Ordinary People

Set in affluent suburban Illinois, the film follows the Jarrett family after the eldest son drowns in a boating accident. Conrad, the younger son, returns home from a hospital stay following a suicide attempt and begins seeing a psychiatrist. His father reaches toward him with anxious tenderness; his mother keeps a composed distance that admits no grief.

Redford, directing his first feature, drew praise for his control of the material and for performances built on restraint rather than display. Mary Tyler Moore, cast against her comic reputation, plays the mother as a study in poised refusal. The picture won four Academy Awards in 1981, including Best Picture and Best Director; Timothy Hutton took Supporting Actor for his first screen role.

For the clinician, the film is notable for its patient rendering of the consulting room. The sessions between Conrad and Dr. Berger show an alliance forming slowly, through testing, silence, and gradual trust. Around them the family holds a frozen grief, and survivor guilt runs beneath the son's symptoms. The mother marks its hardest question: what becomes of a household when one member cannot mourn.