Sony Pictures Classics releases the film in select theaters on Friday, November 25. Florian Zeller doesn't make movies, he makes birth control at 24 fps. Adapted from his play of the same name, and adding rich cinematic dimensions to the text's witty structural conceit, Zeller's brilliant and unrelenting "The Father" shook people by how it simultaneously conveyed the confusion of suffering from dementia and the anguish of losing a loved one. a loved one. one to that. The follow-up to it, which similarly originated on the stage, makes the devastating debut of the writer-director feel like a "Paddington" movie by comparison.
Lacking the puzzle-box magic that enabled Zeller's previous film to salvage deep traces of humanity from the onslaught of his mental illness, "The Son" delivers a stark, straightforward family portrait that emphasizes the meaninglessness of depression. through the simplicity of its plot. Is it an unusually honest depiction of parental helplessness in the face of a devastatingly cruel disease, one that can bring some comfort to people who have been cursed to live with unfathomable guilt for something they had little power to prevent? Despite some major gadgetry and a complete lack of medication, I'm afraid it is.
Director: Florian Zeller
Writers: Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller
Stars: Vanessa Kirby, Hugh Jackman, Anthony Hopkins
At the same time, though, "The Son" is also so pornographic in its pain that it can't help but feel like an argument against having children in the first place. What joy could be worth such agony? How are parents supposed to accept that loving their children isn't always enough to save them? These are brave, valid questions for any movie: "It's better to see something in a dark light than not at all," one character rightly insists, but Zeller frames them in such a clumsy and forced way that love ends up looking more like a burden than a reason to live.
Excellent in a film that makes great use of his groomed vulnerability, Hugh Jackman plays Peter, the kind of father many dads in the audience can relate to a little too much. I mean, who among us hasn't divorced Laura Dern, remarried the much younger Vanessa Kirby, and raised a baby with her in the spacious Manhattan apartment we pay for with our elite lawyer's salary? ? No, Peter is so uncomfortably familiar because of his supposed determination to give his teenage son, a memory of the Kate years, all the love his own father never showed him.
Easier said than done. In fact, we feel that Peter's "failure" with Nicholas may have influenced his decision to create a new family and start from scratch. Played by Zen McGrath, a young newcomer stranded in the role of a recessive non-character who seems more like a generic archetype of teen depression than his own human, 17-year-old Nicholas is no longer the same wide-eyed package. of joy that Peter so fondly remembers raising as a child. He's been sulking in his room, skipping school every day for the past month and scaring Kate to the point where she insists she move in with Peter, Beth, and baby Theo for a time.
The situation doesn't exactly improve with the change of scenery. It's bad enough for Peter that Nicholas is still down and making Beth nervous with her benign incel energy. We suspect this isn't the kind of movie to be filled with "We need to talk about Kevin," even if it turns out to be difficult. relax after that errant mention of an antique rifle in act one, but worst of all is how living with his eldest son forces Peter to face his own guilt and feel the strain of being father and son at the same time. weather.
Even at its most bland, "The Son" resonates with uncomfortable truths both big and small. Infusing the role with just enough clueless conceit to make Peter look like a life-size Gregory Peck, Jackman extracts real tragedy from his character's myopic logical approach to an illogical problem.
Many of the film's early scenes are rich in the frustration of a father trying to decipher his son's mindset from the hieroglyphics of slamming doors and muttered conversations. Peter assumes that Nicholas's depression must have something to do with his love life and doesn't know where to turn after that; For all the icy severity of Zeller and Christopher Hampton's script, no film has more effectively dramatized how parents rely on their children's schoolwork as a measure of their own success.
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