Mike Mills (right) on the set of Beginners with Ewan McGregor. Photograph:Focus/Everett/RexOne could be forgiven for associating director Mike Mills with the word "quirky". His debut film Thumbsucker was a little-seen critically acclaimed tale of a young appendage-obsessed man, complete with a cornucopia of odd characters (including Keanu Reeves as a creepy, philosophical dentist). His music video resume (Moby, Yoko Ono and Air) practically demands the word's use. Plus, he's married to Miranda July, she of "quirky indie darling" film Me And You And Everyone We Know. But mention the "Q" word, and it's like a red rag to a very chilled out, straggly-bearded, bull.
BeginnersProduction year: 2010Country: USADirectors: Mike MillsCast: Bill Oberst Jr., Christopher Plummer, Ewan McGregor, Goran Visnjic, Mary Page Keller, Melanie LaurentMore on this film"I hate it, I really do," he says. "I hate all those words – quirky, indie, and dysfunctional. It's been turned into a brand and it shouldn't be. And they're never positive, these words. They're always used like 'another fucking quirky indie film about dysfunction'. It implies a cliche or a rut and yet all humans are dysfunctional to some degree, whether it's the raging alcoholic or the guy who's just a bit self-defeating. Humans are vulnerable, messy little animals and that's normal. And all I want to do is make a space for that in my films."
In that, he has certainly succeeded. In the first few minutes of Thumbsucker, the confused and miserable character of Audrey, played by Tilda Swinton, tells her son desperately, "I have to find something distinctive about myself." It's a perfect line, that sums up not only the dearest wish of every character in the film (and some might say those outside it), but also one that lays the foundations for the film we're discussing now, Beginners. With its palpable melancholy and infinite sadness, Beginners is no story of teenage angst manifested weirdly. It is the story of how Mike Mills's dad came dancing out of the closet at the age of 75, before dying from cancer five sex-filled years later.
"My mom had just died, which had been incredibly traumatic," Mills recalls, "and a few months later, my dad said to me: 'Tomorrow I'm going to throw you a ball and I want you to catch it.' I had no idea what he was going to say. Seriously, I thought he wanted to move in with me; he still couldn't really work out how to defrost food. So when it turned out he'd been gay for the last 50 years, I was hugely relieved! And the fact that he wanted to actually do something about it was amazing; it proved he hadn't given up on life."
The film is less an autobiography, and more of a deeply personal, yet widely universal portrait, utilising Mills's background as a graphic designer and video director to create a film that manages to say nothing, and everything at the same time. Christopher Plummer is jaw-dropping as the newly gay pensioner, his unstoppable lust for life outweighed only by his equally indestructible terminal cancer. A subtle Ewan McGregor plays Oliver, a Mills-type taciturn graphic designer who struggles less with his father's out-and-proudness, and more with his own inability to conduct intimate relationships with the same amount of joie de vivre as his dying father.
"I wanted to make a film that really concentrates on people's specific stories," says Mills. "In the UK there's a tradition of realism and humour and domestic storylines, Mike Leigh-style. What's more real than your dad coming out at 75, and wanting not just to come out, but also to actually go and be gay, go and have lots of sex? And just wanting to fucking talk about it all the time! And I didn't really want to hear about it; not because he's having sex with men, obviously – I went to art school in New York, I have a lot of gay men in my life – but because he's my 75-year-old dad and it's weird! He had this one phrase that he liked to say which weirded me out, which was trying to say, "Son, I'm horny!" He'd put it a lot nicer, but that's basically what it was. And I'd be like, "La la la, not listening!" Children are always mildly repulsed by their parents having sex and now all my formerly sweet, appropriate and low-key dad wanted to talk about was gay gay gay gay gay gay gay! Occasionally, I'd say, 'Could we please, please talk about something else?' and he'd laugh and change the subject and then 10 minutes later he'd be talking about sex all over again."
