movie reviews the son 2003

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"The Son" is complete, self-contained and final. All the critic can bring to it is his admiration. It needs no insight or explanation. It sees everything and explains all. It is as assured and flawless a telling of sadness and joy as I have ever seen.

I agree with Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic, that a second viewing only underlines the film's greatness, but I would not want to have missed my first viewing, so I will write carefully. The directors, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne , do not make the slightest effort to mislead or deceive us. Nor do they make any effort to explain. They simply (not so simply) show, and we lean forward, hushed, reading the faces, watching the actions, intent on sharing the feelings of the characters.

Let me describe a very early sequence in enough detail for you to appreciate how the brothers work. Olivier ( Olivier Gourmet ), a Belgian carpenter, supervises a shop where teenage boys work. He corrects a boy using a power saw. We wonder, because we have been beaten down by formula films, if someone is going to lose a finger or a hand. No. The plank is going to be cut correctly.

A woman comes into the shop and asks Olivier if he can take another apprentice. No, he has too many already. He suggests the welding shop. The moment the woman and the young applicant leave, Olivier slips from the shop and, astonishingly, scurries after them like a feral animal and spies on them through a door opening and the angle of a corridor. A little later, strong and agile, he leaps up onto a metal cabinet to steal a look through a high window.

Then he tells the woman he will take the boy after all. She says the boy is in the shower room. The hand-held camera, which follows Olivier everywhere, usually in close medium shot, follows him as he looks around a corner (we intuit it is a corner; two walls form an apparent join). Is he watching the boy take a shower? Is Olivier gay? No. We have seen too many movies. He is simply looking at the boy asleep, fully clothed, on the floor of the shower room. After a long, absorbed look, he wakes up the boy and tells him he has a job.

Now you must absolutely stop reading and go see the film. Walk out of the house today, tonight, and see it, if you are open to simplicity, depth, maturity, silence, in a film that sounds in the echo-chambers of the heart. "The Son" is a great film. If you find you cannot respond to it, that is the degree to which you have room to grow. I am not being arrogant; I grew during this film. It taught me things about the cinema I did not know.

What did I learn? How this movie is only possible because of the way it was made, and would have been impossible with traditional narrative styles. Like rigorous documentarians, the Dardenne brothers follow Olivier, learning everything they know about him by watching him. They do not point, underline or send signals by music. There are no reaction shots because the entire movie is their reaction shot. The brothers make the consciousness of the Olivier character into the auteur of the film.

... So now you have seen the film. If you were spellbound, moved by its terror and love, struck that the visual style is the only possible one for this story, then let us agree that rarely has a film told us less and told us all, both at once.

Olivier trains wards of the Belgian state--gives them a craft after they are released from a juvenile home. Francis ( Morgan Marinne ) was in such a home from his 11th to 16th years. Olivier asks him what his crime was. He stole a car radio.

"And got five years?" "There was a death." "What kind of a death?" There was a child in the car who Francis did not see. The child began to cry and would not let go of Francis, who was frightened and "grabbed him by the throat." "Strangled him," Olivier corrects.

"I didn't mean to," Francis says.

"Do you regret what you did?" "Obviously." "Why obviously?" "Five years locked up. That's worth regretting." You have seen the film and know what Olivier knows about this death. You have seen it and know the man and boy are at a remote lumber yard on a Sunday. You have seen it and know how hard the noises are in the movie, the heavy planks banging down one upon another. How it hurts even to hear them. The film does not use these sounds or the towers of lumber to create suspense or anything else. It simply respects the nature of lumber, as Olivier does and is teaching Francis to do. You expect, because you have been trained by formula films, an accident or an act of violence. What you could not expect is the breathtaking spiritual beauty of the ending of the film, which is nevertheless no less banal than everything that has gone before.

Olivier Gourmet won the award for best actor at Cannes 2002. He plays an ordinary man behaving at all times in an ordinary way. Here is the key: o rdinary for him. The word for his behavior--not his performance, his behavior--is "exemplary." We use the word to mean "praiseworthy." Its first meaning is "fit for imitation." Everything that Olivier does is exemplary. Walk like this. Hold yourself just so. Measure exactly. Do not use the steel hammer when the wooden mallet is required. Center the nail. Smooth first with the file, then with the sandpaper. Balance the plank and lean into the ladder. Pay for your own apple turnover. Hold a woman who needs to be calmed. Praise a woman who has found she is pregnant. Find out the truth before you tell the truth. Do not use words to discuss what cannot be explained. Be willing to say, "I don't know." Be willing to have a son and teach him a trade. Be willing to be a father.

A recent movie got a laugh by saying there is a rule in " The Godfather " to cover every situation. There can never be that many rules. "The Son" is about a man who needs no rules because he respects his trade and knows his tools. His trade is life. His tools are his loss and his hope.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Son (2003)

Rated NR No Objectionable Material

103 minutes

Morgan Marinne as Francis

Isabella Soupart as Magali

Felicien Pitsaer as Steve

Remy Renaud as Philippo

Nassim Hassaini as Omar

Kevin Leroy as Raoul

Olivier Gourmet as Olivier

Written and Directed by

Jean-Pierre
Luc Dardenne

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The Son Reviews

The Dardennes build drama slowly and deliberately, often perching their handheld cameras right at their subjects' earlobes or on the backs of their necks. It's an odd choice, but one that works improbably well in achieving intimacy.

Full Review | Mar 16, 2020

The instructor is played by Olivier Gourmet in an extraordinarily physical (and cerebral) performance.

Full Review | Apr 11, 2018

It's a clear-eyed style of filmmaking reminiscent of The Decalogue or The Bicycle Thief, movies that adopt a raw, bare-bones aesthetic to capture the difficult morality of everyday life.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 3, 2008

There's no music, not much dialogue (and what there is is mundane), a deliberately bland video look, and not much happens.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | May 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 3, 2005

The Son will dazzle you if you patiently think it through and discuss it. The effort you put into it will determine how much it rewards you in the end.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Feb 1, 2005

Actions, not words or feelings, are at the center of The Son, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's challenging, nearly religious parable of humanity, fallenness, and grace.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | May 31, 2004

Simple yet deep. Not for blockbuster fans but amazing in its own way.

Full Review | Original Score: A | May 27, 2004

The Son proves that [the Dardennes] can take on the concepts of the human desire for revenge and the capacity for forgiveness without becoming precious or overbearing.

Full Review | May 21, 2004

See if you don't find Olivier Gourmet's performance one of the most compelling and natural of the year.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Apr 29, 2004

The events are simple. The emotions are hugely complex.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 24, 2004

Fails to provide enough tension to draw us into what, at first, seems a properly chilling crime drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 23, 2004

The Son takes forever to get going. And while that is a deliberate move by the filmmakers, Belgium's Dardenne brothers, it's still a problem.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 16, 2004

[The film's] sense of claustrophobia heightens the idea that guides The Son, that past events inextricably tie people, even strangers, together.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 16, 2004

...a work of enormous moral and spiritual depth, where sacrifice, forgiveness and redemption are revealed as the natural extensions of the movie's humdrum landscape.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 7, 2004

If you have to pick between movies about the spiritual passion of tortured carpenters, make this the one.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 2, 2004

The simple but persuasive social drama at some point grabs your attention and never lets go.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Mar 31, 2004

This carpentry is art.

Full Review | Oct 3, 2003

Although Olivier never faces a gang of outlaws, he becomes a modern Gary Cooper that stares down his inner demons

Full Review | Original Score: B | Oct 3, 2003

A substantial story about how one man handles his personal turmoil.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 25, 2003

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Riveting thriller with less violence than most; sex, nudity.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Everything may not always be as it seems; sometime

Troubled main character is determined, courageous,

Most battles are waged without physical violence o

Opening scene shows a couple in the last moments o

Wine is served in social situation. The main chara

Positive Messages

Everything may not always be as it seems; sometimes it's hard to determine who is believable and who isn't. It's worth being patient and using resolve to uncover the truth. Evil may be well-disguised. In a symbolic way, touches upon the overwhelming obligations of parenthood.

Positive Role Models

Troubled main character is determined, courageous, and devoted, even when his own actions and behavior work against him. Character strengths stressed: friendship, empathy, and perseverance.

