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THE SON (2022)
Director: Florian Zeller Cast: Hugh Jackman, Zen McGrath, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Anthony Hopkins MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 2:03 Release Date: 11/25/22 (limited); 1/20/23 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 19, 2023 Peter (Hugh Jackman), the main character of The Son, is a man of almost uncertain identity. In this story, he is the father of a teenage son from one marriage, the parent of a baby boy in his current marriage, the son of a father who clearly didn't and still doesn't care about him, and a person who has pushed himself toward career success—perhaps because his personal was and seemed fated to remain a mess. The character, as written by director Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton, possesses all kinds of potential, but just as the character doesn't seem sure of who he is and is supposed to be, the movie doesn't seem certain how to tell a story about him. The primary focus becomes Peter's relationship with the teenage son, named Nicholas (Zen McGrath). He's in some trouble or having some problems at the start of the story, adapted from Zeller's play, as Peter's ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) calls to let him know that Nicholas has been truant from school for a month. Neither parent has noticed—Kate on account of the teen's deceptions and Peter because his life is so busy otherwise. He's now married to Beth (Vanessa Kirby), a younger woman, and the couple are new parents to Peter's second son. Meanwhile, he's also earning a good living as an attorney, often working long hours that could become longer in the near future, since a politician is eying Peter to become part of his campaign team. Despite all of this, Peter makes some time to talk to Nicholas about his regular absence from school, and the teenager ultimately says that he thinks living with his father—and stepmother and stepbrother, by extension but not by request—might help him. Peter accepts the idea. The kid says a lot more, of course, but one of the major questions and conflicts of Zeller and Hampton's screenplay is how much—or, more to the point, how little—Peter actually hears of what his son is saying. From our perspective as an audience that notes how much of the narrative revolves around the father-son relationship and how often Nicholas repeats certain ideas in his dialogue, it becomes apparent very quickly that the teenager is struggling with depression to some degree or another. The script doesn't try to hide or obfuscate the telltale statements and warning signs. Nicholas speaks about feeling lonely and alone. He cannot stop thinking about his father leaving him and his mother to start a new family. At one point, Nicholas outright states that he doesn't want to be alive anymore, because the pain and sadness and constant torment have become too much for him. With stakes of such significance established, the movie—in spite of McGrath never convincing us of the character's inner turmoil and external signs of that—overshadows Peter, as well as whatever struggles and suffering he might be enduring apart from and because of his son's mental health issues. All of this puts Peter in an additional state of uncertainty—this one in regards to the entire intention and purpose of the drama here. Peter's plight is and isn't the point of Zeller and Hampton's narrative. It is because the man is our entryway into and main focus of this story. It isn't, though, because that becomes a kind of cautionary tale about seeing the signs of depression, as well as one about how easily parents can overlook or deny that those signs exist. Both Peter and Kate repeatedly downplay or refuse to acknowledge the severity of what their son is saying and doing, and we can only watch with a mounting sense of dread—not only for what might happen, but also that Zeller could so easily bungle a story with such delicate subject matter. In theory, these are noble and vital ambitions, but the narrative becomes torn between Peter as a character unto himself and as a parent to Nicholas, the character who really seems to matter as his condition and the consequences of it worsen. It's obvious that Zeller and Hampton want Peter to have a deeper back story and inner life to help explain why he reacts the way he does to Nicholas' depression. The implication is that Peter himself has suffered or still does struggle with a similar mental health issue, although—apart from a scene between the man and his own father, played with cool and chilling cruelty by Anthony Hopkins—most of that is left to Jackman to communicate. The actor is quite good here, especially in those quiet moments of self-doubt and guilt, because we get the sense of a man in denial because he suspects Nicholas blaming Peter for what's happening to him is true—to an extent that the father, perhaps, isn't willing to entirely admit. The Son, then, becomes a movie that keeps its most compelling elements and character at an arm's length. Unfortunately, little of that matters by the time the story reaches its climax, which is both terribly logical and manipulative, and a woefully misguided epilogue, which only confirms and solidifies that second component of the storytelling. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for mature thematic content involving suicide, and strong language)
