I adore this powerful film. In fact, as much as I rate Martin Scorsese and think he probably deserved to get a Best Director Academy Award that year for Raging Bull, I'd still give the Best Picture Oscar to Ordinary People, which is truly touching and poignant in a way that perhaps the more artistically accomplished but relatively remote Raging Bull isn't.
However, the ending does leave me feeling rather conflicted. On one hand, I find Conrad and Calvin's reconciliation, and Beth's fundamental inability to break free of her icy shell and move on, as they are attempting to do, incredibly touching and bittersweet. On the other hand, I sometimes wonder if there is a hint of misogyny in the depiction of this family, with Beth, who I admittedly find to be a very credible, very convincing character, superbly rendered by the late Mary Tyler Moore, almost cast, by default, as the film's de facto villain whose emotional frigidity is implied to be the factor that is preventing the rest of the family progress healthily with their grief (and thus, must be cast from the family home in order for Conrad and Calvin to somehow flourish).
Of course, we should all be sophisticated enough to process family dramas in which the main female character is presented as the most antagonistic individual, without it coming across as some form of sexism. In real life, people are flawed and complex irrespective of gender, race and sexuality, and it would be very reductive and shallow to always end up with a scenario in which only old white men were the de facto villains, and, besides, the novel from which Ordinary People was adapted was authored by Judith Guest, a woman. But, like I say, the film's resolution, whilst undeniably powerful and incisive, does leave me somewhat conflicted.
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