Violence & Scariness

Most battles are waged without physical violence or brutal images, but are still disturbing, suspenseful, and in some instances, even horrifying. In a lengthy scene, a woman giving birth behind a locked door howls with pain. Her husband fights fiercely to enter the room. A man roughly takes baby from woman, who then falls. Character threatens another with gun; bloody body is later discovered. Police roughly take a man into custody.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Opening scene shows a couple in the last moments of sexual intercourse, with some nudity, including bare breasts.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Wine is served in social situation. The main character is a recovering alcoholic. Prescription drugs are mentioned both for pregnancy and for mental instability. A character injects herself with an unknown substance.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Son is a psychological thriller from Argentina, in Spanish with English subtitles. The movie is based on The Protective Wife , a novel by Guillermo Martinez. An impassioned artist and his biologist wife conceive a much-wanted baby boy. The wife's isolating, obsessive behavior during the pregnancy and after the baby is born, combined with her husband's intensifying suspicion, strains their relationship to the breaking point. Rather than physical violence or scares, most of the tension in the film comes from implications of danger, furtive stalking, the protagonist's mindset, and an unconventional ending. The violent or disturbing scenes include a brief struggle during which a woman falls, a man held at gunpoint, and the discovery of a body. A lengthy, noisy off-camera childbirth sequence, heard through a locked door, may be unsettling for some. The movie opens with an ardent sex scene; a nude couple is seen in the last stages of intercourse (with female breasts exposed). One curse, "f--k," is heard. There's some social drinking. A main character is a recovering alcoholic; another injects herself with an unidentified substance. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

Argentinean Lorenzo Roy (Joaquin Furriel) and his Norwegian wife Sigrid (Heidi Tioni) are desperate to have a baby in THE SON. Overjoyed when Sigrid becomes pregnant, they eagerly anticipate their baby son's arrival. Both have pasts that make them uneasy. Lorenzo, a former alcoholic, has no relationship with his two daughters from a first marriage. Sigrid suffered a miscarriage and is hyper-vigilant about this pregnancy. After initial help from a doctor, she decides to forego further medical assistance, makes some peculiar decisions about her medication, and decides that the baby will be born at home. Lorenzo is puzzled by Sigrid's increasingly odd behavior. When she brings in a surly midwife from Norway, the two further isolate Lorenzo from the preparations. The actual birth further separates husband and wife. Things get worse as the months pass. Lorenzo is given little time with the baby. Basically, they've locked him out. He strongly protests, then confides in his closest friends, Julieta (Martina Gusman) and Renato (Luciano Caceres), who sympathize, but are concerned about his agitated mental state. When Sigrid involves the police, Lorenzo erupts with an astonishing claim. He believes Baby Henrik isn't his child. Events escalate in a tightly drawn battle of wills.

Is It Any Good?

This movie, with terrific performances and stellar direction, comes with an ending that will leave an audience either exhilarated or peeved, depending on their willingness to appreciate a sly puzzle. Director Sebastian Schindel keeps the tension high, the developing events mysterious, and rooting interest uncertain. Motives are always perplexing. Is Sigrid a caring mom or a villain? Is Lorenzo believable, paranoid, or a sufferer of Capgras Syndrome (a disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a loved one has been replaced by an imposter)? The Son is seen from Lorenzo's perspective or, in later significant moments, from the perspective of Julieta, his friend and lawyer, and it works. Schindel's decision to leave conversations between Sigrid and the midwife untranslated from Norwegian works well. It leaves the audience in the dark just as Lorenzo is. For fans of psychological thrillers where the stakes are high and the answers aren't easy, it's a very satisfying movie.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the scares and tension in The Son . Does the movie live up to its "thriller" classification? How much of the conflict results in actual violence? How much is based on psychological dread and audience apprehension? What do you think is the difference in the impact between graphic violence and more subtle terror?

Some viewers may find the ending of The Son to be puzzling and/or abrupt. Would you agree or disagree with them? How much did the production team choose to leave to the audience's imagination? What do you think Julieta saw? Is it intriguing to figure it out for yourself, or did you feel cheated?

What techniques did the filmmakers use to accelerate the tension and scares (i.e., music, lighting)?

How was Lorenzo's home used as a "character" in the film?

Movie Details

On DVD or streaming : July 26, 2019
Cast : Joaquin Furriel , Heidi Tioni , Martina Gusman
Director : Sebastian Schindel
Inclusion Information : Latino actors
Studio : Netflix
Genre : Thriller
Run time : 92 minutes
MPAA rating : NR
Last updated : February 18, 2023

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‘The Son’ Review: Hugh Jackman Goes Deep in ‘The Father’ Director’s Devastating Follow-up

On the strength of his 2020 Oscar win, playwright-turned-helmer Florian Zeller assembles a stellar cast — including newcomer Zen McGrath — to explore another dimension of mental health.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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From Sophocles to Shakespeare, it all comes back to family. Writers can get as high-concept as they like, but in the end, the world’s greatest storytellers recognize that nothing is more potent — not even romantic love — than the connections between children and their parents. Florian Zeller gets it. Before turning his attention to the screen, the gifted French scribe wrote at least a dozen plays, the most acclaimed of which were a trilogy focusing on how mental health issues devastate seemingly functional bourgeois families: “The Mother” (depression), “The Father” (dementia) and “ The Son ” (you’ll see).

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Instead of feeling loose and lived in, Zeller’s adaptation of his own play has a slightly heightened quality, not to be confused with “theatrical”: The sets feel disconcertingly under-decorated, as if the characters were living in an Ikea showroom. The sound design has been dialed down, such that sirens and street noise (a New York near-constant) barely register. The dialogue, adapted into English with Christopher Hampton’s help, suggests what people might say in such a situation. These very concerns have fueled countless TV movies, and yet, Zeller is going for the most “tasteful” possible treatment. Instead of merely wrenching us emotionally — which “The Son” will inevitably succeed in doing anyway — he wants to get audiences thinking.

Study the dynamic between father and son carefully, and you’ll spot a fascinating trick at work, even subtler than the sleight of hand Zeller used to make audiences feel as if they were slowly losing their minds (like Hopkins’ character) in “The Father”: In the role of Peter, Jackman becomes a man caught up in his own kind of performance. The seldom-home workaholic desperately wants to be perceived as an ideal patriarch but seems to know (or suspect) deep down that he’s a failure in that department. That means Jackman is essentially playing a man playing a dad.

If you doubt this reading, consider one of the film’s defining scenes, when Peter takes a rare break from work to see his own dad (Anthony Hopkins as Anthony, a different father from “The Father”) to let him know he’s thinking of turning down a D.C. politician’s offer to oversee his campaign, since Nicholas needs him. It seems to Peter like the right call, but Anthony sees right through his agenda. “Your daddy wasn’t nice to you. So what?” he spits. “Just fucking get over it!”

And therein emerges another dimension of Jackman’s character, who hails from a generation in which shutting one’s mouth and enduring the pain is seen as a sign of personal strength. Today, emotional maturity is associated with the opposite qualities: the capacity to identify one’s trauma and accept treatment, as Nicholas tries to do. To his credit, when not too distracted with work, Peter does try to communicate with his son. It’s through one of these conversations that Peter learns that the boy is deeply traumatized by his parents’ split. This revelation isn’t offered as an “explanation” so much as a clue. Nicholas clearly feels betrayed and abandoned by his father. Life, he says, is “weighing me down.”

“The Son” isn’t an easy watch, but it’s an important one at a time when young people are very much in crisis. Just look at the statistics, and it’s clear that depression, self-harm and suicide are up in alarming rates among teenagers — and that’s even before you factor in the challenges of the pandemic. When Nicholas asks his father about the rifle he noticed in the laundry room, it’s not clear whether this disgruntled teen plans to use it on his classmates or himself. Ask Chekhov how you ought to feel for the rest of the film.

Beth is frightened, but tries her best to be a caring stepmother, as in an atypically light scene when she pressures Peter to demonstrate his “famous hip sway.” Out comes a glimpse of the goofball behind Hugh Jackman’s star persona. Between this and “Bad Education,” we’re seeing a new chapter of his career, as Jackman subsumes his natural charisma in order to suggest Peter’s fundamental insecurity: He wants to break the cycle, to be a better dad than the one he had. But he doesn’t understand what he’s up against, and in watching “The Son” play out, this family’s tragedy becomes our own, and Zeller’s warning becomes impossible to ignore.

Reviewed at Sepulveda Screening Room, Aug. 30, 2022. In Venice, Toronto film festivals. Running time: 123 MIN.

Production: (U.S.-France-U.K.) A Sony Pictures Classics release of a Film4, Ingenious presentation, in association with Cross City Films, Embarkment Films, of a See-Saw Films, IntoTheVoid production. Producers: Joanna Laurie, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Florian Zeller, Christophe Spadone. Executive producers: Simon Gillis, Philippe Carcassonne, Hugh Jackman, Daniel Battsek, Ollie Madden, Lauren Dark, Peter Touche, Christelle Conan, Hugo Grumbar, Tim Haslam.
Crew: Director: Florian Zeller. Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller, based on the play “Le Fils” by Florian Zeller. Camera: Ben Smithard. Editor: Yorgos Lamprinos. Music: Hans Zimmer.
With: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Hugh Quarshie, Anthony Hopkins.

