Zen McGrath, Laura Dern, Hugh Jacckman
“THE SON” My rating: C+ (In theaters)
123 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13
The performances are strong. The subject matter is important. The execution is, well, fine.
But “The Son” is the most unpleasant, upsetting two hours I’ve spent watching a movie in months. For all of its strong elements, the damn thing is so disheartening and joyless that I’m loathe to revisit the memory just so I can write this review.
The latest from director Florian Zeller (like last year’s “The Father” it is adapted from a Zeller play, once again with an assist from Christopher Hampton) addresses the issue of teen depression. It’s almost brutally insightful, and not the least bit encouraging.
Peter Miller (Hugh Jackman) is an executive with a Manhattan-based charity. He has recently married his second wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and together they have welcomed to their lives a baby boy.
But Peter’s cozy world comes crashing down when he is approached by his ex, Kate (Laura Dern), who reports that their teenage son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) is in trouble at school. More specifically, he hasn’t been to class in a month. The kid leaves home every morning and God knows where he spends the day.
Peter doesn’t need this, but he’s a decent guy who genuinely loves his firstborn and wants to do the right thing. He invites Nicholas to move into his place (new wife Beth is surprisingly amenable…she’s a decent person, too) and enrolls him in a new school.
But here’s the thing. Nicholas is tormented, unhappy, friendless. He cannot find words to express his feelings, and rather than share them he prefers isolation.
Peter tries to put an optimistic face on all this, but he’s simply denying the inevitable. And the pressure is starting to unravel both is career and his marriage.
Zeller’s narrative nails the pain and frustration of parents incapable of alleviating their child’s misery. And young McGrath delivers a borderline brilliant depiction of a kid whose unhappiness has led him down an antisocial path (among other things he’s a genius at parental manipulation). Watching this performance we’re jerked back and farther between compassion and indignation — exactly the emotions the adults in his life are experiencing.
Though Nicholas is the clockwork that makes the movie tick, “The Son” also serves as a personality study. Jackman has spent so much of his career in Spandex that it’s easy to forget that he’s a solid dramatic actor. A scene in which Peter visits his semi-estranged father — played by Anthony Hopkins as a sarcasm-dripping capitalist elitist — goes a long way towards establishing why Peter operates in the not-for-profit sphere and why he’s determined to be a genuine father to Nicholas.
But sometimes broke cannot be fixed.
“The Son” does contain one spectacularl improbability. Ask yourself…if you were the parent of a suicidal adolescent, would you keep a loaded firearm in the laundry room?
Didn’t think so.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 