I will try and get Bicycle Thieves and give it a watch.
It's on HBO Max.
Anyway, next up:
'Ordinary People' (1980), Directed by Robert Redford:
It was not hard for this film to resonate with me given the timing of me first watching it. I saw this in mid-2017 which was part of the worst one year span of my life. I don't want to go into every occurrence that made me fall into despair, but the two relevant ones were my parents divorcing and one of my best friends committing suicide a few months prior. Two similar things happen to Timothy Hutton's character in this film and needless to say, I related a lot to him and was pretty much inconsolable by the end of the movie. It might have been a mistake to watch it when I did, but that made its emotional content more palpable in the end, so I'm glad I did see it.
As for what it's about, if you don't know, it's basically about a family in picturesque upper-class suburbia dealing with the grief of the eldest son dying in a boat accident and how grief takes different forms. And that's what makes the movie so compelling because nobody goes about grieving in the same way, and sometimes that can cause further conflict and tension, particularly in a family. I've gone through similar circumstances, I would imagine that everyone has at one point or another. In this case, you have Donald Sutherland who tries to keep up a facade of positivity and aloofness, perhaps even bottling up his true feelings; there's the surviving, younger son, Timothy Hutton, who is contending with survivor's guilt and attempting to get over it with the help of a psychiatrist after attempting suicide and being committed; and perhaps most controversially, Mary Tyler Moore who lays the mom/wife and comes across as incredibly passive-aggressive and cold towards her son in regards to processing her grief. And I say she is "controversial" because one of the first things you'll hear about the film is that she is a huge b**** in it. While she does come across that way she isn't necessarily villainous or a bad person, there is a lot of nuance to her and in comparison her husband his approach might not actually be as positive as it seems either at times. As I said before, she is just dealing with what the rest of her family is in her own way, for better and worse. It's a real gripping drama sold well by the excellent actors and one hell of a good directing debut for someone who was mostly known for acting prior, Robert Redford. And I would hope that it's identifiable to everyone in some way or some form, because grief is indeed human and "ordinary" as the title suggests, no matter how idyllic your life may seem on the surface.
Two scenes always get me bawling: when Conrad has his cathartic, breakthrough moment with Dr. Berger, recognizing that he feels guilty about his brother's death, ...
"Are you really my friend?"
"I am. Count on it."
And, of course, the very end.
Such a beautiful movie, and such an effective tear-jerker.
That reminds me of certain dialogue from an episode of Wings:
Lowell: I remember the time I cried; I went downtown to see Ordinary People.
Roy: Yeah, that was a sad movie.
Lowell: What movie?