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Entertainment

The Son review: an emotionally manipulative family drama

“The Son strives to be a devastating and insightful family drama, but it ends up feeling more like a shallow, emotionally manipulative exploration of misery.”

Hugh Jackman's intense lead performance
Laura Dern's complex supporting turn
An engrossing opening act
Vanessa Kirby and Zen McGrath's underwhelming performances
A repetitive second act
An emotionally manipulative ending

The Son wants you to feel things — namely, regret, heartbreak, sorrow, and helplessness. Despite featuring a handful of talented and very game performers, though, the biggest feeling The Son creates is frustration. The film elicits such a reaction through not only the deeply flawed ways in which it tells its story but also through the myriad of easily avoidable creative mistakes that its filmmakers make across its laborious 123-minute runtime.

What’s even worse is that there’s no reason to go into The Son expecting it to be such an inauthentic, blatantly manipulative drama. In 2020, its director, Florian Zeller, managed to create a far better film with The Father , which was, like The Son , adapted from one of Zeller’s plays and even explores a similar tale of familial strife. Unfortunately, all the missteps that Zeller could have made in The Father he ends up making in The Son — resulting in a film that’s not heartbreaking so much as it is intensely irritating.

To Zeller’s credit, The Son doesn’t struggle to feel cinematic in the same way so many previous stage-to-screen adaptations have. While most of the film takes place in one New York apartment, Zeller and cinematographer Ben Smithard succeed at making the space feel expansive enough that The Son ’s scope doesn’t ever feel theatrically restricted. Zeller, in fact, makes great use of the film’s central space from its opening scene, which follows Peter (Hugh Jackman), a remarried man, and his second wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), as they receive a surprise visit from his ex-wife, Kate (Laura Dern).

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The conversation that follows effectively establishes the tension and history that exists between Beth, Peter, and Kate, and it also succinctly sets up The Son ’s story. Kate, it turns out, has been forced to ask Peter for help with their teenage son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), whose resistance toward his mother and proclivity for skipping school has grown too intense for Kate to manage on her own. Peter, in response, pays a visit to his son and it isn’t long before he’s letting Nicholas move in with him, Beth, and their newborn son. For most of its 123-minute runtime, The Son subsequently follows Peter as he unsuccessfully tries to reconnect with his firstborn son and, even more importantly, fails to acknowledge the severity of Nicholas’ depression.

As simple as its story is, The Son struggles to maintain a sense of momentum or tension throughout its first and second acts, which feature long sections that are not only repetitive but often dramatically inert. While the film’s dialogue does manage to occasionally capture a sense of raw naturalism as well, it’s often hurt by its own stilted language. The characters in The Son call each other by their first names so often, for instance, that an unintentionally cold distance is created between characters who shouldn’t, at the very least, feel the need to talk in such an awkward, overly formal manner.

Most of the film’s actors manage to overcome The Son ’s strangest quirks fairly well. Hugh Jackman, in particular, turns in another emotionally intense performance as Peter, a man whose own faults and pride make him blind to the complexity of his son’s despair. Laura Dern similarly shines as Kate, a woman whose kindness and warmth can be overwhelmed at times by the feelings of abandonment that her husband and son’s departures have left her with. Jackman and Dern don’t get to share many scenes in The Son , but the film often works best when they’re on-screen together.

Vanessa Kirby and Zen McGrath fare less well throughout The Son . While Kirby’s talent has been well established at this point, she’s left more or less stranded throughout The Son in a role that feels underwritten. McGrath, meanwhile, is given the difficult task of playing a character who, thanks to Zeller and Christopher Hampton’s screenplay, essentially oscillates between seeming either emotionally distraught or blank. McGrath’s performance, consequently, mostly comes across as flat, a fact which undercuts many of The Son ’s biggest emotional moments.

All of these flaws, unfortunately, don’t come close to matching the severity of the mistakes Zeller makes in The Son ’s third act. Rather than trusting in the dramatic power of the film’s story, Zeller resorts to the kind of emotionally manipulative gimmicks that rob The Son of any of the weight it had previously built up. The film ultimately feels less like an exploration of a complex issue and more like a superficial exercise in generating misery — one that hopes its audience’s empathy for its subject matter will make up all for the cheap tricks it employs in order to weaponize its viewers’ own sincerity against them.

Not only does The Son fail to put you in the same emotional headspace as its characters, but it fails, even more severely, to make any of their emotions feel real at all.

The Son hits theaters nationwide on Friday, January 20.

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From its chaotic, underwater first frame all way to its liberating, sun-soaked final shot, God’s Creatures is full of carefully composed images. There’s never a moment across the film’s modest 94-minute runtime in which it feels like co-directors Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer aren’t in full control of what’s happening on-screen. Throughout much of God’s Creatures’ quietly stomach-churning second act, that sense of directorial control just further heightens the tension that lurks beneath the surface of the film’s story.

In God's Creatures' third act, however, Holmer and Davis’ steady grip becomes a stranglehold, one that threatens to choke all the drama and suspense out of the story they’re attempting to tell. Moments that should come across as either powerful punches to the gut or overwhelming instances of emotional relief are so underplayed that they are robbed of much of their weight. God's Creatures, therefore, ultimately becomes an interesting case study on artistic restraint, and, specifically, how too calculated a style can, if executed incorrectly, leave a film feeling unsuitably cold.

Andrew Dominik’s Blonde opens, quite fittingly, with the flashing of bulbs. In several brief, twinkling moments, we see a rush of images: cameras flashing, spotlights whirring to life, men roaring with excitement (or anger — sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference), and at the center of it all is her, Marilyn Monroe (played by Ana de Armas), striking her most iconic pose as a gust of wind blows up her white dress. It’s an opening that makes sense for a film about a fictionalized version of Monroe’s life, one that firmly roots the viewer in the world and space of a movie star. But to focus only on de Armas’ Marilyn is to miss the point of Blonde’s opening moments.

As the rest of Dominik’s bold, imperfect film proves, Blonde is not just about the recreation of iconic moments, nor is it solely about the making of Monroe’s greatest career highlights. It is, instead, about exposure and, in specific, the act of exposing yourself — for art, for fame, for love — and the ways in which the world often reacts to such raw vulnerability. In the case of Blonde, we're shown how a world of men took advantage of Monroe’s vulnerability by attempting to control her image and downplay her talent.

Meet Cute wants to be a lot of things at once. The film, which premieres exclusively on Peacock this week, is simultaneously a manic time travel adventure, playful romantic comedy, and dead-serious commentary on the messiness of romantic relationships. If that sounds like a lot for one low-budget rom-com to juggle — and within the span of 89 minutes, no less — that’s because it is. Thanks to the performance given by its game lead star, though, there are moments when Meet Cute comes close to pulling off its unique tonal gambit.

Unfortunately, the film’s attempts to blend screwball comedy with open-hearted romanticism often come across as hackneyed rather than inspired. Behind the camera, director Alex Lehmann fails to bring Meet Cute’s disparate emotional and comedic elements together, and the movie ultimately lacks the tonal control that it needs to be able to discuss serious topics like depression in the same sequence that it throws out, say, a series of slapstick costume gags. The resulting film is one that isn't memorably absurd so much as it is mildly irritating.

‘The Son’ Review: Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern Battle Pain and Guilt in Tough Look at Teen Depression

Director Florian Zeller once again explores mental illness in a bolder, less focused follow-up to “The Father”

This review originally ran September 7, 2022, in conjunction with the film’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

When he made his directorial debut with “The Father” last year, French novelist and playwright Florian Zeller proved to be uncommonly adept at using the tools of cinema to depict an elderly man’s descent into dementia. But Zeller was far from finished exploring the subject of mental illness, which he tackles from a very different perspective in his new film, “The Son.”

While “The Father” was entirely from the point-of-view of Anthony Hopkins’ title character, “The Son,” which premiered at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday, is a film of shifting perspectives. The young Australian actor Zen McGrath offers an indelible performance as Nicholas, a high schooler wracked with depression after the stormy divorce of his parents – but we spend as much time with the adults who are trying desperately to figure out what they did wrong and how they can save Nicholas: Hugh Jackman as Nicholas’ high-powered lawyer father, Peter; Laura Dern as his distraught mother, Kate; and Vanessa Kirby as Beth, the young mother for whom Peter left Kate.

“The Father” had a heartbreaking elegance in the way it got inside the main character’s head, but “The Son” is both colder and hotter than that film, following the mood swings of a teen in pain. It finds Zeller (with the help of his remarkable cast) going bigger, bolder and perhaps less focused, but remaining sensitive and attuned to the intricacies of putting mental illness onscreen.

