The Beaver
Surrounded by controversy is an understated for what this movie is going through as it tries to find its audience. First, there's Mel Gibson who angered the powers that be by proving he is a loose cannon who says what he thinks--at least when he's got the right kind of cannon balls in his cannon. The fact that Mel Gibson found another movie to star in after the public relations disasters he's presided over in the last two or three years is as much proof about his power as a movie star as any actor is ever apt to present.
Jodie Foster directed and co-stars in The Beaver. She had to have a kind of artistic courage to bring Mel Gibson to star in The Beaver.
I chuckle when I see the title. Few names could be more covered with innuendo than that one. It has to speak volumes about the decision makers on this flick just choosing to go with that title. Clearly their give-a-shit meters were broken, or maybe they just decided to turn them off for this movie. I suspect the latter.
It was totally unexpected what I found when I viewed the movie. The trailers and advance publicity had given me a different idea about the movie than what I encountered when I saw the thing itself.
I almost passed on seeing it on the big screen. I had planned to watch it during that period before its release when the advance buzz said it was going to be a controversial flick. Anything Mel Gibson did after what he had been through was going to be controversial. He had offended the people who create buzz: how could his next movie be anything but controversial? But when the movie was released, and I watched the trailer and saw how they were advertising it, it looked like it wouldn't be worth the trouble of driving 50 miles to see it. That's right. The Beaver was released in limited distribution so there were only two theatres in Georgia showing it. And both of them in Atlanta. So what with looking like it was nothing special and the long drive through Atlanta traffic, I almost decided to wait until it came to DVD before I would watch it.
That's where Lord Holy Ghost came in. There's me deciding to do what is most comfortable, or convenient, or pleasurable for your loyal movie critic, and then there's me being moved by Lord Holy Ghost.
So I ended up driving to see the movie. The two theatres chosen in the limited distribution speaks volumes about the way a motion picture seeks an audience today. Theatre one was an Art Theatre located in Midtown, Atlanta, the nexus of the homosexual presence in Atlanta and in Georgia and in the South and in the USA. The other theatre was at Phipps Plaza in the heart of Buckhead, the exclusive shopping mall for the Bloomingdales of Atlanta and Georgia and the South and the USA. So the movie was being screened for the homosexuals and the rich folks. Speak volumes?
I went with the rich folks because too many homosexuals recognize me in Georgia. I went last night, Thursday, a normally slow night. But it was veeeery slow for The Beaver. Only myself and one other couple--late middle agers who talked incessantly before The Beaver began and when I turned to stare at them, stared back as if they intended to keep talking. I bet they were Jews come to dis Mel Gibson, but I have no evidence except a feeling. Anyway they shut up when the movie began, letting me get into it.
I'm not going to tell you any more about the movie, except that Eric Rudolph's brother, when the whole world was looking for Eric Rudolph, got so enraged at how the feds would not leave his family alone when none of them--neither Eric's family nor the feds--had a clue where Eric was hiding, in the middle of an argument in the tool shed on the family farm with a group of federal agents cut off his hand with a power saw and threw it at the feds to give them their pound of flesh. True story.
The Beaver is not a true story like that. But it is a story that raises a lot of questions about whether a person who follows the leadership of Lord Holy Ghost is crazy like a man who follows the guidance of a beaver.
For a man who does the best he knows how to walk in the Spirit, I think it was maybe the best movie I've ever seen that shines some light on that subject. I hope that's why the audience gave it a standing ovation when it was screened at the Cannes Film Festival. But I doubt it: it has lots of feel good messages and nuances for an audience who has no sensitivity to the moving of Lord Holy Ghost to still like it for those reasons.
So no matter what you think about Lord Holy Ghost, you won't waste your time seeing the beaver.
Turns out their give-a-shit meters were on after all.