Photograph: Matt Carr/Getty Geriatric sex aside, there is something reassuringly Leigh-esque about Mills's film-making style; characters steeped in melancholy, confusion and self-wrought misery, but with a deep vein of humour and love running through. While Leigh employs a style of so-called kitchen-sink realism so gritty you're spitting gravel for a week however, Mills – while clearly paying homage – prefers a more effervescent approach. Hence the Godard-influenced vignette-style layering of authentic photos that place the film's events firmly into their historical context, a choppy narrative timeline and, rather more surreally, a talking dog. Yes, for a man who dislikes the concept of "quirk", Mills certainly takes it by the hand and gives it a friendly squeeze. "I don't think that's weird," he counters. "Everyone talks to their dog, and then in your mind the dog talks back. A talking dog can provide the words that a stunted protagonist finds difficult to muster."
Like Leigh, love and relationships play a huge part in Mills's narrative, as fans will remember from his warmly observational portrait of a real-life California couple chattering over the melody for his video to Air's All I Need. And just like Leigh with Vera Drake, Mills is equally interested in a portrait that drenches the deeply personal with the wider political and social context that defines it. Here, it's the quashed lives of gay men born before the second world war who, like his father, were forced to hide their sexuality all their lives. And it is in utilising this very real story, told with a deeply personal twist, that Mills intends to move from that annoyingly reductive indie pool, into something that resembles whatever "mainstream" is.
"Well, I don't care for traditional narrative," he says dismissively. "What's important is historical consciousness, as any irritating Marxist student will attest to. It's about how we came to be here, how things got to be here. Life doesn't just happen; it's constructed through the history of power. And that's something I am interested in and so is the art world: a world that's trying to engage socially, with a leftist slant, to work out how we got here."
Which would all be fine, I venture, except that few people hanker after a big tub of popcorn on a Saturday night to watch a socially engaged, left-slanting film.
Mills respectfully disagrees: "I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details is how you get the big, big audiences; by talking about your relationships, or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people. I don't know what it's like to be a gay man in the 1950s but I love Howl because I connect via the specificity of Ginsberg's rage and via the historical moment it was born from. And that's what I want to do, how I want to get a bigger audience."
Sonic Youth's cover for Washing Machine, designed by Mike Mills. Despite his so-called indie credentials, Mills really does want those big, big audiences. With a background in advertorial design, he's a strange blend of hippy capitalism, a man who believes Starbucks is organised vandalism, but unapologetically makes Nike ads to pay the mortgage.
"I do corporate work to make a living, sure," he says. "But unlike a lot of artists, I really love the public sphere. I think you can reach a lot more people on a huge billboard than in some little gallery – or even a big gallery."
An early Mills project was the cover of Sonic Youth's Washing Machine, an album that came out in 1995 just as the band, fresh from headlining Lollapalooza, faced fan accusations of selling out and going mainstream. The cover is a picture (taken by Kim Gordon) of two fans wearing "merch" sporting the band name plastered on to a washing machine graphic; in Mills's opinion, it's a perfect example of an organic concept, a way for the band to be a part of the wider discussion. As far as the frankly outdated idea of "selling out" goes, former indie darling Mills is on board, oars at the ready, gentle whimsy left firmly at the door like a bad teenage habit (thumb sucking, anyone?).
"Look, it's great getting good reviews but let's face it, nobody saw Thumbsucker!" he says with a sudden grin. "I want to be part of the discussion, too. I want to engage. I don't want to be a niche film-maker. I don't want to be diminutised by 'quirky'. Quirky is not a genre. Indie is not a genre."
Mills pauses a beat, and then smiles: "I do think I can get those big audiences, I really do. But you know, Beginners took five years to make! I'm never going to make money from my films. But money isn't the most important thing and that's kind of liberating."
A beautiful film about human relationships made by a modern auteur who doesn't care about money? Forgive me, but for a man with his eyes on a Hollywood-sized audience, that's definitely still a little quirky.
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