Beginners

This is a film that seems destined to win an Oscar. That's because Christopher Plummer is riding a streak of award ceremony wins for Best Supporting Actor that has that old sense of inevitability about it. More on this later.
The film actually belongs to Ewan MacGregor as a Los Angeles artist/designer who has recently lost his Dad (Plummer) to cancer. In the wake of his grief, he has started a relationship with a French actress, played oddly enough by a French actress, named Melanie Laurent. But he is working through some burdensome grief and guilt and self-reflection and that complicates his new relationship.
The story is told in flashback both of his childhood and the last stages of his father's battle with disease. Plummer's character has come out of the closet at age seventy-five after his wife's death and the disease seems arbitrary and cruel now that he is finally living a life true to himself. His gay life is happy and active, if a bit confusing to his son who must now take a second look at his own upbringing in the light of new information.
I thought this was a film about a father and son coming to terms with who they really are. Maybe I was mislead (the talk was all about Plummer's out-of-the closet subplot, but that isn't it at all). This is MacGregor's movie, a love story underscored by a battle with grief. And the tone is not light or amusing, that's for sure. This is a film with an undercurrent of pervasive sadness. It is sometimes quirky, with odd voice over montages, and sometimes fragmented (a result of cutting back and forth between three separate time frames). It makes "Beginners" an unusual and melancholy film, but one worth seeing.
Now, about Christopher Plummer as this year's anointed Oscar frontrunner, it fascinates me why some films or performances get so much traction come awards time.
Plummer does a fine job, certainly worth considering, but really there isn't anything all that compelling about the work, not that would place it as an overwhelming frontrunner. If he wins, it will be because of an accumulation of accomplishments over a distinguished career. But really, is this the film that should come to mind when you think of Plummer's work? Not so much. If he does win, he'll fall into the same category as Pacino whose Oscar for "Scent of a Woman" should actually say "....but we really mean "The Godfather" and "Serpico" and "Scarface" etc. Ahhh, the eccentricities of award season.