just a couple of months short of my 21st birthday. The part in the movie that resonated the most for me, the one I most identified with, was Conrad, as portrayed by Timothy Hutton. I’d imagine that most people who saw the film at that age had a similar reaction, because even if you hadn’t had to deal with the tragedy that Conrad faced, what kid that age didn’t have to deal with some of the things which Conrad deals with – a mother who doesn’t understand him, the mystery presented by the opposite sex, the clueless teachers, the sometimes idiotic friends and companions. You could watch the movie, and hope that you’d never have to go through that kind of pain, but at the same time think “yeah, if I ever had to face that situation, I hope I’d do some of the same things Conrad did.” As I’ve already written, Mary Tyler Moore’s Beth Jarrett was also an attention-grabber, because the image of Mary Richards – the girl who could “turn the world on with her smile” – was still so fresh in everyone’s minds.

But Donald Sutherland as Calvin Jarrett? I didn’t really think much about it at the time. But now, 30 years later, with 2 sons close to the same age as Buck and Conrad Jarrett, I probably identify more with Calvin than I do with any other character. Even in the last scene of the movie, after he knows in no uncertain terms that sometimes, things are out of his control, he says to Conrad, “no, I should have known…I should have done something.” The difference between how Beth and Calvin deal with the tragedy is subtle, but huge: Beth wants everything to go back to the way things were, while Calvin just wants to hold everything that is left together. And Donald Sutherland plays him perfectly – the pain is not out there shouting itself hoarse for the entire world to hear, but is there, just under the surface. A man who, as Conrad confides to Dr. Berger, is wound so tight that he just might crack.

Though I may not have appreciated Sutherland’s performance then, I certainly do now.

Mary Tyler Moore as Beth Jarrett in "Ordinary People"

For people under a certain age, it will be impossible to understand how much of a shock it was to see Mary Tyler Moore playing Beth Jarrett in “Ordinary People.” Today, Moore is remembered primarily for her roles in two iconic television comedies – “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” in which she played Laura Petrie, and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” one of the most famous TV shows in the history of the medium (one of the few that can be rightly said to have made television history). Moore’s Mary Richards was single. She had never been married. She worked in a newsroom filled with stodgy old men, and more than held her own in her interactions with all of them. At the same time, she was funny, vivacious, and as the theme song said, could “turn the world on with her smile.”

It’s hard to imagine a character less like Mary Richards than Beth Jarrett. We know very little about Beth throughout “Ordinary People” – we don’t know much about her interests, outside of maintaining a fine home; we don’t know what she was like in college; we don’t know what her interests were when she was younger. We get a brief glimpse of what she was like when she and her husband were courting (or perhaps newly married), but that’s about it. All we really know is that for Beth, the world revolves around two things – her family, and appearances.

The movie’s three central characters – Conrad, Calvin and Beth – are all damaged. Calvin and Beth’s oldest son, Buck, has died in a boating accident. For reasons which are unclear when the movie begins, the younger son, Conrad, has attempted suicide and is only now, a year later, trying to fit back into the pieces of his life. As the story proceeds, Calvin and especially Conrad begin to come to grips with what happened, and begin to prepare themselves for the life that is continuing, as life does, after a tragedy. Beth cannot do that. She wants to have things back the way that they were. She is broken, but does not have the self-realization to begin the slow, painful process of putting herself back together again.

The intensity of Moore’s performance – so unlike her work on television – is almost frightening. As Moore portrays her, it is as if Beth’s psyche is enclosed in ice, through which she cannot break through. She feels the trappings of emotions – anger, laughter – without ever getting to the core of those emotions. The act of taking a plate full of uneaten French Toast and shoving it into the garbage disposal, as if it were covered in blood, is enough to send shivers down the spine. Moore transforms herself into a woman who remains respected by all and loved by some, but one who can no longer love – no longer recognize, as Calvin puts it at one point, that the world does not revolve around her.

