I have seen the film “Beginners” twice in the past 24 hours, and recommend it to all who desire, but fear love.

Beginners is about how we are all beginners when it comes to finding love again, and dying.  It’s about that voice in your head that says, “Things never work out,” and that other one that still believes in magic.  It’s about never giving up the hope that you will someday feel real, loved and lovable.  It is about the endless dance between hope and fear, and it’s also about not settling for less.

Beautifully constructed and filled with surprises, irony, and subtle humor, “Beginnings” tells the parallel story of Oliver, a graphic artist in his 40s, who wants to believe in love, but instead continues to write “The history of sadness.”

Oliver has recently watched his father die of cancer, a father who only embraced the fact that he was born gay at age 75, but did finally embrace everything in himself before he died.

This comedy/drama is really about how deeply funny and transformative life can be if you ever have the courage to risk embracing it fully.  It’s also about those who have spent a lifetime leaving relationships, because they “don’t believe it’s going to work… so I make sure it doesn’t.”  It’s about whether it is better to settle for a giraffe when you’ve been waiting your whole life to find a lion.

Most importantly, this film is about becoming real and authentic at some point in life:

“What is REAL?” asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day… “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” 

“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.  “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, or bit by bit?”  “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become.  It takes a long time.  That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. 

“Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby.  But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are REAL you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand… once you are REAL, you cannot ever become unreal again.   It lasts for always.”    – Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

P.S. I’m going as Sigmund Freud to my very next costume party!