The son doesn’t make an appearance in “The Son” until we’ve already met the parents. Peter comes home to Beth, who’s struggling with the pressures of a new baby, and a frantic Kate shows up at their door to say their 17-year-old son hasn’t been to school in a month and has been harming himself. “He needs you, Peter,” she pleads. “You can’t just abandon him.”

Peter confronts Nicholas, who’s reluctant to explain anything to his father until he finally stumbles his way through a confession of sorts: “I can’t do any of it…. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s life . It’s wearing me down.”

For the rest of the film, Nicholas bounces between his father’s house, which scares Beth and puts a strain on that relationship, and his mother’s place, where Kate lives in perpetual fear of what her son might do.

As he did in “The Father,” which took place in an apartment that subtly and continually changed to reflect the central character’s state of mind, Zeller pays particular attention to the environments in which his characters live and work. We find Peter in a sleek train compartment between New York and Washington, D.C., Kate in a woodsy office, Nicholas in stifling classrooms, Beth in a gleaming modern apartment that may not be the best place for a new baby or a troubled teen. The spaces don’t have to do the heavy lifting of the sets in Zeller’s last film, but each is impeccably drawn by production designer Simon Bowles, and they quickly sketch the distances in these relationships.

Nobody here is untouched by pain or by guilt. Kate lives in a world of bottomless regret and hurt, blaming herself for Nicholas’ depression. Peter knows he may have set things in motion when he left his wife for another woman, but he’s determined to remain in control. So he embraces enough self-delusion to convince himself that Nicholas is getting better and things will be OK. Beth has her own life and a child that must take priority, but she can’t escape the reminder that the prelude to her own new family was the destruction of her husband’s old family.

Dern, Jackman and Kirby navigate the shifts from heartbreak to anger to bewilderment, and manage to keep the film grounded even as it gets increasingly fraught. And then Anthony Hopkins, who won an Oscar for “The Father,” shows up as Peter’s cold and emotionally brutal father for a single, devastating scene in the middle of the film and casts a shadow over everything else that happens.

As in “The Father,” there’s an austerity and a rigor to “The Son,” but there’s also more desperation and, at times, more exuberance in the exploration of adolescent depression. In a rare moment of joy, Peter, Beth and Nicholas dance wildly to Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” – but rather than staying at that fever pitch, the music morphs slowly into a moody lament (“Wolf” by Awir Leon) whose pained falsetto brings out the deep hurt beneath the exuberance.

“The Son” is a serious look at depression and mental illness that holds out the possibility of healing but makes it clear how difficult that healing can be; cinematographer Ben Smithard shoots it in a way in which the simplest of scenes, from a mother-son hug to a closeup of a washing machine, come to be imbued with a sense of dread and foreboding.

As the film goes on, it’s also hard not to think of a certain dramatic principle associated with an earlier dramatist, Chehkov, though we won’t go into any details there. Suffice it to say that Zeller engages in some cinematic misdirection here, but it’s considerably more obvious than it was in his last film.

Where “The Father” was subtle and twisty, this drama is more agitated and restless, even melodramatic at times – but that’s a directorial decision that certainly fits the dark and troubling subject that the film explores but doesn’t exploit.

“ The Son” opens in NYC and LA Nov. 23 and nationwide Jan. 20 via Sony Pictures Classics.

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‘The Son’ Review: Father Doesn’t Know Best

Hugh Jackman plays the father of a troubled teenager in Florian Zeller’s leaden drama.

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A man, left, and his teenage son, right, sitting on the sofa watching television.

By Natalia Winkelman

At one point in “The Son,” directed by Florian Zeller and based on his play of the same name, a clinician briefs a divorced mother and father on their teenage son’s condition after a mental health emergency. “He’s in very good hands now,” the doctor says, referring to the hospital staff. “Now” is the key word; the implication is that the wealthy, well-meaning Peter (Hugh Jackman) and Kate (Laura Dern) are unfit to handle the issues their son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) is facing.

In my professional opinion (I’m a critic, not a physician), the same should be said of the movie surrounding Nicholas, which tackles adolescent depression about as deftly as an estate lawyer performing open-heart surgery. Despite its contemporary New York City setting, “The Son” seems to have appropriated a midcentury understanding of mental illness, and the emotion on display feels even more artificial than the rooftop vista erected outside the windows of Peter’s industrial-chic Manhattan loft.

Peter shares this apartment with his wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), and their infant son, and though his work as an attorney is consuming, he relishes his downtown idyll. But the sweetness curdles when Peter learns that Nicholas, who lives with Kate in Brooklyn, has been acting volatile and would prefer to move in with him. Never mind that the teenager is friendless, cutting class and has taken to self-harm; Kate and Peter agree that a change of scenery will restore the cheerful child they raised. (We eventually meet a 6-year-old Nicholas in flashbacks that are so euphoric they could double as airline commercials.)

The leadenness of “The Son” is puzzling given the ingenuity of Zeller’s “The Father,” which positions the audience within the point of view of an aging man with dementia. (The film won two Oscars in 2021.) Unlike that triumph of subjectivity, “The Son” declines to probe the perspectives of Peter or Nicholas, compelling the audience to survey the wreckage of their relationship from a distance. It also leaves the actors seeming somewhat stranded, trading clunky lines or lurching into tantrums without the psychological depth to underpin their affliction. The movie may take place inside a pit of despair, but the theatrics leave us with the uncanny sensation of feeling nothing at all.

The Son Rated PG-13. Divorce and remorse. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. In theaters.

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The Son review – laceratingly painful drama of familial fear and loathing

Florian Zeller’s follow-up to The Father features a tremendous performance from Hugh Jackman, as a divorced lawyer who agrees to look after his troubled offspring

F lorian Zeller has already devastated audiences in 2020 with his movie The Father , based on his own stage play and adapted by Christopher Hampton, with Anthony Hopkins as the old man being cared for by his daughter played by Olivia Colman while he succumbs to the tragic endgame of dementia. Maybe the title of Zeller’s new film The Son – again from his own play with a Hampton screenplay – provides a kind of emotional rhyme or complement to that.

The Son is a laceratingly painful drama, an incrementally increased agony without anaesthetic. At the centre of it, Hugh Jackman gives a performance of great dignity, presence and intelligence as Peter, a prosperous New York lawyer whose life is enviable: he is divorced (that situation being now amicable enough), remarried with a baby son, and on the verge of a political consultancy which might give him some sort of superstar future role in the White House.

But then his first wife gets in touch saying that his 17-year-old son by their relationship is deeply depressed, playing truant from school and begging to stay with him for a while. Peter decides he can’t honourably refuse; his new wife decides she can’t refuse her husband - and everything is to lead to darkness without anyone ever being able to tell if they did the wrong thing, if there was a right thing to do or a right turn to take, or if the nature of mental illness means that this is all irrelevant anyway. Vanessa Kirby plays Peter’s new wife Beth; Laura Dern is his first wife Kate; Anthony Hopkins has a cameo as Peter’s formidably angry father and the young Australian actor Zen McGrath is Peter’s troubled son Nicholas.

The Son is a beautifully composed and literate drama with impeccable performances, especially from Jackman: the sleek Manhattan lawyer gleaming with corporate prestige in his corner office (the faint unreality of the studio sets with the city’s diorama beyond the window work in the movie’s favour). But small things betray his internal pain: his handsomeness is etched with strain and he has never shaved properly: a stubble of sleeplessness and anxiety shows through.

I am not certain quite what I think about this film’s Kodak-moment flashbacks to happier times or to the final scene: it packs a sledgehammer punch, no doubt about it, but I also felt something too slick in it, a conjuring trick played on the audience’s emotions, a legerdemain which doesn’t have the meaning of the POV-shifts and reality-erosion in The Father.

Watching The Son means uneasily pondering possible influences, such Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, or Philip Larkin’s This Be the Verse, or indeed Anton Chekhov’s dictum about what happens when a certain object is produced in act one. But there is something distinctively Hellerian in its pessimism. Peter accepts Nicholas into his now crowded home because it is the right thing to do, but also because at one level he wants to rebuke his own cold and uncaring and irresponsible father – and in fact engineers an unannounced visit to the old man, clearly just so he can tell him what is happening with Nicholas and then use that as a pretext to dredge up the past.

Dern shows how Kate herself is over their breakup only in the sense she is able to accept it rationally, but if anything has a clearer sense of her grievances – and is perhaps not entirely displeased that young Nicholas could now damage or even destroy Peter’s remarriage. Kirby shows her candid fear of Nicholas – who is sometimes charming, sometimes unsettling – and Nicholas himself is candidly angry about the way his father abandoned him (as he sees it), but his attitude is different; he wants something in return for a ruined past.

