Watch: The Beaver

• Director: Jodie Foster
• Writers: Kyle Killen
• Stars: Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster and Anton Yelchin
• Release Date: May 2011
• Run Time: 91 min
• Genre: Drama

He’s here to save Walter’s life.

One of the best actresses of her generation, Jodie Foster makes that rare return to the director’s chair to helm The Beaver, which had actually gained more traction for its lead actor Mel Gibson having self destructed the last several months in what has been painted as a disastrous personal life with drunken rants and threats turned into physical violence. There’s something of a cruel irony in all of this, since Mel’s character in The Beaver is a manic depressive, who created this imaginary, titular character out of a puppet to take over the thought and motor functions of his life, in an effort to try and be normal, only for this make belief to slowly consume him.

Written by Kyle Killen, The Beaver has two main narrative threads running in the story that revolves around the Black family, where little kid Henry (Riley Thomas Stewart) has to endure a horrid, bullied time in school that got glossed over soon enough, mom Meredith (Jodie Foster herself) having to finally find the strength to boot husband Walter (Mel Gibson) out of the house before his blasé negativity permeates to everyone around him, and oldest kid Porter (Anton Yelchin) who coasts through his life being extremely embarrassed with his estranged father, as well as making a covert reputation for himself in school as the go-to person for essay assignments to be done for a fee, written so well since they’re passed off convincingly as someone else’s own work, which would be what I felt as someone who is extremely sensitive, expressive and emphatic.