THE SON : Official Reviews

[jo]

The Wrap has released its review --

‘The Son’ Film Review: Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern Battle Pain and Guilt in Tough Look at Teen Depression
Venice Film Festival 2022: Director Florian Zeller once again explores mental illness in a bolder, less focused follow-up to “The Father”

Steve Pond | September 7, 2022 @ 7:30 AM




The Son
Sony Pictures Classics

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” will be released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics on Nov. 11.

[jo]

www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/the-son-hugh-jackman-in-florian-zeller-teen-depression-drama-1235212545/

‘The Son’ Review: Hugh Jackman is Outstanding in Florian Zeller’s Otherwise Unrewarding Dirge

Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby and Zen McGrath also star in this installment of the playwright-turned-director’s trilogy on mental health and its brutal impact on families, premiering in Venice competition.


BY DAVID ROONEY


SEPTEMBER 7, 2022 10:15AM
The Son, Hugh Jackman
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 with his clinically depressed teenage son, provides a plaintive emotional center to Florian Zeller’s second feature. But therein lies the imbalance — this adaptation of the French dramatist’s stage play is called The Son, not The Father, the title of its predecessor. While it’s part of the point that young people are often unable to articulate the complex roots of their mental health issues, that block keeps the title figure, and the performance of newcomer Zen McGrath in that role, at an anesthetizing distance.



The Sony Classics release, opening Nov. 11 after Venice and Toronto festival premieres, is a depressing film about depression. But not because it shows noteworthy insight about that illness or pulls you into the head of its agonized title figure, Nicholas (McGrath), who lacks the character shading and specificity to be much more than a statistic. Only in the fumbling attempts of his hotshot lawyer father Peter (Jackman) to nurture him back to stability does Nicholas really touch us. And the elegant austerity of Zeller’s direction makes the outcome a given, which turns The Son into a punishing slog.

The Son
THE BOTTOM LINE
Stubbornly unemotional.
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Competition)
Release date: Friday, Nov. 11
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Anthony Hopkins
Director: Florian Zeller
Screenwriters: Florian Zeller, Christopher Hampton, based on Zeller’s play

Rated na, 2 hours 4 minutes



Peter has settled into a contented life in Brooklyn with his new partner, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), and their infant son when ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) turns up at the door distraught about their 17-year-old child from that marriage. Nicholas has been skipping school for a month with no explanation, risking expulsion, and his coldness toward his mother scares her. Peter promises to talk to him.

Nicholas shows no warmth toward his father either; he’s still feeling the sting of abandonment. When Peter tries to draw him out, all he gets is, “It’s life. It’s weighing me down.” Nicholas wants to come live with his father and his baby half-brother, making his case by confessing that he’s been having dark thoughts and fearing for his sanity. Beth already has her hands full taking care of a newborn; she correctly assumes that with Peter away for long hours at work, she’ll be the one dealing with surly Nicholas, whom she barely knows.

Like a “Master of the Universe,” only without the ego, Peter works from a sleek steel and glass Midtown Manhattan tower with breathtaking views. He’s been offered his dream job, on a promising political campaign in D.C. But what should be a period of exciting change turns into one of narrowing options as the extent of Nicholas’ problems becomes clear. Suddenly, Peter’s attention is pulled away from work and his unresolved feelings about his own unhappy childhood resurface, making him strive to do better as a parent.

The best scene in The Son is the brief appearance of the Oscar-winning lead of The Father, Anthony Hopkins, playing Peter’s well-heeled political careerist dad. Lunch at the latter’s stately Washington home is a coolly civil affair until Peter starts in on the old man’s parental failings, turning him instantly defensive: “Just fucking get over it.” More of this kind of savage bite would have brought needed tonal variation to Zeller’s one-note new movie.

Retreating deeper inside himself, Nicholas refuses to return Kate’s calls, while Peter reassures his ex-wife that the boy is doing much better, only seeing what he wants to see. Peter continues to cling to memories of what a happy kid his son was, returning in his mind to an idyllic family boating vacation in Corsica. He finds himself spouting the same platitudes that made him resent his own father.

But all that contributes to keeping Nicholas stranded on the margins in his own story. He starts a new school with no improvement, consents to minimal communication with his therapist and gets caught self-harming. “It relieves me,” he tells his father of the cutting. “It’s a way to channel the pain.” By the time he makes his first suicide attempt and Peter and Kate are forced to consider a psych ward, there’s only one way a movie this dour can go.

The sole moment of relief — aside from the Corsica flashbacks and a characteristically Zeller-esque deception near the end — is a happy evening during which Beth coaxes Peter into busting out the dance stylings that first caught her eye. Nicholas loosens up enough to mimic his dad’s exuberantly goofy moves as unfamiliar laughter erupts from him. But that’s not much of a lifeline of hope to throw your audience.