But what? Does he want to bring them back together: if so, it seems to be working, in its way, but at what cost? Or is he simply transfixed and horrified, in a way that adults learn to suppress, by the terrible and unjust irreversibility of the past? Or is he just psychologically disturbed in ways that do not admit of analysis?

At a level deeper than this, I think The Son is about the middle-aged generation’s fear of and incomprehension of the young. Peter looks into Nicholas’s face – sometimes smiling, sometimes crying, sometimes eerily blank – and can see nothing there that tells him the truth about what his son is thinking and feeling and what he should be thinking and feeling in return. Again: I’m unsure about that showy final scene. But this is such a powerful and literate film.

Drama films
Hugh Jackman
Florian Zeller
Vanessa Kirby
Venice film festival 2022

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Howard For Film

I don't sugarcoat., movie review: the son.

Oscar-winning writer-director Florian Zeller is back with the second installment of his trilogy that revolves around mental health. While THE SON isn’t as stagey as THE FATHER , it’s neither as disorienting nor as powerful.

Peter Miller (Hugh Jackman, REMINISCENCE ; THE GREATEST SHOWMAN ) has, by all appearances, a pretty good life. He and his partner, Beth (Vanessa Kirby, PIECES OF A WOMAN ; MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT ), along with their newborn son, Theo, live in a swank New York City flat that includes a wall of exposed brick, he has an important job that affords him an office with unobstructed view of the Manhattan skyline, and a plum job offer in Washington, DC, is in the wind. His idyllic bubble bursts, though, when his ex-wife, Kate (Laura Dern, LITTLE WOMEN ), knocks on his door one evening. It seems their 17-year-old son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), has skipped school for the past month and Kate is at wits’ end with the teenager. Peter goes to see him the next day and Nicholas tells his father that he wants to live with him and Beth. Peter wants to be a better father to his son than own father (played by Anthony Hopkins, THE FATHER) was to him and he agrees to take him in, much to Beth’s quiet reluctance. He also enrols Nicholas in a school in their neighbourhood and the boy appears to be happy with the new arrangements. Appearances, though, are illusory.

While Zeller hit the nail on the head in THE FATHER when it came to depicting dementia and how it affects not just the person who is suffering from it but also the family members who have to deal with it, he seems to be out to lunch with this story about teenage depression. It’s bizarre that Peter, Kate and even Beth are all clueless at reading the warning signals that Nicholas is sending out to them. Once they put Nicholas into the new school, they think their problems are all solved and they can get back to their lives. The teen was able to skip a month of school before anyone was the wiser. Why aren’t Peter or Kate maintaining an open line of communication with the new school? At the same time, why aren’t they discussing Nicholas’ progress with his therapist? This isn’t 1980 where Beth Jarrett from ORDINARY PEOPLE buries her head in the sand when it comes to her son’s mental health issues. This is 2023 where we talk openly about these things. It’s also when many kids are on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication. I’m not saying that’s a good thing but why aren’t Peter and Kate even discussing this option with the therapist?

Part of the answer, we learn, lies in Peter’s relationship with his own father. THE SON, it turns out, is supposed to be less about Nicholas than it is about Peter. However, with the exception of one masterfully acted five-minute scene between Jackman and Hopkins, Zeller barely scratches the surface of what makes Peter tick. Had Zeller focused his story on the Peter-Dad dynamic rather than on Nicholas’ angst, then maybe THE SON would have been a worthy second part of this trilogy. As it is, though, Zeller offers up very little about Nicholas’ mindset and even less about Peter’s. Peter says he’s doing everything he can to put Nicholas back on track but what’s he really doing? Not much, it seems. Faced with little character development, Zeller then turns to repetitive imagery to try to elicit some sympathy for Peter. His work life goes up and down while his home life spins round and round.

What we end up gleaning from Peter and Nicholas’ interactions, and this is perhaps by accident, is that Nicholas is really good at gaslighting everyone. The issue is not his depression. It’s that he’s a sociopath. Unfortunately, that wrinkle is completely ignored by everyone. He says he wants to be a writer but does he really or is he just telling Peter what Peter wants to hear? That’s what sociopaths do. He says he’s never gotten over his parents’ divorce and what he perceives to be Peter’s abandonment of him. One would presume that Peter has been physically, if not emotionally, present in his son’s life since the divorce so why has this become such a revelation now? Oh, that’s right. Nicholas is a sociopath and he knows exactly how to play Peter and Kate. Not to minimize Nicholas’ depression but Zeller doesn’t take the story where is needs to go.

Needless to say, THE SON is terribly frustrating and it’s completely predictable too. Zeller even telegraphs the ending to the audience ten minutes into the story’s second act. It then becomes another hour of watching elevators going up and down and washing machines spinning round and round before the inevitable happens.

THE SON opens in Hong Kong on Thursday (January 12th). It’s a dud. Hopefully, THE MOTHER or whatever the third part of the trilogy will be called, will be more interesting than this.

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'The Son' Ending Explained: A Divisive and Tragic Conclusion

The film and it's ending have divided critics and viewers.

After the overwhelming critical success of The Father , film fans were anxiously anticipating whatever playwright turned writer/director Florian Zeller was going to be working on next. Zeller had managed to avoid the issues that many playwrights had in adapting their own work for the screen in The Father by using inventive techniques in perspective and cleverly doctoring his own work to make it flow as a narrative feature; the film earned him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Zeller’s new film, The Son , is also based on one of his own plays and deals with serious health issues in an intimate manner. Hugh Jackman ’s performance was earmarked early on as a potential contender in this year’s Best Actor race; should Jackman win, he would rank among the few “EGOTs” in the industry.. However, reviews for The Son have been incredibly mixed since it debuted at the Venice International Film Festival in September, with some critics taking issue with how Zeller chooses to tackle the issue of depression in the film’s final moments.

What Is 'The Son' About?

The Son follows the successful political consultant Peter Miller (Jackman), who has moved in with his new partner Beth ( Vanessa Kirby ) to a luxurious new apartment with their infant son. Amidst his professional success, Peter is notified by his ex-wife, Kate ( Laura Dern ), that their 17-year-old son Nicholas ( Zen McGrath ) has not been attending school and has chosen to leave his mother in an act of defiance. Despite accepting his dream job in Washington D.C. and caring for a young baby, Peter decides to take Nicholas in and provide him with the support that he clearly needs.

Similar to The Father, The Son features a divisive ending that may split moviegoers down the middle; while it could be moving for some audiences, others may find it disrespectful or manipulative. Here is how The Son ends, explained.

Is Peter a Bad Father to Nicholas?

Although Peter attempts to bond with his son, he clearly knows very little about him, and Nicholas isn’t that keen on opening up. Given Peter’s hardworking attitude at work and commitment to raising a family, he’s constantly busy and is not able to devote his entire day to looking after Nicholas. His conflicting goals put a strain on his relationship with Beth; she feels uncomfortable around Nicholas and irritated that Peter cancels social engagements in an attempt to bond with him.

Trouble begins to arise as Peter becomes aware of Nicholas’ issues with depression, and his history of threatening self-harm. Many of Peter’s attempts at bonding with Nicholas prove that he’s not adept at raising a teenager; after he tries to teach Nicholas how to dance, he subsequently ignores him to spend more time with Beth. Beth also has conflicts with Nicholas after he hears her proclamation that she doesn’t want him looking after her infant child.

RELATED: Hugh Jackman in ‘Bad Education’ Makes Me Wish He'd Stop Playing Wolverine

Is Anthony Hopkins in 'The Son'?

Sir Anthony Hopkins won his second Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in The Father , and Zeller subsequently cast him in his follow-up. Hopkins has a brief role as Peter’s father, Anthony, who has been suffering from dementia and is now retired. Due to the similarities, some theater analysts have taken this to mean that The Son is a prequel to The Father ; the two plays were originally part of a spiritual trilogy that Zeller wrote that also included 2015’s The Mother . There are some allusions that suggest that Hopkins is playing the same character and that The Son takes place before Anthony’s dementia gets more extreme in The Father .

Early on, Peter alludes to his father’s mental condition in a brief conversation with a coworker and indicates that they are not close. When Peter comes to visit Anthony, they end up arguing about his similarly irresponsible parenting style. Anthony was not attentive or caring to Peter when he was a child, and Peter feels that this has made him similarly ignorant about being a parent. However, Anthony only lashes out in anger, and Peter leaves him on bad terms.

Does Nicholas Kill Himself?

