NOWHERE SPECIAL - Mark Reviews Movies

Nowhere Special, Cohen Media Group

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 25, 2024

John (James Norton) has done everything he can to give his son more than he ever had. Life keeps getting in the way, though, because John is a single father, works as a window cleaner, and, as a result, only has had so much time and money to provide his son the kind of life he wants for the boy. Near the start of Nowhere Special, we learn that John doesn't have much life left to do anything more for his child, either.

Writer/director Uberto Pasolini's film is an inherently heartbreaking one, inspired by a true story, but the most intriguing and, ultimately, effective aspect of the storytelling is how ordinary it feels. Yes, John is dying, of presumably untreatable cancer, but this isn't a story about that. It's simply about the lengths to which a father will go to best ensure that his son will have the best life the child can.

In this moment, that means spending as much time with the boy as possible, even though it becomes increasingly difficult for John to even stay awake when he's with his son. In the future, that means placing Michael (Daniel Lamont), the son, with a family that might be able to do more for the boy than he ever could. That's the theory, at least, but how can John be certain that complete strangers will provide for, care for, or even just accept someone else's child with the kind of love he has now and would have had decades from now?

For most of the film, death isn't the first thing on John's mind, although it's not the last thing, either. He has no illusions of some sort of medical miracle, but he can't stop to think about dying at the moment. For one thing, he still has a profession to maintain, because he's still his son's only provider. For another, John has to visit multiple homes, looking for a family that will meet the necessary but uncertain requirements he has for the kind of people who should raise his son.

Finally, the man has no idea how to tell Michael that the boy soon won't have his father any longer or if he even wants to burden a 4-year-old child with that information. The kid's mother left the two of them, after realizing a child wasn't going to repair the issues she and John had, and now, the boy's father will be gone, too. Would it be better for the kid to grow up with that knowledge and have ways to remember his father or for John to simply disappear from Michael's life, hoping that the boy won't remember him and have his adopted family as the only one he truly knows?

These are impossible questions, and in simply letting us watch John go through the everyday challenges of living while dying and the process of trying to select a family, the film acknowledges them as such. There has to be an answer, because social services has its timeline to make sure Michael will have a home and John will become too weak to do much of anything soon.

It's the most important decision John will ever make, as he tells one of the social workers. What he doesn't say but is at the heart of the problem is that he cannot and will never know if any decision will be the correct one—if there even is one in such a situation.

The whole of the story builds toward devastation. It has to, because that's the reality of this scenario. The reason the impact by the end is as intense as it is here, though, is in the way Pasolini sticks to the simple realism of John's life as a working man, a father, and someone trying to keep his imminent mortality at an arm's length, if only because there's so much for him to do before that finality.

The narrative, then, amounts to a series of vignettes, which let us see John, Michael, and the father-son bond in little moments. While cleaning windows, John might spot children's bedrooms or playrooms and see all of the things he hasn't been able to give his son—not with resentment or even regret but maybe with a little hope that Michael will have that someday. The two spend time watching television, reading stories, and playing at the park, although John can't do much physical activity to keep up with his son.

On visits to those possible families for Michael, John listens to potential adoptive parents and scans their homes, and in a private conversation with kind-hearted social worker Shona (Eileen O'Higgins), he admits that he was hoping a single family would stick out from the crowd in an instant. That hasn't happened, and he's starting to fear it will never will.

Norton's performance is one of quiet, complex particulars. Here's a man who doesn't say much, partly because that's the way he is, growing up in foster homes and being raised to believe that showing emotion is a sign of weakness, but mostly because his mind has to process so much that doesn't make sense. How can he explain any of this to a child if he can't know what will happen, understand why it's happening, and be optimistic about how Michael's life will turn out as a consequence of this tragedy?

All of these little moments of affection (Michael putting a blanket over his dad, who has fallen asleep before the kid joins him to watch TV) and fear (John's regular work route has him passing a cemetery) and contradiction (John watches a boy a few years old than Michael cross the street on his own, knowing that will be his son one day that he'll never see) in Nowhere Special build and build. They feel authentic, so the inevitable heartbreak of the film is, too.

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