Any parent or relative who has had to experience the sorrow of watching a child shut themselves off from the world will no doubt be moved by this distressing scenario and by the hard questions it reveals. It’s admirable that Zeller — working with his longtime translator and screenwriting collaborator Christopher Hampton — declines to try analyzing suicidal depression. Instead, he presents it as a private hell that provides no access for the people who love Nicholas.

As with so many children of divorce, Nicholas’ loyalties bounce abruptly in any given moment between his parents, even sometimes doing a persuasive impersonation of being at peace with them both. But he’s never at peace with himself, as much as Peter and Kate try to convince themselves otherwise.

The play on which the film is based is the completion of a trilogy by Zeller about unraveling minds, following The Father, which examined the advancing dementia of an elderly man; and The Mother, about a woman steadily unhinged by middle-aged emptiness.

While Zeller’s psychodramas are serious to a fault, they toy with distorted reality, designed to keep the audience as disoriented as the respective title characters. But in this case, there are too few gray areas in the character study, and McGrath is too green an actor to fool anyone into thinking Nicholas is getting it together. That makes the drama one of grim inevitability, appropriately accompanied by Hans Zimmer’s somber orchestral score.

The always watchable Dern is as unchallenged here as she was in the dismal Jurassic World Dominion earlier this summer, merely called upon to fret and plead. Kirby has more to work with, as Beth becomes torn between her commitments as a new mother and responsibility toward her partner to do what she can for a teenager who is openly hostile toward her. The strain on Beth’s relationship with Peter is played with palpable tension and a welcome brittle edge by Kirby beneath the good intentions.

But this is Jackman’s movie. He makes Peter’s helplessness intensely moving as he keeps trying, against mounting odds and false breakthroughs, to communicate with a child who remains out of reach. Sadly, that goes for The Son, as much as the son.

[jo]

From THE GUARDIAN (UK) --

www.theguardian.com/film/2022/sep/07/the-son-review-hugh-jackman-laceratingly-painful-drama-of-familial-fear-and-loathing?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

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

4 of 5 Stars

Venice film festival: 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

Dignity and intelligence … Hugh Jackman in The Son.


Peter Bradshaw

Wed 7 Sep 2022 18.15 BST
Florian 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 Beth 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 not 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.

The Son screened at the Venice film festival on 7 September.

[jo]

variety.com/2022/film/reviews/the-son-review-florian-zeller-hugh-jackman-laura-dern-1235355208/

‘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


The Son
Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

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).

Onstage, his strategy has been to keep things simple, honest and as universal as possible. In 2020, he directed Anthony Hopkins (and himself) to an Oscar with “The Father.” And now, with so many watching to see what he’ll do next, Zeller adapts his most personal play, “The Son,” about a troubled teenage boy no one seems to understand, least of all himself. “I’m not made like other people,” insists 17-year-old Nicholas (remarkable newcomer Zen McGrath, who goes head-to-head with Hugh Jackman here). “I’m in pain. All. The. Time.”

It’s a cry for help in a film where people desperately want to do the right thing, but no one seems to know what that is — or what Nicholas is capable of. That uncertainty gives “The Son” its tension: a low, subconscious dread that something terrible is going to happen, as if tragedy were inevitable, but you can’t quite be sure what form it will take. “He scares me,” Nicholas’ mother, Kate (Laura Dern, letting the character’s neediness be known) tells ex-husband Peter (Jackman) in a tone that suggests she’s admitting it for the first time. Kate has shown up at Peter’s place — the apartment he shares with new wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and their newborn baby — at an inappropriately late hour looking for help.

Nicholas has been skipping school for nearly a month. Something is wrong, but the boy refuses to confide in Kate. Maybe Peter can talk to him, she suggests. The next day, Peter drops by, tough but concerned, and tries to pep-talk the kid out of what parents optimistically call a “phase,” but which, in fact, they may never grow out of. It’s a fascinating scene. Nicholas winds up asking whether he can live with his dad, which sets the rest of “The Son” in motion.

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 slightly 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 play, 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 playing Peter, Jackman becomes a man caught up in a kind of elaborate role-play as well. 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.

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.”

For Nicholas’ parents, as well as any fathers and mothers in the audience, it’s upsetting to see someone so young overwhelmed by the world around him — a state of mind McGrath plays more subtly than Laurie Kynaston did in the West End stage version, where the character scribbled on walls and upended furniture in agitation. Not this Nicholas. He’s largely a cipher,
stashing a weapon under his mattress and showing an unsettling interest in his infant stepbrother (whom he sees as a replacement of sorts). This is no easy role, since the slightest bit of menace would likely sabotage the sensitivity of Zeller’s portrayal. And yet, 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 mother-in-law, 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.

