Though Robert Redford’s Ordinary People beat Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull at the 53rd Academy Awards, both films were knockouts in their own right. Many now consider Scorsese’s searing, boisterous boxing drama one of the director’s best — a brutal, black-and-white symphony of rage and violence. Ordinary People, based on Judith Guest’s novel of the same name, is a much quieter affair. Set in muted earth tones in the North Chicago suburbs, Ordinary People focuses on an affluent Waspy family grappling with the death of one son and suicide attempt of the other, who blames himself for his brother’s accidental death. It’s a tragic but not entirely bleak film, one that despite Redford’s acclaim and gravitas seemed like an odd choice for his directorial debut. In fact, what may be most remarkable about Ordinary People is how it shifted the “Robert Redford” the public knew as a Hollywood golden boy. Redford, who died in his sleep on September 16, was the portrait of a California everyman: golden-haired, handsome, charismatic, and often funny. While Ordinary People is not without humor, it’s the humor of repression: Part of what we laugh at, when we laugh, is what the characters cannot bring themselves to say.
Redford’s shift to directing 20 years into his career was an attempt to reset the narrative that formed around his star persona. “I wouldn’t mind moving away from the role of a, uh, glamour figure of cartoon proportions. I’ve been grateful for a lot of it — no complaints — but I have felt reduced,” he said at the time, adding later that he’d been looking for material about “behavior and feelings.” Ordinary People’s greatness lies in its central quartet: Conrad (Timothy Hutton), the son who lived; Calvin (Donald Sutherland) and Beth (Mary Tyler Moore); and Conrad’s psychiatrist, Dr. Berger (Judd Hirsch). As Conrad’s father, Calvin is warm and overeager, desperate to see his remaining son move through his grief. As Calvin, Sutherland is encouraging and engaged, smiling even when a scene does not call for it in hopes the gesture will be contagious. Moore’s Beth, on the other hand, is steely and passive-aggressive, a textbook example of narcissism, and cannot bring herself to grapple with her grief and instead curdles from the inside out. Moore was a beloved comedian, but in a part this dramatic and removed, she’s almost terrifying. Even with its Hollywood cast, it’s a very Midwest film — familial, plaintive, and slow.
After it took home six Academy Awards, Ordinary People’s reputation as weepy Oscar bait calcified with its straightforward trauma plot and handsome and beloved director. But most essentially, Redford knew his place did not exist inside the film, as with other actor-directors (like Kevin Costner or even Bradley Cooper), but rather on its margins. The crux of the film’s spark and charm also come from Dr. Berger, who infuses the film with a certain Jewish directness otherwise absent from Conrad’s life. Berger does not sugarcoat Conrad’s trauma, but he does not baby it either — asking prying questions in rapid-fire succession as he smokes a cigarette. “I gotta tell you,” Conrad says to Berger at their first meeting, “I don’t like being here. I don’t like being here at all.” Berger stares with him, barely blinking. “Mm-hmm,” Berger eventually says. Redford plays these scenes in long, static shots, letting the silence push the tension. Redford the actor could hold the audience’s attention through even the most mundane tasks — see: All the President’s Men, in which being on the phone looks thrilling — but Redford the director allowed discomfort to permeate, pushing the audience’s expectation of release.
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Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Conrad’s love interest, Jeannine, nearly turned down the part to start at Juilliard. “I was just this young kid, and [Redford’s] attitude was, Life is as important as the movies, and he was right,” she explained. Ordinary People is just a movie, but it is infused with life even at its most barren and miserable. As Conrad starts to improve, slowly, over the course of the film, it feels almost magical: the spark of joy, an odd laugh. “I’d like to thank our wonderful director, Robert Redford,” the then-20-year-old Hutton said in his Oscar speech before leading the audience in a round of applause almost longer than the one he got for winning. Hutton kept his comments to Redford brief: “I love ya,” he said, with a big grin. Later in the night when Redford won Best Director (an award presented — somewhat incredibly — by King Vidor and George Cukor), he said, “I really am grateful for the trust I received from a terrific cast: Mary, Donald, Tim, Judd, Liz,” as the camera hovered to show the tears glistening in Moore’s eyes before he returned Hutton’s sentiments. “I love them,” he said of his cast, “and I appreciate their love too.” Redford paid that love forward again and again — on- and off-screen, to his casts and co-stars and collaborators, and most notably through his work founding the Sundance Film Festival. His support of independent film launched the careers of hundreds of artists, many of whom specialize in movies that are, like Ordinary People, about “behavior and feelings.”
