"Talk to my hand"

Title: The Beaver

Year: 2011

Genre: Drama

Director: Jodie Foster

Writer: Kyle Killen

Runtime: 91min

Cast: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin

Produc.: Summit Entertainmet, Participant Media, Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ, Anonymous Content

Budget: $21 million approx.

In The Beaver, Walter Black (Mel Gibson) is a depressed man who after moving out of the house where he lived with his family finds a beaver puppet, which will use to communicate with people around him.

Walter, excellently played by Mel Gibson, suffers from severe depression, for which no help has been able to heal him. While the film does not reveal medical details, it is clear enough to understand that Walter´s psychological disorders are such that he is absolutely unable to carry out the role of a father. Hence, when Meredith gets him to leave them to live alone, the eldest son, Porter (Anton Yelchin), is pleased at the thought of not having to see more of this "loser."

Already on his own, a night that Walter just bought a few bottles of alcohol, he opens the trunk of his car, looks inside and decides to get rid of some things. Right there is a dumpster a few meters away. Walter throws some belongings there and that's when he meets a stuffed beaver. Curious finding that at first seems not to attract his attention, but then we see that the truth is quite different. Back again to his vehicle Walter provides the container, for only seconds later, going back to collect the puppet. Once in his hands, Walter looks into the beaver´s eyes with the expression of someone who wonders what could be doing a thing like that among so much filth.

In the next scene we see the magnitude of the pain felt by Walter, who unable to bear with the situation yields to drink while he whines, with a bottle in one hand and wearing the beaver in the other. But that's not all. Walter uses his tie to hang himself to the shower pipe. Except that given his weight, pipe and curtain fall with him in the bathtub, as if the bathroom were trying to say that suicide is not acceptable. His last alternative is to try something that cannot fail. Walter now, wearing the beaver (pipe and curtain to his neck) climbs the wall of his balcony... And suddenly, he hears the voice of "the beaver".

Much to the sorprise, Wlter staggers back, entering his bedroom to the stumbling, falling to the ground, taking the TV with him and ending up unconscious.

When, sometime later, Walter awakens, he will not behave in the same way.

Then, when Meredith goes to pick up Henry Black (Riley Thomas Stewart) to school, she is told that kid has already been taken by his father. Frightened, Meredith leads to his house to meet a man who communicates with her son through a puppet. Thus, a confused Meredith quickly gets from Walter a card that reads: "The person who gave you this card is under the care of a prewritten puppet, designed to create a psychological distance between himself and the negative aspects of his personality."

At first, living with a father/husband who communicates with the world through a talking teddy to some extent comes to be something peculiar, because for the first time in a long time Walter seems happy and is a funny guy. Except that appearances are deceiving.

As one follows the film, it can be seen how Walter has returned to work on par with everyone, but due to a puppet, even though scene by scene it seems to be his personal therapist, which is actually his way of distancing from the world. As for his beaver, so funny and friendly as well with his intellectual air and his British accent, it's amazing to think that it neither isn´t really even alive, nor is it one of the many performers of the movie. The problem is, however, that no human being can go through life talking through a puppet in the hand.

In The Beaver there are combine a very good photography along with Mel Gibson´s great acting (comedian, never before seen so sad), together with an excellent script, that cleverly shows how each member of the Black family processes and reacts to everything that it´s happening to their relative. This allows us to get in into the setup, with interest and curiosity regarding the internal conflicts of a troubled Walter Black.

My rating: 9/10

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