The Son

Director Florian Zeller again finds his focus on the father in this depressing drama

Zen McGrath, Laura Dern, and Hugh Jackman make the best of a lacking script in The Son.

There’s never been a problem that Peter (Hugh Jackman) didn’t tackle head-on. He’s a high-flying Manhattanite who’s considering a run for political office. With his beautiful young wife and adorable infant son, his prospects are looking bright. Those plans come to a screeching halt when his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) shows up on his doorstep.

Kate has been trying to manage their son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), but the situation has become tenuous. Nicholas is filled with rage, showing signs of deep depression, and skipping school. Kate can’t handle him and fears she’s not reaching him. It’s Peter’s turn.

Sure that Nicholas’ problems stem from his mother’s more lenient parenting style, he says he’ll take the boy, confident he’ll be able to fix him in a matter of weeks. But Nicholas isn’t just a boy in need of a little structure, he’s suffering from severe untreated depression. Peter getting him an internship and asking him to go jogging isn’t going to cut it.

As Nicholas continues to spiral, Peter’s current wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby) begins to worry about whether or not he’s safe to have in the house. Peter ignores her concerns, convinced if he just pushes the boy a little harder, they can get through these rough teen years.

Can Peter’s dogged positive outlook help Nicholas?

Playwright/director Florian Zeller made a stunning directorial debut with The Father, a deeply personal and touching depiction of a man suffering from dementia. The play was the first of Zeller’s family trilogy, The Son is the second offering, and The Mother will presumably follow sometime in the future. But where The Father gave viewers an understanding of dementia from the point of view of the man suffering from the disease, The Son is an outside perspective. It may as well be called The Father Part II, because we’re constantly with Peter, experiencing his denial and fear. Nicholas remains a mystery.

And that is where The Son truly fails. While Zeller’s first feature was a precisely nuanced look at a man who could no longer trust his sense of reality, The Son falls into “A Very Special Episode” territory. Zeller isn’t really interested in Nicholas’ mindset, he’s interested in Peter’s view of Nicholas’ mindset. The film is more about how Peter’s generation trauma — his father (played entertainingly by Anthony Hopkins) is a narcissist who only cares about Peter’s success as a reflection on himself — shaped Peter’s ability to deal with adversity. It’s an intriguing concept, but one we don’t dwell on long enough to make up for the cliché ridden script.  

It’s easy to see why Jackman leaped at the role since The Son is nothing but a string of monologues and closeups to show him off. While he has tamped down on his more theatrical acting style, the role of Peter still feels like a long string of audition monologues loosely woven into the semblance of a character. Everything is very dramatic, but it all feels showy. There’s no lived-in pain or horror here.

As Nicholas, Zen McGrath is given little to do. We get glimpses into Peter’s ability to manipulate, but for the most part, he’s sent to mope in the corner while Jackman monologues and takes over scenes. It’s a curiously unsympathetic view of someone suffering from mental illness, especially considering the care taken in The Father to show the audience how disorienting, frightening, and heartbreaking dementia is for everyone affected by the illness. Instead, we get Peter, who is almost pathological in his ability to make everything about him. Peter’s got speeches, Peter’s got dreams of his son’s future, Peter has stressors at work and home. But we get no time with Nicholas, no real empathy for the crushing condition that’s brought him so low.

And that is the issue with The Son, it’s not actually concerned about Nicholas. This is a film about parents’ pain. It’s a movie about feeling like a failure when your kid isn’t exactly what you imagined them to be. But in examining that feeling of failure, Zeller makes Nicholas an object rather than a person. No one, including the writer/director, is actually concerned about what’s going on with Nicholas, they’re concerned about what Nicholas means to them.

Zeller also resorts to filmmaking cliches as well as writing ones. You get about 50 shots of Chekhov’s Washing Machine (behind which is a gun, because why not store a gun loosely in an apartment with a depressive and an infant?) throughout the film. It’s supposed to build tension but works to simply remind the viewer that the end game is clear from the first 20 minutes of the film.

Zeller is a brilliant writer with real insight into mental strife and human foibles…when he wants to be. But with The Son, we see that even people with great empathy and instincts can take a false step. If you’re looking for a film that offers you a real look into how depression corrupts the mind and alters thinking, you won’t find it here.

Verdict: There are plenty of awards-clip moments for Hugh Jackman in this film, but not a lot of heart or insight.

The Son is rated PG-13 and available in theaters Jan. 20.