The Son

When I began this movie, I really had no idea where the story was going to go. I just saw that it was a Hugh Jackman film and wanted to see it. He's always been one of my favorite actors. This story is very personal to me because not only have I too dealt with mental illness for a long time now, but I have also lost several loved ones to suicide. My heart felt like it was being ripped from my chest. Watching this story also made me question how I have dealt with my own children at times. Now, they are all adults but one of my sons deals with depression and anxiety and there were some years during his adolescence that I really worried if he would try to hurt himself. I encourage everyone who watches this film, to hugged your children tight, constantly tell them you love them, and pay attention to them. It is so easy to get involved in life and miss little clues that are right there. But truthfully, just as it is performed in this movie, our love can prevent us from seeing the truth because we don't want to believe it. This was a very touching movie.

Whether or not this is about behavior, due to some degree of mental illness, both parents and step-mother, especially the father, seem completely out of touch with their son's very real and obvious psychiatric and emotional problems to the degree of appearing themselves part of the problem, if not even the trigger of the escalation.

But I am not sure what the movie was telling us? Somewhere between script, direction and editing the whole thing got either diluted to indecisiveness of message, or confusion about the moral we were supposed to walk away with.

Even the actors seemed confused as to how they were supposed to deliver their parts.

It could be argued that real life is like that, but I've had 64 years of it and I would disagree.

The kid had real psychiatric issues and he was even explaining them to his parents, who were competitive go-getters by nature and they seemed to be in total denial of their son's reality.

I think the movie was a good idea badly executed.

The script seemed choppy and not believable, especially in the beginning; I had that feeling where you're acutely aware that they are actors doing a scene. More importantly, the film needed a much, much better actor to play Nicholas, someone who could do the role greater justice especially with Hugh Jackman as the lead. The film did touch on some very important themes including the pain and mourning that can come from divorce, especially for children, and also of course the difficulty of trying to understand and help a loved one with depression. The film felt a little long and drawn out, but had a very emotional and impactful ending that made it worth it.

I'll address the first thing that I see on the negative reviews: Zen McGrath as Nicholas does not "sell" it. I thought the same thing as I was watching the movie, he never brought me in, he was hard to read, he had a smirk that threw me off, a little smile that was hard to decipher, he seemed sarcastic and out of it, I never felt his pain... but after days of thinking about this film this is what I realized:

Teenage kids are hard to read.

That is the whole point.

I am a parent of a 15 year old boy and this movie shook me to my core. It really did. The parents couldn't read the boy (much like I feel most of the time), they went with what they saw from him and trusted that gut feeling vs what professionals were telling them, they trusted the memories they had as though those represented who the boy was now, they trusted their own desire for things to normalize, they trusted the good moments, they went with the unmistakable desire that "things will be ok". They let those desires take the wheel.

This is Hugh Jackman's best performance to date as a parent desperate for things to be ok as he dealt with his own issues of being a son himself, he wanted to avoid being a monster... not realizing that being a friend wasn't the solution.

X.

The Son is every parent's nightmare. Reminiscent of Birth in the way the uncanny permeates every frame and implants a creeping sense of foreboding under your skin. Vanessa Kirby as Beth is the most relatable character, as she seems as confused by Nicholas as the audience. Hugh Jackman nails it as the father trying to do the right thing and slowly realising that there are some things that are just beyond our control. Zen McGrath is naturalistic as Nicholas, allowing the actions to speak for themselves and calibrating perfectly a performance it would be easy to over-egg. There is something stagey about the production, a nod to the play origins, and done deliberately one feels, as it adds to the sense of unreal events overtaking characters. My favourite moment was when the parents leave the hospital having made one decision, only for the next cut to show they reversed it. A harrowing film that will hopefully start important conversations for some people.