It’s a great performance, one that richly deserved the Academy Award nomination it received. It’s also sad to watch it today, because when it comes to Moore’s film career, “Ordinary People” was pretty much it. Who knows – maybe Moore scared even herself with this role, and couldn’t bring herself to erase the image of Mary Richards that so many people still held in their minds at that moment.

Ordinary People: The Reviews

“Ordinary People” may be best known today as the film that won the Best Picture Oscar in the year that “Raging Bull” was released. Somehow, over the years this had led to the mythology that the movie is terrible; that it was one of the Academy’s most embarrassing moments.

Let’s analyze what the leading critics of the day had to say about the film, upon its release.

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine:

Redford's use of previously unexplored locations around Chicago gives the picture a fresh, honest look. He has also asked much of his actors, and they have all responded superbly, but it is within the Jarrett family that the biggest chances are taken. The dramatically risky stillness in Donald Sutherland's performance remains constant as he moves agonizingly from being a passive player to an active force in reshaping his family's life. Mary Tyler Moore deserves some kind of award for her courage in exploring the coldness that can sometimes be found at the heart of those all-American girls she often plays. As for Timothy Hutton, son of the late Jim Hutton (Walk, Don't Run), he handles the sulks, rages and panics of adolescence with a naturalness any parent will recognize. He is a nice boy, but there is a scary power in the emotional volatility of his age, and he shows how that can tyrannize the lives of those around him. There are no villains in Redford's world, only fallible human beings trying to work things out, failing and succeeding in touchingly recognizable ways. That is a rare enough viewpoint to find at the movies now, but coming from a man whose fame might have carried him far from the realm of Ordinary People, it seems little short of miraculous.


Vincent Canby, New York Times:

The very real achievement of Robert Redford, who makes his directorial debut with ''Ordinary People,'' and of Alvin Sargent, who meticulously adapted Miss Guest's novel for the screen, is that the Jarretts become important people without losing their ordinariness, without being patronized or satirized. ''Ordinary People,'' which opens today at the Loews Tower East, is a moving, intelligent and funny film about disasters that are commonplace to everyone except the people who experience them. Not since Robert Benton's ''Kramer vs. Kramer'' has there been a movie that so effectively catches the look, sound and temper of a particular kind of American existence.

The Jarretts are not only ordinary people, they are also ''nice'' people. They wear the right clothes, read the right books, eat the right things and misbehave discreetly. They put great store in selfcontrol, as much in the privacy of their own house as abroad in the company of friends or strangers. The problem is that such niceness and control cannot accommodate the fears, furies and resentments occasioned when things go to pieces.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times:

Director Redford places all these events in a suburban world that is seen with an understated matter-of-factness. There are no cheap shots against suburban lifestyles or affluence or mannerisms: The problems of the people in this movie aren't caused by their milieu, but grow out of themselves. And, like it or not, the participants have to deal with them. That's what sets the film apart from the sophisticated suburban soap opera it could easily have become. Each character in this movie is given the dramatic opportunity to look inside himself, to question his own motives as well as the motives of others, and to try to improve his own ways of dealing with a troubled situation. Two of the characters do learn how to adjust; the third doesn't. It's not often we get characters who face those kinds of challenges on the screen, nor directors who seek them out. Ordinary People is an intelligent, perceptive, and deeply moving film.

Now, don’t forget the point of this little enterprise – it’s not to tear down “Raging Bull,” it’s simply to tear down the myth that “Ordinary People” was somehow unworthy.

Coming Soon To A Blog Near You

For years, it has gotten a bum rap as "the film which robbed Raging Bull of its Best Picture Oscar."

It is likely that I am in a distinct minority when it comes to these two films, but over the next couple of weeks - as we get closer to the Oscars - I'll be writing about "Ordinary People," and why it is one of my all-time favorite movies - one that I'd much rather see, seven days of the week, than "Raging Bull."

I will not damn Scorsese, DeNiro, and their film - it is one that I admire greatly. I seek merely to defend and make an argument for a film that deserves better than to be relegated to the ash can of Oscar history.

Stay tuned...