Peter becomes aware that Nicholas has not been attending school as he promised, and instead takes long walks in the park alone. They get into a terse argument; Peter accuses Nicholas of not working hard enough, and in turn, Nicholas accuses him of being an irresponsible father. As tensions rise between the two, Nicholas attempts to take his own life and is rushed to the hospital. A stern medical expert at the facility tells Peter that Nicholas has to stay under professional care, as he is likely to make a similar attempt on his life if he is not monitored. Nicholas violently reacts to the possibility of staying in an isolated location and receiving help, but Peter and Beth decide that for his safety, he must reside in the facility.

Later, Peter and Beth decide to take Nicholas home after they feel that he will have more progress if he is staying with them. Initially, it appears that Nicholas is in much better spirits, as he actively participates in conversations and gives an extended monologue about his appreciation for his family. After the reunited family sits down together back at their apartment, Nicholas goes to move back into the room that he had been staying in. A gunshot is heard, but before Nicholas’ fate is confirmed the film cuts to a scene several years later.

Is Peter Dreaming at the End?

Peter is still living in the same apartment, but he receives a surprise visit from Nicholas, who has moved from New York City to Toronto. Nicholas appears to be doing great and shares a pleasant conversation with Peter; he even mentions that he is in a romantic relationship. He gifts his father with a book that he’s written that recounts his struggles with depression, and how his father helped him recover. Peter is overjoyed to see that Nicholas has dedicated the book to him.

However, it is clear from the next moment that Peter is imagining a potential dream scenario, and that Nicholas is dead. The final moments include flashbacks to a happy memory he has of teaching Nicholas to swim on a family vacation when he was younger. He is interrupted from his daze by Beth.

clock This article was published more than 1 year ago

‘The Son’ will make you squirm, for all the wrong reasons

Florian zeller’s follow-up to ‘the father’ has none of that shattering 2020 drama’s subtlety, visual elegance or thematic heft.

Admirers of “The Father,” Florian Zeller’s shattering 2020 drama about dementia and filial devotion, will no doubt be intrigued to learn that Zeller has made “The Son,” a movie that shares some (literal) DNA with its predecessor, but none of the first film’s subtlety, visual elegance or thematic heft. Mawkish, obvious and manipulative, “The Son” is, quite simply, a disappointment, from its pat setup to its equally false — and, quite frankly, cruel — resolution.

Hugh Jackman plays Peter, a middle-aged New York attorney who as “The Son” opens has embarked on a new life with his partner, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), and their new baby when his ex-wife, Kate (Laura Dern), shows up to let Peter know that Nicholas, their 17-year-old son, has been skipping school. Red flags abound in a story that turns out to be about adolescent depression, as well as adult self-deception, generational trauma and wobbly boundaries: Peter, a fixer by nature, is convinced he can get Nicholas back on track by virtue of good intentions and sheer force of will. What ensues is a slow-motion wreck that the audience can see coming down Madison Avenue, complete with a Chekhovian trope that’s as on the nose as it is breathtakingly offensive.

Indeed, “The Son” is so ham-handed, so hysterically pitched and manufactured, that’s it’s difficult to believe it emanated from the same hand that brought such skill to limning the shifting cognitive realities in “The Father.” Anthony Hopkins starred in that film as a man falling down a rabbit hole of confusion and temporal dislocation; here, he plays Peter’s father, whose aggression and insensitivity play like a burlesque of toxic masculinity. Jackman, for his part, brings intensity and focus to a role that calls for calibrated rising panic but also buttoned-up repression. (Bonus: Zeller has made sure to include at least one scene where we can see him dance.) And in just one glance, Dern clearly conveys the grief of a women who has lost not just her husband, but an entire future she had counted on. Sadly, Zen McGrath, as the suffering Nicholas, is given nothing to play outside petulance and moodiness. Unlike, say, “Beautiful Boy,” in which Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet played a father and son embroiled in a fight against addiction, “The Son” doesn’t plumb any surprising depths of mental illness. Instead, Zeller seems content to skim the most lurid surfaces of a subject that is far more complicated and nuanced than the stock beats we see here.

Nowhere is that truer than in “The Son’s” final act, a glib, cynical misdirect of the most melodramatic order. In one fell swoop, Zeller breaks faith not just with his characters, but with his viewers. What may be worse, few of them will believe a word of it.

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains mature thematic material involving suicide, and strong language. 123 minutes.

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‘The Son’ Review: “Powerhouse Performances Fall Prey To Exaggerated Bleakness”

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Florian Zeller’s directorial debut, The Father , became an unlikely awards darling upon its release in 2020. Pulling a major upset for Best Actor at the Academy Awards two years ago for Anthony Hopkins, the film marked a successful transition from stage to screen for Zeller. In a savvy move, Zeller then chose to adapt another one of his successful plays, The Son , to the silver screen. What seemed like a sure thing turned into a minor debacle as early festival reviews lambasted a perceived dour, melodramatic nature. Although both are apt descriptors for The Son , it comes very close to achieving greatness.

READ: ‘Plane’ Review: “Good Enough”

The movie follows businessman and political hopeful Peter Miller (Hugh Jackman), whose life with his wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and newborn son in New York City is as idyllic as it can get. Peter, however, is in for a surprise when his estranged 17-year-old son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) from a previous marriage to Kate (Laura Dern) expresses his desire to live with him. Peter welcomes him with open arms, but he finds himself unable to cope with Nicholas’ severe depressive behavior.

The Son requires audiences to get on its wavelength. To be fair, it’s not an easy wavelength to get on. A grim and, for lack of a better word, depressing mood enshrouds the film. Ben Smithard’s cinematography captures the cold nature of the film’s many upper-class indoor spaces. Always intense music courtesy of Hans Zimmer holds the audience on edge without the briefest hint of a respite. Zeller wants you to know this a serious film about serious topics , as if downtime would make the audience completely forget about the film’s core themes. Whenever The Son works, though, it emulates the intimacy of a black box theatre production.

Jackman has a habit of turning in powerhouse performances that get left by the wayside come awards season. His Peter Miller doesn’t deserve that fate. He plays Peter as someone who is trying his hardest to instill a sense of structure into young Nicholas’ life, using radical, artificial positivity and talk of career to try and get his child to buck up. But underneath that front, Jackman makes it clear that Peter doesn’t know what to do. The cracks widen and Jackman explodes into expressions of pure pathos, guaranteed to wrench the hearts of anyone willing to fully absorb themselves into it. Kirby turns in an excellent performance as someone unnerved by both Nicholas’ anti-social, often confrontational behavior, and Dern makes the soul ache as a woman who’s had her life upended.

Newcomer Zen McGrath fails to live up to the rest of the ensemble as the film’s centerpiece. His character feels more like a collection of nervous breakdowns and tics than an actual representation of mental health issues. Sometimes he overcomes the tendency to lean into simply retreading tropes of depressed characters seen in film and television for eons, but it’s few and far between. It’s a shame because the way Zeller treats Nicholas’ depression is with great care. The script, in general, examines the slow decay that Nicholas’ situation has on the people around him. It’s one of those situations where no one knows what to do.

READ: ‘The Last of Us’ Episode 1 Review: “A Labor of Love”

Bafflingly, The Son nearly destroys all goodwill it’s built up for itself with an extremely tasteless climax. As if the mood weren’t bleak enough, it takes a foray into tragedy that, given any real breathing room, might have worked. Here it feels exploitative and cheap. This is where the film sinks under its own darkness, leaving a sour taste in the mouth that’s hard to wash out. Nevertheless, The Son is worth watching as a showcase for powerhouse talent and some brilliant writing from Florian Zeller. It’s just unfortunate that it couldn’t get out of its own way. – James Preston Poole

Rating: 6/10

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The Son Is So Bad, You May Question Whether You Actually Liked The Father

After watching The Son , I went back and rewatched The Father , French playwright turned filmmaker Florian Zeller’s 2020 directorial debut, to see if it really was as good as I remember it being . And honestly, it’s better than good — it’s an all-timer, a mundane horror movie of crushing effectiveness in the guise of Oscar bait. Over the course of its ingenious depiction of dementia from the inside, it transforms a regular London apartment into a hall of mirrors and a small cast into a disorienting ensemble of untrustworthy caretakers, anchored by an Anthony Hopkins performance as fearlessly flinty as it is full of pathos. The Father is such an achievement that it’s hard to believe The Son was made by the same person. Zeller’s latest stars Hugh Jackman as a New York lawyer with a struggling teenager from his first marriage, and it’s everything The Father wasn’t — emotionally unconvincing, dramatically rote, and unapologetic about treating a child’s depression as a parental burden. It’s bad enough to make me wonder if The Father was a fluke, representing some unrepeatable confluence of everything Zeller does well, with the rest just being empty showboating.

