Mad Mel, beyond Blunderdome. Where’d it all go wrong, eh? From charming A-list movie star and multi-award winning director of challenging historical epics to anti-Semitic alcoholic sexist who allegedly beats up his girlfriend.
Perhaps that’s why his performance in The Beaver, a dramedy about a man’s struggles with marionettes and melancholia, directed by long time friend Jodie Foster, is all the more poignant. Opening with a sweeping prelude through the life of Walter Black, a depressed toy company CEO having tried every method from drumming to medication to self-flagellation to ease his emotional burdens, we see Mel Gibson, a man with all the weight of the world on his shoulders, floating silently in a swimming pool, arms outstretched in Christ-like anguish. A cockney voice, later revealed to be the Beaver himself, tells us of his troubles, how he doesn’t want to be like this, how his family can no longer cope, how he’s become a joke professionally, how alcohol offers his only respite. It’s hard to draw the lines between fact and fiction. Well, at least until Walter starts communicating solely through the medium of a plush puppet on his left arm.
