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The Son
Directed by
Florian Zeller
Produced by Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Florian Zeller, Karl Hartman, Joanna Laurie, and Christophe Spadone
Screenplay by Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton Based on the play Le Fils by Florian Zeller
Produced by Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Florian Zeller, Karl Hartman, Joanna Laurie, and Christophe Spadone
Screenplay by Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton Based on the play Le Fils by Florian Zeller
With:
Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, William Hope, Hugh Quarshie, Gretchen Egolf, and Anthony Hopkins
Cinematography:
Ben Smithard
Editing: Yorgos Lamprinos
Music: Hans Zimmer
Editing: Yorgos Lamprinos
Music: Hans Zimmer
Runtime:
123 min
Release Date: 25 November 2022
Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1
Color: Color
Release Date: 25 November 2022
Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1
Color: Color
French playwright Florian Zeller, who made an astonishing directorial debut with the film version of his play The Father in 2022, returns with another adaptation of his own work. This time, it's not about an elderly father raging against the ravages of dementia, but a middle-aged father in denial about the severity of his teenage son's suicidal mental health crisis. Hugh Jackman plays Peter, a busy lawyer whose life is upended when his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) informs him that their teenage son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) hasn't been to school for months. When the deeply troubled Nicholas asks if he can come live with his dad, Peter upends his new life with his new partner Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and their infant son to take care of Nicholas as he wished his own father had. Seeing every situation through the narrow lens of his own perspective and experience, Peter can't seem to grapple with the severity of his son's situation. Kate is at her wit's end with despair and guilt, while Beth does her best to deal with Nicholas's deeply unsettling presence in their home.
Like The Father, this is a character study as much as a story about illness. but unlike The Father, we aren't brought cinematically into the mind of the person suffering. Nicholas is written and performed with about as much insight into depression as one might glean from interviewing a single high school guidance counsellor. I could understand the lack of depth on display here and the obliviousness of the adult characters to what they're dealing with if this was a decades-old play, or a film from the 1960s with Burt Lancaster playing Peter. But The Son opened in London in February 2019! It's not like understanding depression, suicide and other mental health issues hasn't been at the forefront of our culture for many many years now.
Aside from the poor performance of McGrath, the cast is quite strong. Dearn underplays a role in which she could easily have gone over the top. Instead, she and Zeller make the smart choice to play Beth as an exhausted woman who reached the end of her rope before the events of this story are launched. Kirby, playing a young, beautiful, well-off, new mother, could easily lose our sympathy if she embodied the role with less compassion. Instead, we really feel for her. It's actually kind of a problem that the character we most identify with in this movie is Beth because she seems the only one who can really see the situation for what it is. Jackman gives his usual fully committed performance, and you do feel for this guy. He's a buttoned-up, rational, problem-solver; a man whose reaction to his own crappy childhood was to springboard himself into a solid career and material success. Peter feels like a real and three-dimensional human being, but his blindspots strain credibility. Anthony Hopkins, who won the 2022 Best Actor Oscar for The Father, returns to play Peter's father in an extended cameo that provides a wonderful showcase for both actors. It's telling that a dining room table scene between Jackman and Hopkins is the most theatrical and also the most successful. The screenplay for The Son, which, like The Father, was penned by the legendary Christopher Hampton—known for his adaptions of iconic non-English plays like The Seagull, Hedda Gabler, Dangerous Liaisons, and God of Carnage. In a rare stumble, Hampton fails to bring a play's text alive so that it can fully translate to cinema.
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Aside from the poor performance of McGrath, the cast is quite strong. Dearn underplays a role in which she could easily have gone over the top. Instead, she and Zeller make the smart choice to play Beth as an exhausted woman who reached the end of her rope before the events of this story are launched. Kirby, playing a young, beautiful, well-off, new mother, could easily lose our sympathy if she embodied the role with less compassion. Instead, we really feel for her. It's actually kind of a problem that the character we most identify with in this movie is Beth because she seems the only one who can really see the situation for what it is. Jackman gives his usual fully committed performance, and you do feel for this guy. He's a buttoned-up, rational, problem-solver; a man whose reaction to his own crappy childhood was to springboard himself into a solid career and material success. Peter feels like a real and three-dimensional human being, but his blindspots strain credibility. Anthony Hopkins, who won the 2022 Best Actor Oscar for The Father, returns to play Peter's father in an extended cameo that provides a wonderful showcase for both actors. It's telling that a dining room table scene between Jackman and Hopkins is the most theatrical and also the most successful. The screenplay for The Son, which, like The Father, was penned by the legendary Christopher Hampton—known for his adaptions of iconic non-English plays like The Seagull, Hedda Gabler, Dangerous Liaisons, and God of Carnage. In a rare stumble, Hampton fails to bring a play's text alive so that it can fully translate to cinema.
Zeller and Hampton stumble with their follow-up to their astonishing The Father. Despite excellent performances from the adult cast in this story of parents dealing with a suicidal teenager, the script feels dated, predictable, and false.