Play adaptations are difficult in general and rest on theatrical conventions ( like the need to gather characters in one place for long bouts of conversation) that are always in danger of feeling claustrophobic and contrived onscreen. Both of Zeller’s features to date have been adaptations of works written for the stage: The Father made its way to the West End and Broadway after debuting in Paris in 2012, while The Son premiered in Paris in 2018. (Completing this family trilogy is the unadapted The Mother , which premiered in 2019 in an Atlantic Theater Company production starring Isabelle Huppert and Chris Noth.) But artificiality was a feature, not a bug, for The Father , which takes place inside the unsteady reality experienced by Hopkins’s character. The Son is more straightforward and lands awkwardly somewhere between naturalism and the deliberately heightened. Its stiltedness is compounded by the strangeness of its synthetic New York, which sits outside the windows of the spacious apartment Peter Miller (Jackman) shares with his wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), and their baby like a digital backdrop.

Is it possible that two monied New Yorkers would handle their child’s depression poorly? Absolutely. Is it likely that they would be as unfamiliar with the very concept of depression as Peter and his ex-wife, Kate (Laura Dern), seem to be? It would be more believable if their son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), had by this point seen every therapist and psychiatrist in the city, taken a variety of meds for a test-drive, and watched his treatment become a topic of discussion among the parents of classmates dealing with their own mental-health journeys. But Nicholas isn’t even a pawn in an embittered split, as he appears to be at first, getting shuttled back and forth between Kate’s Brooklyn home and Peter’s Manhattan loft — that, at least, would feel like a human dynamic. The Son seems as baffled by Nicholas’s struggles as Kate and Peter are, regarding him as if he were a curly-haired alien, an effect compounded by McGrath’s Tommy Wiseau–esque bleat of lines like “I feel like my head is exploding!”

Peter left Kate for the younger Beth, with whom he has started a new family, and in some ways, Nicholas serves as a ghost of the past as well as a sort of karmic punishment for the reset his father pulled on his home life. It’s not exactly an empathetic perspective on a child’s depression, and while Peter reacts with denial, frustration, and some wallowing in his own insecurities about fatherhood, the movie can’t reckon with mental illness as anything more than an abstraction. If it were sharper and more immersed in Peter’s mind-set, The Son might have been able to pull this off — making Nicholas’s unpredictability more plausibly frightening and Peter’s self-centeredness more arrogant and all-consuming. But aside from a sequence taking place in one character’s imagination, Zeller doesn’t angle the proceedings as subjective, and Jackman, offering up a performance of light phoniness, appears unwilling to play Peter in a way that would read as unsympathetic. Because of this, the film settles into a tone that’s curiously reminiscent of a high-end PSA, up to and including a literal Chekhov’s-gun scene. The ending may be heavily foreshadowed, but that doesn’t make the lead-up any less exasperating or what happens any less egregious. The Son is meant to be a parental nightmare, yet its only effective scene is the one in which Anthony Hopkins turns up to exude frost for five minutes as Peter’s own semi-absent dad. Hopkins is so good that he could be in a whole other movie — which I guess he is. Just watch The Father again.

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Nowhere Special

When John, a thirty-five-year-old window cleaner, is given only a few months to live, he attempts to find a new, perfect family for his three-year-old son, determined to shield him from the ... Read all When John, a thirty-five-year-old window cleaner, is given only a few months to live, he attempts to find a new, perfect family for his three-year-old son, determined to shield him from the terrible reality of the situation. When John, a thirty-five-year-old window cleaner, is given only a few months to live, he attempts to find a new, perfect family for his three-year-old son, determined to shield him from the terrible reality of the situation.

Uberto Pasolini
James Norton
Daniel Lamont
Carol Moore
57 User reviews
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72 Metascore
5 wins & 8 nominations

Mrs. Parkes

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Trivia James Norton would often visit Belfast and spend time playing with toys in Daniel Lamont's bedroom. He said Daniel would visit the set and be excited to act alongside him because of it.

Michael : What's adopt, daddy?

User reviews 57

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Aug 15, 2021
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Long-lost first model of the USS Enterprise from ‘Star Trek’ boldly goes home after twisting voyage

The first model of the USS Enterprise is displayed at Heritage Auctions in Los Angeles, April 13, 2024. The model — used in the original “Star Trek” television series — has been returned to Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, the son of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, decades after it went missing in the 1970s. (Josh David Jordan/Heritage Auctions via AP)

Joe Maddalena, executive vice president of Heritage Auctions, left, and Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, the son of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, shake hands over the recently recovered first model of the USS Enterprise at the Heritage Auctions in Los Angeles, April 13, 2024. The model — used in the original “Star Trek” television series — has been returned to Eugene, decades after it went missing in the 1970s. (Josh David Jordan/Heritage Auctions via AP)

Joe Maddalena, executive vice president of Heritage Auctions, left, and Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, the son of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, view the recently recovered first model of the USS Enterprise at Heritage Auctions in Los Angeles, April 13, 2024. The model — used in the original “Star Trek” television series — has been returned to Eugene, decades after it went missing in the 1970s. (Josh David Jordan/Heritage Auctions via AP)

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DALLAS (AP) — The first model of the USS Enterprise — used in the opening credits of the original “Star Trek” television series — has boldly gone back home, returning to creator Gene Roddenberry’s son decades after it went missing.

The model’s disappearance sometime in the 1970s had become the subject of lore, so it caused a stir when it popped up on eBay last fall. The sellers quickly took it down, and then contacted Dallas-based Heritage Auctions to authenticate it. Last weekend, the auction house facilitated the model’s return.

Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, CEO of Roddenberry Entertainment, said he’s thrilled to have the model that had graced the desk of his father, who died in 1991 at age 70.

“This is not going home to adorn my shelves,” Roddenberry said. “This is going to get restored and we’re working on ways to get it out so the public can see it and my hope is that it will land in a museum somewhere.”

AP AUDIO: Long-lost first model of the USS Enterprise from ‘Star Trek’ boldly goes home after twisting voyage.

AP correspondent Margie Szaroleta reports on the return of the original model of the USS Enterprise from the TV show “Star Trek.”

Heritage’s executive vice president, Joe Maddalena, said the auction house was contacted by people who said they’d discovered it a storage unit, and when it was brought into their Beverly Hills office, he and a colleague “instantly knew that it was the real thing.”

Colored pencils sit around a drawing of "Bluey" the Australian kids' television program character on a sketch pad Friday, April 19, 2024, in Phoenix, Ariz. (AP Photo/Cheyanne Mumphrey)

They reached out to Roddenberry, who said he appreciates that everyone involved agreed returning the model was the right thing to do. He wouldn’t go into details on the agreement reached but said “I felt it important to reward that and show appreciation for that.”

Maddalena said the model vanished in the 1970s after Gene Roddenberry loaned it to makers of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” which was released in 1979.

“No one knew what happened to it,” Rod Roddenberry said.

The 3-foot (0.91-meter) model of the USS Enterprise was used in the show’s original pilot episode as well as the opening credits of the resulting TV series, and was the prototype for the 11-foot (3-meter) version featured in the series’ episodes. The larger model is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

The original “Star Trek” television series, which aired in the late 1960s, kicked off an ever-expanding multiverse of cultural phenomena, with TV and movie spinoffs and conventions where a fanbase of zealous and devoted Trekkies can’t get enough of memorabilia.

This USS Enterprise model would easily sell for more than $1 million at auction, but really “it’s priceless,” Maddalena said.

“It could sell for any amount and I wouldn’t be surprised because of what it is,” he said. “It is truly a cultural icon.”

Roddenberry, who was just a young boy when the model went missing, said he has spotty memories of it, “almost a deja vu.” He said it wasn’t something he’d thought much about until people began contacting him after it appeared on eBay.

“I don’t think I really, fully comprehended at first that this was the first Enterprise ever created,” he said.

He said he has no idea if there was something nefarious behind the disappearance all those decades ago or if it was just mistakenly lost, but it would be interesting to find out more about what happened.

“This piece is incredibly important and it has its own story and this would be a great piece of the story,” Roddenberry said.

Thankfully, he said, the discovery has cleared up one rumor: That it was destroyed because as a young boy, he’d thrown it into a pool.

“Finally I’m vindicated after all these years,” he said with a laugh.

‘My Child Has My Doctor’s Face’ on Lifetime: How to watch online for free

Updated: Apr. 20, 2024, 4:02 p.m. |
Published: Apr. 20, 2024, 4:02 p.m.
Mike Rose, cleveland.com

“ My Child Has My Doctor’s Face ” airs tonight, Saturday, April 20, at 8 p.m. Eastern on Lifetime. It stars Natalie Polisson, Daniel O’Reilly, Jason Tobias and Kelsey Fordham.

