The Beaver (2011)

The Beaver is a difficult movie to review. For starters, The Beaver is an extremely difficult movie to watch. I don’t know if I would be able to watch it again. But I do want to own the DVD, so that I can rent it out to my friends so they can see this fabulous film. And if I do watch it again, it’ll be a while until. But yes, The Beaver is a hard-to-watch but brilliant film. The movie stars Mel Gibson as Walter Black, a man who is down on his luck. Well, that’s a bit of an understatement. This man, who was once an extremely successful toy executive and family man, is now depressed and gone. The movie uses a perfect metaphor for his state: “He seemed to have died, but forgotten to take his body with him.” After a sickly hilarious double suicide which involves Walter trying to jump off of a balcony with a metal pole attached to his neck by a tie, he finds a beaver hand puppet in the garbage. He puts the puppet on, and develops a second personality talking through the hand. The second personality is known as ‘The Beaver’, who has a thick cockney accent, and is very friendly and happy, but is a bit menacing. But either way, this helps him get his life together. He begins to patch up his relationship with his wife (played by Jodie Foster, who also directed the film), and his younger son, while still being unable to work his relationship out with his older son Porter (Anton Yelchin, who has recently starred in the remake of Fright Night). Porter has mapped out his similarities to his father, and tries to distance himself from them. He also goes out to different famous places with money made by writing papers for his fellow classmates in the summer, and is hired to write a valedictorian speech for the valedictorian of the school (played by Jennifer Lawrence, who is going to be our Katniss Everdeen in the upcoming movie based off of the book The Hunger Games). But back to Walter (you see how awkward that transition from the subplot of the film was? Yeah. That happens a lot in the film. The subplot doesn’t flow with the main plot very well). As Walter gets psychologically better with ‘The Beaver’, it becomes clear that this is a very sick man. And this goes for longer and longer until Walter completely loses it. The ending of the film is sick, twisted, and cruel. It comes as such a shock, and it is pulled off brilliantly. It is the best scene of the film, but it might give you nightmares. Not like Friday the 13th nightmares, more like Misery nightmares. But it is so brilliant. Mel Gibson in the film is amazing. I know that this man continues to go through a lot of trouble personally, but-he is such a great actor. He is one of the single most talented actors working in the business today. And here, he shows off perfectly the fact that he can do just about anything. Foster is still the same way. She is a brilliant actress, and also a great director. She is probably a better actress than she is director, but she is still great at both. Anton Yelchin and Jennifer Lawrence are both great in the film, even though their plot is a bit unnatural. And now for my single favorite part of the film. The Beaver is written by Kyle Killen, a first-time screenwriter. This brilliant script was on the Blacklist, a list of the most popular unproduced screenplay, for some time. I saw an article on the script in an issue of Entertainment Weekly a couple years ago, and I already wanted to see it. So I’ve been waiting for this movie for a while. And it paid off. This movie is a brilliant film. It is a brilliant piece of art. It is hard to watch, and crazy, and mental, and probably written by a man whose mother is really worried right now, but it is brilliant. So, so, brilliant.
9/10