Sometimes you gotta go depressed....

        I saw two movies this week. Bridesmaids and The Beaver. One is a great romantic comedy with Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph (who reminds me of a skinnier version of a girl I know named Della) and is the number 2 movie in the country. The other is a movie about Mel Gibson running about with a stuffed beaver on his hand. Of course I chose the latter. Hey this movie needs my help...or a few million movie goers.

I have been depressed to the point of needing psychotherapy and am not ashamed by that fact. It worked for me and to quote the crazy old guy on “Night Court” from back in the eighties “I’m feeling much better now.” Not really, still miserable most of the time, hence my name. It amazes me why people don’t understand that. “Why call yourself Mr. Unhappy?” I think it stems from the pretty much permanent state of unhappiness that the universe needs to keep me in. Yet this is all beside the point. The point is that depression is a debilitating disease that makes you feel as though there is no other way to be. A kind of fog covers your eyes and you just follow your routines. You get no joy in your day and you just always feel tired and not wanting to move. It makes writing a blog on schedule really difficult (as I am finding out). I was lucky though and my depression was fixed rather easily by a therapist. In the case of Mel Gibson’s Walter Black in “The Beaver”, that is not the case.

Walter is a chronically depressed man who when we first meet him, sleeps all day and seems to sleep through his life as well. His eldest son is scared to death of becoming like his father and his youngest son seems invisible (except to the bullies at school) that even his mother (Jodie Foster who also directed) doesn’t see him at the curb when she goes to pick him up. Jodie Foster’s Meredith Black loves Walter and wants to believe he’ll get better but her patience is running out. When she kicks him out, Walter finds himself on a balcony looking to jump with a stuffed Beaver puppet on his hand.

Walter doesn’t jump and when he awakens in the morning, the Beaver is speaking to him and telling him that he has to tear down his old life and create a new one, with The Beaver as his voice and personality. It is an odd choice but it seems to work. Walter instantly turns around his family life, engaging with his youngest son and even breaking through with his wife. The Beaver also helps him save his family business and win back Meredith’s love. So what is the problem here? If it works for him where medication and therapy have not, what is the harm? Well people usually tend to look at you funny when you speak through a stuffed beaver.

I don’t judge the man as I can be seen talking to myself all the time. Doesn’t mean I am not completely insane but it verbalizes the thoughts I need to get out but can’t. Perhaps Walter is just extremely shy and needs The Beaver’s confidence to make himself speak and be heard by those he cares about. Mel Gibson has been playing the crazy man in the media lately and I can’t think of a more perfect role than that of Walter and The Beaver. I think that behind all the craziness in Mel, there is still a genius actor. He portrays a depressed person with respect to those of us who are depressed. His is a serious case and the movie doesn’t make light of Walter’s inability to cope without a Beaver puppet. It is a very real problem to the family and to Walter. He is crazy and that’s not funny. Some of the things that happen in the movie are funny but the movie never plays the Beaver for schtick.

One of the most unexpected things in the movie was the portrayal of Anton Yelchin’s Porter Black, the son of Mel’s Walter who is desperately afraid of becoming his father that he keeps a wall of post it’s marking all of the similarities that he needs to eliminate. He is in his senior year and planning to run from Walter and Meredith’s disfunction at the end of the school year and go on a road trip to find himself and eliminate Walter from his personality. It is a touching story of a kid who sees his father’s descent into madness and wants to ensure he is not on the same path. When we first meet Porter, I felt a little angry at his inability to accept or help his father but as the movie goes on you see why he got to where he is. His story is the meat of the movie.

For people who do not understand the level of pain a depressed person feels, you should see this movie. This movie treats the very real psychological problems seriously and makes a sympathetic person of a man with a beaver on his hand and the son who hates him. I’d understand if you don’t want to see the movie because of Mel Gibson but really, the movie is not about Mel Gibson the man, it is about Walter Black and his attempt to save himself from a ledge. Some may draw parallels from Mel’s life to the Beaver but the two things are entirely different. Walter is a man who can’t say anything, and Mel is a man who says too much. The nuanced performance he gives in The Beaver is Oscar worthy. He won’t be nominated but he is still one hell of an actor. If only he could get out of his own way and help us love him again. Walter would.

Mr. Unhappy Sez: The movie is about a man with a Beaver on his hand... Why do you not want to see this?