by Chris Marshall:
Ever since I watched it a couple of days ago, I’ve been
trying to decide whether or not the title Ordinary
People is ironic or meant in earnest. If it’s serious, then I think that
Robert Redford (well, I guess the author of the novel would be more to blame)
doesn’t have a very good idea of what ordinary people are like. The
protagonists are wealthy, live in a giant house, had a maid at one point, and
so on. But maybe they meant that these guys have problems just like ordinary
people do.
Either way, these folks certainly do have problems. Plenty of them, as a matter of fact. Before the
movie even starts, the elder son dies in a boating accident, a tragedy that
serves as a catalyst for the most, if not all, of the events in the film. Oh,
and the younger son (Timothy Hutton) attempted suicide and was placed in a
mental hospital, which also took place prior to the evens in the movie.
So… yeah. If these are the problems we don’t see, then you can probably imagine that the situations we do
aren’t exactly going to be a barrel of laughs.
