This movie has come out of nowhere. If not for Hugh Jackman’s Golden Globe nomination, I wouldn’t have known this movie existed. What’s strange is that when I do a little research, I find out that The Son is written and directed by the same guy who made The Father a few years ago; an Academy Award nominated debut that nabbed Anthony Hopkins the Best Actor award right out of Chadwick Boseman’s posthumous glory. I wonder why The Son hasn’t been more prominent in advertising and conversations 🤔 And director Florian Zeller now has movies in his back pocket called The Father and The Son… I mean, what’s next – The Holy Spirit?! 🤣 That was fruit hanging so low I had to pick it.
Peter Miller (Hugh Jackman) welcomes a baby boy into the world with his second wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby). But his older son Nicholas (Zen McGrath), a teenager from his previous marriage to Kate (Laura Dern), is skipping school, and frankly, scaring Kate with his behaviour. With humility, Peter believes this is something he can straighten out, and affirms Nicholas’s bid to come and stay with him for a change in scenery. But the problems don’t resolve, and Nicholas’s mood is baffling; the more Peter and Kate try to approach their son’s crushing apprehension, the more they feel disconnected. Nicholas says he doesn’t fit in with other people and doesn’t like life like other people do… We’re dealing with acute depression, folks, and an examination of how bewildered parents’ approach the issue out of left field.
I was optimistic about this movie, but once it was underway, I got a dreaded recollection of movies like Ben is Back and Beautiful Boy; melancholy bores where a son and parent try to breach a fragile relationship – was this to be Hugh Jackman’s turn to be a part of it? I do think this movie has a slow beginning, leaning towards the melodramatic, which wouldn’t be so bad if the outlay wasn’t tonally flat. Then, when this movie does pick up, if it isn’t about Nicholas’s depression, there’s not much else to care about. It actually reminded me of Pieces of a Woman in that respect, another Vanessa Kirby vehicle which terrifically portrayed the realism surrounding the tragedy of stillbirth, but wasn’t so exciting as a dramatic movie. This could be a highly personal take, as I feel I have lived through a lot of what this movie is doing myself, sadly recognising a lot the conversations between parent and son. Like Nicholas, I hated the term depression too, which still has an underlying stigma to it while being a necessary medical catch-all, and I would say, much like Nicholas, that I was having life issues. What The Son ends up doing really well is relaying how this problem with Nicholas is like a cancer of the mind, and a black void that ends up sucking in loved ones at the same time. The movie circles around how Nicholas is citing his parent’s divorce as the beginning of it, but I would suggest that it could be triggered by one or six occurrences, and stuff that would be fine for other people, so I don’t believe in a rational cause and effect. It’s an irrational problem – Jackman’s character approaches it with language like ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ and states that, when it comes to cutting, it’s ‘not how people handle their situations’, which is a rational reaction from a person completely mystified by never coming across this problem before. Lucky for me, I wasn’t a cutter, but I was prone to fits of rage, and I’ve been good friends with a girl who was a cutter, so it didn’t surprise me when Nicholas stated that his behaviour was a way to channel the negative energy to one spot. I think it’s important to note, that the rage or the cutting are the outward symptoms and not the problem itself. And from me, I think it’s clear that this is very much how many people cope with their problems, and knowing it’s irrational, all the way to entertaining suicidal tendencies, doesn’t stop it from happening. It can be isolating when people don’t understand, compiling guilt, and it probably comes with a maturity to realise that those people who don’t carry the black void find it completely foreign and innately disgusting to them – I think in some scenes, The Son is great at showing how Nicholas is trying to digest his parent’s attitudes just as much as they are his. Something my mother started nurturing that helped me to talk when I was in a bad place, was a sentiment that we were in it together – it would’ve been great if Peter had explained to Nicholas that he needed to be honest about the cutting and skipping school again so they can share a full view of the problem together, as a means to walk through it. But I also love how ol’ Captain Panaka, psych doctor Hugh Quarshie, makes the point that love is not enough, and love won’t be enough to break through the black void – I never got to the point of hospitalization, and although I believe love is a great comfort and a tangible link to reality, I agree it’s not enough, and not something to be taken personally. What I’ve found comforting is actually knowing how many people have committed suicide after struggling with similar problems, making me realise I’m not alone. Robin Williams killed himself for goodness’ sake, and who could be more joyful and enlightening than him? I think of his scene atop a cliff-face in Patch Adams a lot actually, where his character decides he ‘could jump’, but it’s ‘not worth it’ – I couldn’t agree more, even if somedays my moods still bring me down, but I get better at not fighting it and managing it, including days I have to concede as the storm clouds overhead are too strong. I think the solution is finding a path that doesn’t suck, something to look forward to, and again, who can say what that is, or where that comes from. And I think, like alcoholism, where even if you’re 30 years sober, it’s still wise to recognise you carry this thing, take each day as it comes, and know it’s always in the back of your mind, also similarly to the visions in A Beautiful Mind.
Although he’s much admired, I still feel like Hugh Jackman is underrated. It’s easy to think on how great he was (is) as Wolverine, and then he’s got the singing and dancing prowess on top of that. But third is his dramatic performances, in movies like The Front Runner and Bad Education, where he’s just a solid fit for those excellent roles. I didn’t feel like Laura Dern was given the material to gain an equal presence to Jackman, until those final scenes, but conversely, Vanessa Kirby is terrific, and I love how the movie uses her as another example of how far reaching that black void can be, as her life is tossed around as well, due to the extra strain on Peter’s time, taking him away from her and the baby – and then Beth is the one who finds Nicholas and must call the hospital as well. Peter must give up his dream job too, and I can understand how lives can be put on hold while managing someone who cannot look after themselves. The Son is a movie that seems to have scenes missing though, and I really wish we saw the fight between Beth and Peter that they merely reference. Nicholas also says he apparently told his Dad he was having girl trouble too, and I would’ve liked to have seen that scene for its context. For the entire movie, I felt like we hadn’t gotten enough of Peter’s personality before the drama started – I was putting it down to a choice by the movie to keep Peter and Kate bland because they could be any parents, but as the movie goes on, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were scenes with further character development for Peter left on the cutting room floor; perhaps a happy cuddly scene with Peter, Beth and the newborn to show the kind of man he is beyond his successes. I think the movie leaves us with no doubt that these are good parents though, and that’s all we really need to know.
Yet for the most part, I found The Son to be closer to an important afterschool special than a movie, until the very end where the choice to hospitalize or bring Nicholas home is truly dramatic. The movie tries to have that decision both ways which initially annoyed me, but I think it plays on just how difficult that situation is and how troublesome it can be to know what to do. I call bullshit on Nicholas coming home and shooting himself on the same day, but not on it happening, and I mustn’t overlook that it is an incredibly solemn moment – the woman behind me in the cinema had been bawling her eyes out prior to that, and started sobbing again loudly here; I get shivers just writing about it. The biggest pang in my heart came when poor Laura Dern asked the doctor if she was sure Nicholas’s cuts would heal completely, which seemed to have an undertone of her hoping the entire troubles would be resolved, and they wouldn’t have to come to the hospital again 😥 Yeah, cinemas might need grief counsellors outside sessions for this one – this movie is exceptionally sad. I’m giving this movie a higher rating that I imagined I would, just for how it portrays acute depression, and relates to my past accurately.
4.0
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