Beaver, The (Blu-ray) (2011)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Audio Commentary-Director Jodie Foster Deleted Scenes-With Optional Commentary from Jodie Foster Featurette-Making Of-Everything Is Going to be OK Featurette-PSA Whale Video
Rating
Year Of Production	2011
Running Time	90:59
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Ads Then Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Jodie Foster
Studio Distributor	Icon Entertainment	Starring	Mel Gibson Cherry Jones Jodie Foster Anton Yelchin Riley Thomas Stewart Zachary Booth
Case	Standard Blu-ray
RPI	$34.95	Music	Marcelo Zarvos

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	1080p
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

     By any empirical calculation the Jodie Foster directed film The Beaver was an abject failure. Opening to mixed reviews it eventually did nothing at the box office, earning back only a fraction of its budget. The reason for the failure at the box office is pretty obvious to all and sundry. The film was due to be released earlier in the year but had to be shelved due to be ongoing, very public, media problems surrounding star Mel Gibson. Gibson's recent brushes with the law, alcohol fuelled, his anti-Semitic comments and the violent dispute with his ex-girlfriend all came together in a blaze of bad publicity to make the film doomed from the start.

     He is not the only star who has drawn unwelcome attention to a film that producers and directors are earnestly trying to promote. Fellow Australian Russell Crowe, you may recall, entered into a relationship with co-star Meg Ryan which drew all the attention away from the film Proof of Life and infuriated director Taylor Hackford. Similarly, the very public meltdown (all staged it appears) from Joaquin Phoenix helped draw attention away from the small budget romance story Two Lovers.

     Director Jodie Foster lays no blame at the feet of Mel Gibson, for whom she has nothing but praise. In public comments she has suggested that the failure of the film at the US box office was due more to the inability of Americans to appreciate dramatic comedies. Who knows if she is right? The truth is that, on any count, The Beaver is a really dark comedy which feels more at home amongst independent film than as a collaboration from a couple of Hollywood heavyweights.

     It would have been nice to be in the pitching room when TV writer Kyle Killen described his script. The response to his plot outline, that the film concerned a depressed man who speaks through a beaver puppet, may well have been "Hey, great comedy!" There would have been an embarrassed pause before the writer pointed out that it is not a comedy. Well, not exactly.

     Mel Gibson plays Walter Black the CEO of a toy making company in New York state. Walter has taken over the reins of the company from his father and is slowly driving it into the ground. When we first meet him Walter is floating on an air bed in his swimming pool staring up at nothing. He is profoundly depressed and as the voice-over points out, a voice we later learn belongs to the beaver, he has tried everything to solve his depression. His long-suffering wife Meredith (Jodie Foster) is an engineer who designs rollercoasters (when was the last time you saw a film featuring a character with that job description?) who has reached the end of her tether. She has asked Walter to leave.

     That is not the greatest of losses for the Black household. He has lost touch with his children, the teenage Porter (Anton Yelchin) and the young Henry (Riley Thomas Stewart). Porter is an angsty teen with his own depression issues who earns a dollar on the side not by selling drugs but by writing assignments for his fellow schoolkids. Meanwhile Henry is a loner at school who is friendless and bullied. Both kids seem to be on the path trod by their father towards depression and failure.

     Kicked out of home Walter packs his belongings into his car and moves into a motel. Throwing out some old stuff into a dumpster he sees a mangy, pathetic beaver puppet and on a whim takes it with him. That night, drunk and completely lost, he unsuccessfully attempt suicide. That's when he puts on the beaver puppet and begins to talk through his "furry friend". The beaver becomes an extension of Walter and speaks in the best Ray Winstone cockney accent that Mel Gibson can manage. He gives Meredith and work colleagues a card explaining, falsely, that the beaver is part of this prescription psychiatric treatment. Unsurprisingly, people have difficulty relating to the new Walter, confident and happy though he is.

     Meanwhile, Porter is approached at school by Norah (Jennifer Lawrence), the high school valedictorian with a strange request. Norah has to deliver her graduation speech and realises that, whilst she is intelligent and successful in all her subjects, she really doesn't know herself enough to be able to script the speech. Like Porter she has some dark family secrets. The pair quickly realise that they may just be made for each other if they could only shed their baggage. The question for Walter and Meredith and this troubled family is whether through the beaver they can achieve unity. The bigger question is whether they can become normal and whether "normal" means with or without the beaver.

