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The Son Spreads Itself Too Thin


I don’t think Florian Zeller expected his film adaptation of The Father to be so successful. Sure he had the prestige writing partnership of Christopher Hampton and a cast led by great talents like Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman. But it’s a small movie, confined to a fairly simple setting, and though it incorporates some vivid technical proficiency, it’s not flashy at all in this. I suspect the enormous acclaim came as a shock, to say nothing of the Oscar wins for his and Hampton’s screenplay and Hopkins’ devastating performance. But he welcomed it, and on winning his Oscar confirmed that he was working on an adaptation of his spiritual sequel play The Son (for whatever reason passing over The Mother which was produced between the two). Like The Father, The Son is a family drama that explores a relationship tested by a severe ailment. Unlike The Father though, it is not in any way interesting.
A film much more expensive and straightforward in its’ artistic approach, The Son revolves around the depression and suicidal tendencies of a teen called Nicholas (Zen McGrath), sent from the home of his burnt-out artist mother Kate (Laura Dern) to live with his Manhattan businessman dad Peter (Hugh Jackman), who has just had a child with Beth (Vanessa Kirby), the younger woman he left Kate for and which is implied to be the source of Nicholas’ trauma. Essentially, the film follows Peter’s attempts to reconnect with Nicholas and steer him away from his deceptive and self-destructive impulses.
Once again, Zeller is exploring some intensely difficult subject matter within the frame of this family drama -arguably more materially upsetting than the focus of The Father. And yet it’s nowhere near as heavy, in part because unlike that film -which was so unique and fascinating for choosing the perspective of the man suffering- here it is filtered through the point-of-view of the father witnessing (or hearing about) his son’s problems. And that’s nowhere near as compelling. The plot invests so much in Peter’s character that it can’t deliver on, his ambitions to join a political campaign -sidetracked by his needing to care for his son; happy flashbacks to a holiday years prior when he and Kate and Nicholas were together. But then the movie never reckons with the impact of his relationship with Beth -we know the effect it had on Nicholas, an implied effect it had on Kate, but there’s no reflection on Peter’s part. On the one hand, Peter is under no obligation to explain himself and his choices here, some years after the break-up took place -he and Beth appear to have a very healthy relationship, as he also has with Kate. But there is a narrative need to interrogate that if the movie is to honestly portray Peter’s perspective on what his son is going though, yet neither he nor the film is willing to broach the topic.
Although it could just be that Zeller and Hampton don’t know how. This movie is required to be more frank about its’ subject than The Father, and this is a weakness as it reveals how Zeller and Hampton aren’t equipped to have a serious discussion on teen mental health and suicidal tendencies. Centring Peter allows for a buffer on this, as he’s not expected to understand either, but still there’s a lot of reductionism at play, and every time Nicholas is made to articulate his feelings it comes out as a series of generalizations or avoidance tactics. The scenes between him and Peter, the intended cornerstone of the piece, are the worst for this -as each seems to embody a stereotype of a particular position more than a real person. It’s quite clear that Zeller and Hampton have no firsthand experience with the reality of this material.
That might be the critical distinction between The Son and the movie it most reminds me of, a movie I haven’t thought about in years: Beautiful Boy, the 2018 film about a father and son struggling through the son’s issues with addiction. It may not be remembered for much more than its’ title, but it was a far more believable, far more touching illustration of this kind of difficult paternal relationship. Unlike The Son, it is told from both angles and with a tangible connection to truth that this film simply doesn’t have -you feel the weight of the sorrow there, it isn’t in any way a prop. And it should go without saying that Zen McGrath is no Timothée Chalamet, but Hugh Jackman is somehow no Steve Carrell either.
For whatever reason, Jackman does not work in this movie. As much as he gives, as highly as he emotes, it simply fails to generate genuine pathos. A part of this does rest in the script and how poorly the character’s personality and motivations come across, but Jackman’s own choices often feel forced for dramatic tension. In several scenes, he’s putting way more in and in broader strokes than is necessary. He’s charismatic here and there, but that also works against the performance, as he struggles to get a handle on Peter’s complexes, which include unresolved daddy issues of his own, and how to express them. It’s a performance that goes hard without direction and consequently falls flat, and the same could be said of McGrath, who is plainly not ready as an actor for this kind of material. He visibly struggles through much of the movie and it can often be difficult to watch –especially when he needs to be distraught, which only combines with the script deficiencies to be horribly awkward. He’s not particularly convincing in the calmer scenes either, where just about his every line and expression is tinged with insincerity. Laura Dern and particularly Vanessa Kirby fare slightly better, but for what interest their characters may have in Nicholas, the film remains laser-focused on him and Peter.
That carries through to the end, which is a minefield of bizarre grand emotional shifts, each desperately trying to court audience sympathy. Twice in the last act, a dark bait-and-switch is pulled that seems to be a last-ditch effort to emulate the presentational style of The Father –but it has no bearing in context or point-of-view so it instead just feels inappropriately indulgent, especially the final sequence which gracelessly nosedives from bliss into misery. And nothing valuable is stated by this, it is bleak entirely for its’ own sake.
Anthony Hopkins makes a cameo appearance as Peter’s father. Wikipedia tells me it’s supposed to be a reprise of his role in The Father and that this movie is a prequel, but the film itself never supports that (no mention was ever made of a son in The Father). And the less this movie is connected to that one, the better. It’s hard to believe that not only Zeller and Hampton were involved, but virtually the entire production team of The Father returned for it. Under those circumstances, the movie has no reason to be this disappointing. The Son might be an interesting example of the hubris that follows unexpected success, or it just might be a failure in adaptation –but something clearly went wrong, and it would be a good idea if Zeller intends to continue making movies that he look outside to other kinds of work for inspiration.

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