You can watch the movie live on Lifetime for free on multiple streaming services including Philo , Frndly and DirecTV Stream . Each offers a free trial to new subscribers. Also, Sling also has promotional offers for new customers.

Polisson and Tobias play Jessica and Dylan, parents to young Henry. When Jessica finds out Henry’s biological father is actually her fertility doctor, played by O’Reilly, she teams up with another former patient to reveal the truth before he can ruin any more families.

What streaming services carry Lifetime?

You can watch Lifetime on Philo, DirecTV Stream, Sling and Frndly.

If you don’t cancel before your free trials end, Philo offers over 70 channels for $25/month. DirecTV Stream is $79.99/month and offers more than 75 channels of news, entertainment and sports. You can also watch Lifetime via Sling TV (promotional offer of 50% off first month). Frndly offers more than 40 channels with both live and on-demand service for $6.99 per month. All services with trial subscriptions can be cancelled before they end to avoid a charge.

Cable Guide: What channel is Lifetime on?

You can find which channel Lifetime is on by using the channel finders here: Cox , Verizon Fios , AT&T U-verse , Comcast Xfinity , Spectrum/Charter , Optimum/Altice , DIRECTV and Dish .

Watch other recent Lifetime premieres

How to watch Lifetime’s ‘Have You Seen My Son?’ online
‘Locked in My House’ | How to watch on LMN for free online
How to watch Lifetime’s ‘Killer Fortune Teller’ online

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The Good Son (1993) Movie Review
Taught his son a few tricks😏 #movie #series
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COMMENTS

The Son movie review & film summary (2003)
Written and Directed by. Jean-Pierre. Luc Dardenne. "The Son" is complete, self-contained and final. All the critic can bring to it is his admiration. It needs no insight or explanation. It sees everything and explains all. It is as assured and flawless a telling of sadness and joy as I have ever seen.
The Son
After the reason for Olivier's dark obsession is finally exposed, he realizes that he must then make a difficult decision. Genre: Drama. Original Language: French (Canada) Director: Jean-Pierre ...
The Son
THE SON centers on Peter (Hugh Jackman), whose hectic life with his infant and new partner Beth (Vanessa Kirby) is upended when his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) appears at his door to discuss their ...
The Son
Rotten Tomatoes, home of the Tomatometer, is the most trusted measurement of quality for Movies & TV. The definitive site for Reviews, Trailers, Showtimes, and Tickets
'The Son' Review: Hugh Jackman in Florian Zeller's Depression Drama
September 7, 2022 10:15am. Hugh Jackman in 'The Son' Courtesy of Venice Film Festival. Hugh Jackman 's affecting performance as a father accustomed to managing every situation, in over his head ...
BBC
The Son (Le Fils) (2003) Reviewed by Tom Dawson. Updated 6 March 2003. The middle-aged Olivier (Olivier Gourmet) teaches carpentry at a centre for disadvantaged boys in an unnamed Belgian city ...
The Son Movie Review
Parents need to know that The Son is a heavy drama about teenage depression and the crippling effect it can have on a family, with themes around suicide, self-harm, and strong language.It stars Hugh Jackman as Peter, whose teen son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), comes to live with him, his partner Beth (Vanessa Kirby), and their baby.Nicholas is living with mental health issues and the film examines ...
The Son Movie Review
Parents need to know that The Son is a psychological thriller from Argentina, in Spanish with English subtitles. The movie is based on The Protective Wife, a novel by Guillermo Martinez.An impassioned artist and his biologist wife conceive a much-wanted baby boy. The wife's isolating, obsessive behavior during the pregnancy and after the baby is born, combined with her husband's intensifying ...
The Son review
The Son, which, like The Father, was adapted by Zeller from his stage play, is a solid, affecting domestic drama that deals with a parent - high-achieving lawyer Peter (Hugh Jackman ...
'The Son' Review: Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern Go Deep
Music: Hans Zimmer. With: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Hugh Quarshie, Anthony Hopkins. In devastating family drama 'The Son,' director Florian Zeller assembles a stellar ...
The Son review: an emotionally manipulative family drama
The Son. "The Son strives to be a devastating and insightful family drama, but it ends up feeling more like a shallow, emotionally manipulative exploration of misery.". The Son wants you to ...
'The Son' Review: Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern Battle Pain ...
This review originally ran September 7, 2022, in conjunction with the film's world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. When he made his directorial debut with "The Father" last year ...
'The Son' Review: Father Doesn't Know Best
It also leaves the actors seeming somewhat stranded, trading clunky lines or lurching into tantrums without the psychological depth to underpin their affliction. The movie may take place inside a ...
The Son review
The Son is a beautifully composed and literate drama with impeccable performances, especially from Jackman: the sleek Manhattan lawyer gleaming with corporate prestige in his corner office (the ...
Movie Review: The Son
Oscar-winning writer-director Florian Zeller is back with the second installment of his trilogy that revolves around mental health. While THE SON isn't as stagey as THE FATHER, it's neither as disorienting nor as powerful.. Peter Miller (Hugh Jackman, REMINISCENCE; THE GREATEST SHOWMAN) has, by all appearances, a pretty good life.He and his partner, Beth (Vanessa Kirby, PIECES OF A WOMAN ...
'The Son' Ending Explained: A Divisive and Tragic Conclusion
Liam Gaughan is a film and TV writer at Collider. He has been writing film reviews and news coverage for ten years. Between relentlessly adding new titles to his watchlist and attending as many ...
Review
January 18, 2023 at 9:55 a.m. EST. Hugh Jackman, left, and Zen McGrath in "The Son." (Rekha Garton/See-Saw Films/Sony Pictures Classics) ( 1 star) Admirers of "The Father," Florian Zeller ...
'The Son' Movie Review
The movie follows businessman and political hopeful Peter Miller (Hugh Jackman), whose life with his wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and newborn son in New York City is as idyllic as it can get. Peter, however, is in for a surprise when his estranged 17-year-old son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) from a previous marriage to Kate (Laura Dern) expresses his ...
The Son
("The Father" was this critic's #6 film of 2020. Here is the movie review.) Zeller (along with screenwriter Christopher Hampton) adapted his 2012 play, "Le Pere", for the silver screen, and in 2022, this modern-day renaissance man (and Hampton) customized his 2018 stage work, "Le Fils", for the movies too.
Tears of the Sun (2003)
Tears of the Sun: Directed by Antoine Fuqua. With Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, Cole Hauser, Eamonn Walker. A Special-Ops commander leads his team into the Nigerian jungle in order to rescue a doctor who will only join them if they agree to save 70 refugees too.
Fresh Air for April 18, 2024: Our fragile food system : NPR
Movie Reviews 'The Beast' jumps from 1910, to 2014, to 2044, tracking fear through the ages. This wildly original adaptation of the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle follows human ...
'The Son' Review: So Bad, You'll Question 'The Father'
A Hidden Sexual-Assault Scandal at the New York Philharmonic; No One's Watching the Best Comedy on Netflix; Cinematrix No. 35: April 12, 2024; The 10 Best Movies and TV Shows to Watch This Weekend
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)
Sonic the Hedgehog 3: Directed by Jeff Fowler. With Ben Schwartz, Colleen O'Shaughnessey, Idris Elba, Keanu Reeves. Plot under wraps
Nowhere Special (2020)
Nowhere Special: Directed by Uberto Pasolini. With James Norton, Daniel Lamont, Carol Moore, Valene Kane. When John, a thirty-five-year-old window cleaner, is given only a few months to live, he attempts to find a new, perfect family for his three-year-old son, determined to shield him from the terrible reality of the situation.
Long-lost first model of the USS Enterprise from 'Star Trek' boldly
1 of 8 | . The first model of the USS Enterprise is displayed at Heritage Auctions in Los Angeles, April 13, 2024. The model — used in the original "Star Trek" television series — has been returned to Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, the son of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, decades after it went missing in the 1970s.
'My Child Has My Doctor's Face' on Lifetime: How to watch online for
Mike Rose, cleveland.com. " My Child Has My Doctor's Face " airs tonight, Saturday, April 20, at 8 p.m. Eastern on Lifetime. It stars Natalie Polisson, Daniel O'Reilly, Jason Tobias and ...
'Nowhere Special' Review: James Norton in Tender Father-Son Drama
Nowhere Special. The Bottom Line Distinguished by its restraint and emotional integrity. Release date: Friday, April 26. Cast: James Norton, Daniel Lamont, Eileen O'Higgins, Stella McCusker ...

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'The Son' Ending Explained: A Divisive and Tragic Conclusion

What Is 'The Son' About?

Is Peter a Bad Father to Nicholas?

Is Anthony Hopkins in 'The Son'?

Does Nicholas Kill Himself?

Is Peter Dreaming at the End?