     The Beaver is a complex and sometimes bracing film that not surprisingly failed to find a place at the box office. It is not quite like any recent film and has an uncomfortable tone of drama mixed with comedic elements. At the heart of it is a man’s serious, life crippling depression yet there is no doubt that it is funny whenever the beaver, expertly puppeteered by Gibson, interacts with the wide world. The closest comparison is probably Lars and the Real Girl in which Ryan Gosling played a shy young man who fell in love with a blow-up doll and all his friends just had to deal with it or walk away.

     Mel Gibson gives the performance of his life as Walter considering that the real person behind the puppet can barely speak. The puppet is ugly, mangy looking, but with a degree of life in its eyes and big teeth that make it endearing and frightening in equal measures. In a memorable scene Walter and Meredith go out for their anniversary dinner. Walter has made a tiny tux for the beaver. Meredith insists, seeking normalcy, that he remove the puppet for the dinner. Without the puppet he lapses back into strangulated silence. Foster is also strong as the woman trying to keep a family together in the best possible shape and the young actors Yelchin and Lawrence are good as complicated teenagers. Though Foster may well regret the choice of Gibson as her lead, due to the controversy, it is a relief for viewers that original choices Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell were not finally cast. Though both can turn out great performances the film would undoubtedly have been forced to march towards comedy had these stars being cast.

     The Beaver is an examination of depression and the challenges this creates in the family dynamic. A theme running through it is that sometimes being "not all right" is part of the life experience and that depression is not whisked away with a course of medication. It is no masterpiece but the film did deserve a better treatment at the box office. Those who can forget the controversy and concentrate on the film itself will find this to be a quality experience.

Video

    The Beaver was shot on 35mm film and shown at cinemas at a 2.35:1 aspect ratio of. That ratio has been preserved for this Blu-ray release.

     This is a good quality Blu-ray transfer without being exceptional. The flesh times are accurate as well as the "beaver fur" tones! Colours are not particularly bright but in keeping with the whole movie. There are no technical problems with the transfer itself

     There is only one minor annoyance which I suspect derives from the original film. The focus is quite tight and as Gibson holds the puppet slightly forward there is often a softness when the puppet is talking as it is slightly out of focus. As said, this appears to derive from the film rather than transfer.

     There are subtitles in English for the hard of hearing.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     The Beaver carries one soundtrack being an English DTS HD Master Audio 5.1 high-definition soundtrack.

     This is a strong audio track which matches the film. Therefore, there was not a great deal of amazing surround noise or the sub woofer engaged on a regular basis. It is a fairly subtle truck which relies principally on the dialogue, which is clear they easy to understand throughout. Music is by Marcelo Zarvos who provides a somewhat jaunty score to the offbeat dramatic/comedic action.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

     There are a small selection of extras with this Blu-ray release.

Audio Commentary - Director Jodie Foster

     Director Jodie Foster provides a commentary track. Those who like their tracks immediate and full of drive and enthusiasm will perhaps find her commentary a little dry. She is not constantly speaking. The commentary deals with the themes of the work and the difficulty of bringing off the tonal balance of the film. It is worth a listen although one would imagine, on the strength of this track, that Foster is the type of director who will speak quietly to cast and crew members in a corner rather than stand on a box with a megaphone!

Everything Is Going To Be OK (12.06)

     The making of featurette is really a studio puff-piece with just a little extra to make it interesting. Consisting of interviews with the key cast members and one of the producers they talk about the joys and challenges of working on the project interspersed with footage from the film. It is worth watching for some of the behind-the-scenes footage

Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary by Jodie Foster (4.52)

     There are two deleted scenes available to view with optional commentary by Jodie Foster. One, where Meredith talks by Skype with some friends in Japan, is entirely new scene. Foster explains that she enjoyed the scene because it was funny, which was also the reason why it had to be deleted. A key element of the scene is Meredith raising the question-if she embraces Walter and the beaver as one will it always be the way they interact. Will be puppet always be a part of their lives?

     The second scene is really an extension of a scene between Walter and his 2IC at the toy company Cherry Jones in which to prove that the beaver is real he asks her to try to pull it off his arm.

     The scenes would have been interesting in the final film.

PSA Whale Video

     This is a short Public Service Announcement about dealing with depression featuring work accompanied by the song Whale, by Yellow Ostrich. In its short time it is quite a moving exhortation to those suffering from depression that they are not alone and that there is help available.

  The feature set is the same for the Region A release except for the PSA announcement.

     It has been impossible to talk about The Beaver without talking about the effect on it of the private life of Mel Gibson. That's a pity for the film is quite an engaging look at the problems of depression in a family setting.

     The Blu-ray quality is of good quality without the excellent.

     There are semi-interesting extras thrown in to complete the package.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall