Skip to main content
Filmarian
All films
Poster for Ordinary People
Sign in to rateBe the first to rate
+ write a review
Released
1980 · FILM

Ordinary People

A grieving teenager struggles to survive his own suicidal thoughts while navigating a family's painful silence after tragedy, forcing him and his parents to confront the fragile bonds that hold them together.

“Everything is in its proper place... except the past.”

Directed by
Robert Redford
Written by
Judith Guest, Alvin Sargent
Rated
MPA · R
Runtime
124 min
Drama
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

Beth, Calvin, and their son Conrad are dealing with the aftermath of the death of their other son. Conrad is overwhelmed by grief and guilt, leading him to attempt suicide. He is currently undergoing therapy. Beth had always favored his late brother and is struggling to provide support to Conrad. Calvin finds himself caught between the two, striving to maintain family unity.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

Related titles

No curated related titles yet. Use the edit affordance to add "More from this director", "Same franchise", or "Adaptation source material" entries — every change goes through the wiki review queue.

How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 18

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Jeff KanewShot by John Bailey

Box Office

1980 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 9.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$54.8M

Budget$6.0M
Worldwide gross$54.8M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Eine ganz normale Familiede
  • Des gens comme les autresfr
  • Gente comuneit

Community tags

Be the first to tag this page — tags appear right away. Try a theme, capability, or subject (e.g. WWII, heist, slow burn, time travel, A24).