The Son

Writer-director Florian Zeller’s second installment in his trilogy examining mental health is an emotional wrecking ball almost exquisite in its destructive power.

The third and final entry in French writer-director Florian Zeller’s acclaimed trilogy of plays about conflicted family values in perpetual crisis, The Son is a bold, harrowing and unflinchingly sobering film that is admittedly not for every taste, but an unavoidably intelligent piece of filmmaking for mature viewers that I highly recommend.

Robustly acted by a superb cast and with some beautiful moments, this follow-up to The Father nevertheless feels less mature and less sure of itself.

It’s hard to imagine mal intent from the mind behind The Father, a film laced with an intoxicating empathy, but it’s not hard to imagine a lesser work. If we’re giving Zeller benefit of the doubt, it just goes to show how difficult it is for a director to make back-to-back bangers.

The depiction of teenage acute depression settles for shallow character development and self-indulgent tropes that distract from a strong Hugh Jackman performance.

The Son is so concerned with trying to get an emotional rise out of the audience, to choke us with its pathos, that it fails to create believable three-dimensional characters.

There are no astute or emotionally resonating takeaways to be had about the pain of depression, just stock melodrama with a cautionary-tale climax that feels desperate to shock.

IN A NUTSHELL: This dramatic movie has already received several awards, including Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, with 3 nominations for Hugh Jackman’s outstanding performance. It’s based on the play by Florian Zeller who is also the director of this movie! The story is about Peter who has a busy life with his new partner, Beth, their baby, and a new job offer. They are thrown into disarray when Peter’s ex-wife Kate turns up with their teenage son, Nicholas. TIPS FOR PARENTS: Kids will be completely bored. So will some parents. Parenting is the hardest job in the world. A mom gives a teen a cup of coffee for breakfast. Profanity, including an F-bomb Talk of depression and suicide Talk **** and knife A teen cuts himself Hopefully, this film will serve as a cautionary tale for parents to always be aware of the signs of depression in teens. I wish our kids truly understood how deeply we care, despite our weaknesses as parents. THINGS I LIKED: The cast is stellar and includes Academy Award winners Anthony Hopkins and Laura Dern. The rest of the talented cast includes two Oscar nominees: Hugh Jackman and Vanessa Kirby. The performances by all of them are fantastic. The movie poster caught my attention simply with the presence of Hugh Jackman. I adore him. He’s receiving a lot of attention and award nominations for his performance in this film. The “hip-sway” dance seen was the first one of very few scenes where we get to see some of the characters smile. The movie’s title initially makes you think it’s about a teenage son who is depressed, but ultimately, you realize it’s about Hugh Jackman’s character when his father appears in a scene about their broken relationship. THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE: The movie is heartbreaking and depressing. A mopey, depressed teen isn’t exactly breaking news. I hate it when you ask a teenager a question and the answer is a shoulder shrug and “I dunno.” Unfortunately, the young Zen McGrath who plays Nicholas, doesn’t have the years of experience to give the performance that his role demanded. He’s off to a good start though.

7.5 Un deçà de The Father, mais très bon drame tout de même. On n'enlèvera pas la superbe prestation de Hugh Jackman, et de la conclusion du film qui sera nous prendre aux tripes. Mais la mise en place est peut être plus longue et moins prenante que le premier film malheureusement.

(Mauro Lanari) Conclusive act of a theatrical trilogy of which the film adaptation of "La Mère" is still missing, it has a score of 4.8/10 on Rotten and of 4.5/10 on Metacritic. The mistakes made by Zeller to get such an amount of harsh criticism to his second direction of a feature length are not few. 1) He does not distinguish "attempted suicide" from "failed suicide": it is only the 1st to be a request for help and attention, while 17-year-old Nicholas performs the 2nd gesture. The psychiatrists who take care of him should know the difference and explain it to the parents to justify the high risk of recurrence, but they do not. 2) He does not distinguish between adolescent discomfort, trauma from parental divorce and existential crisis [in the scene set in Nicholas' room the portrait of Rimbaud is prominently displayed]. The so-called "**** pulsionalis" is not superimposable to the "**** existentialis", the 3 different diagnoses require equally specific therapies and antidepressants could even be harmful. 3) In 2000 the Nolan brothers adopted with "Memento" the subjective perspective of a neuropsychiatric case by inventing the trick of a new chronological line to screen-write a noir work. I find the idea more fascinating when it is not limited to the renewal of a film genre but allows me to experience reality from points of view directly inaccessible to me. With "The Father" (2020) Zeller behaved like the Nolans, but what would be the peculiar POV of an aspiring suicidal? The ordinariness of the script of "The Son" makes it an ambiguous and in any case too schematic melodrama of a dysfunctional family. 4) This type of dramas continues to be sweetened by setting them, from "Amour" (Haneke 2012) onwards, in exaggeratedly high-ranking contexts among wealthy successful and prestigious characters: the nursing home where Hopkins was hosted in the previous film, in Italy it would cost around 3,000 euros a month, not to mention the United States. Furthermore, you never see adult diapers, walkers, bedpans, bed rails for the disabled, faecal and urinary incontinences: at movie festivals do they have a different organism from that of ordinary mortals? 5) Thanks, but the slow motion... not.

With The Son Florian Zeller tries again to build a sober work like he did with The Father, but unfortunately, despite the solid performances of his cast, especially Hugh Jackman, what he ends up with is an impressively ineffective movie. It's not a sloppily crafted movie, except that it's very poorly structured and hardly realistic. The treatment of depression is flawed and, above all, superfluous. Regardless of the work of its actors. Mostly Jackman, I think The Son will resonate more with viewers who will identify with the issues than what the movie does about them, and when I as a viewer feel like I'm not even getting a good examination of the issue, let alone something that makes me respond emotionally, what's left about it doesn't resolve or save absolutely nothing. This was a huge disappointment.

Monumental misfire. Can't believe this was made by the same guy as 'The Father.' Hugh Jackman, Vanessa Kirby, and Laura Dern do their best, but the screenplay is terrible. And Zen McgGrath's character probably it's the worst written ever. And, honestly, the guy can't act.