“The Son” (2022) is a film adaptation of Florian Zeller’s play “Le Fils” (2018), which is part of a trilogy, “The Mother” (2010) and “Le Pere” (2012), which was already adapted into the Oscar award winning “The Father” (2020). Like “The Father,” Zeller directs and cowrote this adaptation. Peter (Hugh Jackman) is a successful lawyer at a Manhattan white shoe firm, has an exciting job prospect in DC, is married to Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and has a new baby, Theo, but his perfect life gets interrupted when his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) drops in and announces that their teenage son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath) is in crisis. He rises to the occasion by having Nicholas live with him, but will his steps to get Nicholas on the right track help?
As good as “The Father” is, “The Son” is that bad. Maybe I missed something because I am not a guy, but I came to the movie with a bouquet of flowers, excited to see it, then dumped it in the trash. Nicholas suffers from depression, which is not explicitly diagnosed until right before the denouement. Much of the film consists of shots of the still hot Jackman standing head and shoulders above everyone, staring straight ahead with a thousand-yard stare, undistracted by his smart phone and when in action, adheres to innocuous standard dialogue. We get a few hints of his younger self’s struggles: a sick mother, absent ambitious father and financial troubles. (Huh, I wish that this part was elaborated on because his father is prosperous. Were his parents still together or divorced? Was there no child support orders?) At first, I was hopefully that Zeller would reveal that by plunging into a life without introspection, but achievement and action, Peter avoided being pulled under by the undertow of overwhelming existential dread and must excavate that part of himself to connect to Nicholas, but no. When he is staring into space, he is a computer going to sleep with a screensaver of old memories of a younger Nicholas on vacation. He is a soulless void of platitudes and jocularity.
Because Peter did not want to be like his dad, whom Anthony Hopkins plays in a ruthless lunch cameo that he fits in between appointments, he learned how to show physical affection, speak gently and be nice, but there is no one there. This revelation emerges when Peter loses it while confronting Nicholas. Even when he talks to his wife, he is superficial and awkward as fuck. Beth fell in love with the face, body and money. My most generous reading of this movie is that Zellner wanted to make a portrait of well-meaning ineptitude in the face of authentic human suffering and pain, but it did not work for me and was like watching a series of dad jokes without the punchline. Peter takes Nicholas blazer shopping, tells him to hang out with friends, dances to Tom Jones and has little food fights. These people really think that they are living life fully, but it feels insubstantial and interchangeable. Peter is seriously stunned that these things did not cure depression. He is the kind of person that would laugh while eating a salad with friends and really believe that they had a good time. It was like watching an Afterschool Special for adult men with the morale that you cannot solve everything by just making yourself happy and being marginally better than your dad. I don’t care how clueless the average person is about mental health, most parents would at least have the common sense to verify that their kid was actually going to school after playing hooky and having to change schools.
Even if “The Son” is critiquing superficial American life’s inability to create lasting, nourishing human connection and tackle the maladies of the human spirit, it still does not work. Nicholas says that he wants to spend time with Theo, but we never see them together. When Peter reports how Nicholas is doing to Kate over a martini lunch, it sounds like fan fiction because the movie only shows Beth and Nicholas together. Peter and Beth have a fight, but we only see the mealy-mouthed aftermath makeup where Beth tries to have a deeper conversation about how Peter is not doing enough, and he gently brushes her off, which she accepts. Can I see the fight? Kate tells Nicholas that it is Peter’s dream come true to work in DC. Really? I did not see that at all, and not just because he is preoccupied with his son’s situation and dipping the slightest toe into his own teenage pain. Movies are about showing, not telling, and depicting the dissonance between words and actions may be the point, but it is still a big, boring prose dump with the best parts cut out.
I wanted one moment when a character other than his dad to stop believing that Peter was perfect. Beth reassures him that he is a good father while getting stuck with caring for Nicholas, which she never signed up for, and saying that Peter is not present, which is true. When Nicholas says Kate used to bad mouth Peter, I did not believe it since she seemed thrilled at getting any of his attention. There is never a moment of accountability except Nicholas’s existence. Peter even seems to be killing it at work even though Peter never does any work and just sits still. May we all fail up like Peter.
How did Zellner manage to depict the challenges of dementia in an innovative, textured way, but fail so hard with depression? At least Afterschool Specials educate by oversimplifying complex issues, but if you came to the theater without a basic understanding of depression and cutting, you would probably leave the theater more confused. McGrath does his best to convey the emotional quicksand that he is in, but it is not until right before the denouement that a more detailed explanation is spelled out in the best part of the film when a Dr. Harris (Hugh Quarshie) breaks the news to his deficient parents. Also shout out to attendant Michael who provided silent support to the doctor in the face of parental blindness. Let the audience stay with them, not this family. There is an unspoken dynamic that father knows best, who cares about the professionals.
“The Son” has moments where people fear him because he gives them scary looks, but McGrath’s most terrifying look does not quite measure up to all the talk. I began wondering if Timothee Chalamet is a good actor. “The Son” does a decent job of showing how Nicholas leverages everyone against each other when they get too close to calling out his cover stories. He knows them better than they know themselves: his mom’s frustration at not knowing how to handle the life that she has, not the one that she wanted; his dad’s fear of becoming his father; Beth’s guilt over her role in the dissolution of Peter’s first marriage and framing her as a divider. Compared to the adults, he is a master manipulator though it is not heavy lifting. He keeps getting caught, and they still fall for it.
“The Son” is an inert melodrama. What the fuck was the washing machine starting and stopping supposed to symbolize? Zellner thought that he ate, but no. This movie feels never-ending. When Zellner enters Peter’s fantasies, they are one dimensional, archetypes-a son following in his footsteps, meeting a girl and telling him what a great father he is, but I think that Zellner sympathizes with Peter instead of finding him horrifying. Peter is deluded that he knows Nicholas, but it is as if he never met him. Only Theo’s brain chemistry will save him from his big brother’s tribulations because his father will be useless since everything is always about him.
