“Beaver”heart

by Thomas M. Pender

Poor Mel Gibson.  Just 15 years ago, he was a king.  Braveheart had conquered the box office and was conquering the video market, and he was the professional and personable darling of the media.  Everyone loved Mel.  Then, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto got the public scratching their heads.  Next, a handful of boneheaded public displays and comments happened, and Mel became a Hollywood cautionary tale.  He was hardly seen in the media at all, except for the occasional mugshot.  His spotlight fizzled.

Thus, I was very skittish when I saw him on the cover of a DVD entitled The Beaver.  The same cover featured Jodie Foster, who never ceases who bore me, and . . . a hand puppet of a beaver.  Color me afraid.  Yet, the description of the film made me at least wonder what was in the film.  Gibson was portraying a businessman who, upon reaching the bottom of a deep depression, channels his personality through the aforementioned hand puppet.  This plot could be treated many different ways: as a flat-out silly comedy, as a heartwarming dramatic comedy, as a creepy haunting tale, or as a strict dramatic portrayal of someone with a mental condition.

I think I was expecting the dramatic portrayal least of all, yet that’s what Gibson delivers here.  He plays a man who, upon failing in two suicide attempts, discovers the hand puppet by chance and brings it along with him.  In no time, the puppet is on his hand, and he sees it as an avenue to channel his trapped personality through.  This has been done many ways on stage and screen, with possibly the most famous being Cyrano de Bergerac.  The puppet’s persona, which just so happens to be that of a British-speaking beaver, summons Gibson from his sleep the next morning, and announces that he (the beaver puppet) is going to start making some major changes in his (Mel Gibson’s) life.

The first thing that impressed me was the “low-tech” take on this puppet.  It could have come to life with the help of special effects, high-paid animators and a celebrity cartoon voiceover.  Yet here, it is simply an inanimate puppet on Mel Gibson’s left hand, and it is Gibson who is voicing the puppet.  When I say “voicing,” I don’t mean that we hear the puppet’s voice and it happens to be the star’s voice.  I mean that when the puppet talks, Gibson himself is actually talking.  While he maneuvers the puppet’s mouth, he speaks, just as he would if he was putting on a puppet show.  I dug the simplicity of it, plus it really added to the mental illness issues of the film.

Foster is cardboard as ever, but I am continuously entertained by Anton (Star Trek) Yelchin, who plays Gibson’s oldest child.  He has done comedy well, and here, does a fine job as a son who is tired of dealing with his father’s problems, and just wishes he’d go away.  He has his own hatful of problems in high school, and feels that with his father’s problems and his mother’s distractions, he has no one to turn to with his issues.  Again, this character and situation could have been written and portrayed in many fashions, but Yelchin does a fine job with straight drama.

Filmed in 2009, The Beaver wasn’t released until this year, due to Gibson’s aforementioned public issues around the time of the original 2009 release date.  It did incredibly modest business at the box office, and I suspect it’s because I’m not the only one who’s fed up with Mel.  Still, I took a chance and I’m recommending others do, as well.  This is the best acting job Gibson has delivered since 2002’s We Were Soldiers, and the film in general is well worth your time.  No one knows if the star’s personal problems are over, but through a hand puppet and this one performance, I found I could at least forgive his cinematic slip-ups.