Ordinary People review

 Number 439 on the top 1000 films of all time is Robert Redford's 1976 directorial debut: Ordinary People.

The Jarretts are a wealthy upper-class family living in Chicago. However, mother Beth (Mary Tyler Moore) and father Calvin (Donald Sutherland) world is rocked after they lose one son in a boating accident and their other son Conrad (Timothy Hutton) tries and fails to take his own life. Despite help from therapist Tyrone Berger (Judd Hirsch) Conrad struggles to move on from the tragedy. The family slowly starts to disintegrate. 

This was always going to be a depressing film. That much was obvious from the film's summary. What made it so upsetting was its realness. The Jarretts can be substituted for any other family and the story would be the same. The tragedies that befall them could easily befall anyone. As the title would suggest, they are painfully ordinary people.

Ordinary People was Robert Redford's directorial debut. And it was a terrific debut, because he won the Best Directing Oscar. he did well in making the pain and the tragedy of the Jarrett family relatable for a general audience, regardless of how much wealth they hold.

Similar credit should be given to to the principle cast who were all Oscar-nominated except for Donald Sutherland. Moore and Hutton both won, with Hutton beating out his co-star Judd Hirsch. All this is while Donald Sutherland is generally regarded as one of the best actors to have never been Oscar-nominated, so his snubbing was no surprise. 

I do think if it was any other year Hirsch would have been beaten Hutton, but Hutton's considerable acting skills made him the youngest Best Supporting Actor Oscar in history - a record that stills stands to this day - at twenty. Of course, this isn't to disparage Hirsch. Therapists can tend to be played as cold and condescending, but this was not the case with Tyrone Berger. He was a warm and relatable man who soon becomes Conrad's most trusted confidante.

Yes, Ordinary People was a tragic film, but it was painfully relatable. Maybe that's why it was so sad.