[jo]

awardswatch.com/the-son-review-florian-zellers-sophomore-effort-disappoints-despite-a-great-hugh-jackman-c-venice-film-festival/


‘The Son’ review: Florian Zeller’s sophomore effort disappoints despite a great Hugh Jackman
[C+] | Venice Film Festival

Roberto Ruggio September 7, 2022



Florian Zeller’s stage trilogy about parent-child relationships and the devastating consequences of mental illness was one of the biggest surprises in the theater world of the 2010s. The Father had very successful runs in Paris, London and New York, with its Broadway production getting strong notices and Tony love for both the play and its lead actor Frank Langella; The Mother had rave reviews in those same three cities, with Isabelle Huppert headlining the Broadway show; The Son rounded out the trilogy. After becoming an acclaimed playwright, Zeller decided to adapt his trilogy for the silver screen, pushing The Father, one of the most successful movies of 2020, straight to the Academy Awards, where the great Anthony Hopkins won his second Oscar. It was therefore not a surprise when the director announced that he would bring The Son on the screen, making it one of the most anticipated films of 2022.

The story begins with a call. It’s Kate (Laura Dern), and she’s calling Peter (Hugh Jackman), her ex-husband. Something is happening to their seventeen-year-old son Nicholas (Zen McGrath), who has been missing from school for weeks. Puzzled and confused by the news, Peter decides to talk to his son who, during the conversation, reveals that he’s depressed and that he wants to live with his father. It’s not an easy situation for Peter, as he’s just had another child with his second wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby), who’s reluctant to welcome his husband’s son into their home. Peter is very busy at work, and he’s also been offered a path to a political career that would take him to Washington DC. How is he going to manage a life with a wife and a newborn son, a problematic teenager and a stressful work life? Nevertheless, Nicholas moves in with his father. Things seem to be starting out well for the Miller household: Nicholas has a new school, he’s getting better grades and, despite some tension, he’s developing a healthy relationship with Beth. This newly found serenity doesn’t seem to last though: painful discoveries and revelations plunge the Miller family into disarray, bringing the relationship between Peter and the people around him on the brink.

I remember the first time I watched The Father, and I was struck by how well written, well shot, well acted it was. It was a family story between a loving daughter and her ailing father, but it felt like a thriller, almost a horror movie: the confusion in Anthony’s mind was so deeply reflected by the filmmaking that the whole movie felt like a nightmare. The build-up of the film made the last sequence even more impactful, with devastating emotional effects on the viewer. The Son takes a different direction: it plays like a much more straightforward melodrama, and the end result leaves a lot to be desired.

The main issue with the film is how strangely manipulative it is. One would think that a story about a depressed, suffering teenager wouldn’t need a convoluted script or a self-important music score to accompany it, but this is what happens in The Son. The direction, the dialog, the music become overbearing, crushing the delicacy that this story needed. There is one scene in particular that involves the parents and their son discussing Nicholas’ possible treatment with a psychiatrist that surprised me for how negatively cynical and uncomfortable it is. It’s an unpleasant departure from the sensitive portrayal of a man’s descent into dementia that made The Father such a brilliant film. With such a heavy-handed and overwrought script, the themes of depression, of parental love, of the legacy of our parents are watered down, and their impact is greatly diminished.

The anticipation around The Son mainly centered around the performance given by Hugh Jackman, and he delivers a brilliant turn as a father desperately trying to help his son. Even when the script lets him down, Jackman is able to convey Peter’s despair, his frustration at not being able to help Nicholas the way he would love to, his genuine love for his son. It’s a touching depiction of parenthood at its most complex and terrifying. It would have been great for the film if Zen McGrath, the young actor who plays Nicholas, had been on the same level as Jackman’s: McGrath’s performance unfortunately comes off as rather immature, with an evident inability to carry the emotional weight of his character. The rest of the supporting cast is solid, from the ever-reliable Laura Dern to Vanessa Kirby (and watch out for one killer scene with Anthony Hopkins).

Despite the impressive talent on either side of the camera, The Son is a manifesto of squandered potential that would have benefitted from a different approach.

Grade: C+

[jo]

Indiewire --

‘The Son’ Review: Florian Zeller’s Follow-Up to ‘The Father’ Is a Sadistic Family Drama
Venice: Excellent performances by Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern can't save Zeller's emotionally pornographic story of teen depression.

David Ehrlich

52 mins ago

@davidehrlich


The Son, Hugh Jackman
“The Son”

Florian Zeller doesn’t make films, he makes birth control at 24fps. Adapted from his play of the same name — and adding rich cinematic dimensions to the text’s ingenious structural conceit — Zeller’s brilliant and unsparing “The Father” shook people for how it simultaneously conveyed the confusion of suffering from dementia, and the heartache of losing a loved one to it. His follow-up, which similarly originated on the stage, makes the writer-director’s shattering debut feel like a “Paddington” movie by comparison (in terms of depressiveness and quality, alike).

Lacking any of the puzzle box magic that allowed Zeller’s previous film to rescue profound traces of humanity from the massacre of its mental illness, “The Son” offers a stiff and straightforward family portrait that emphasizes the senselessness of depression through the simplicity of its plot. Is it an unusually honest portrayal of parental helplessness in the face of a devastatingly cruel disease, one that may provide some measure of solace to people who’ve been cursed to live with unfathomable guilt over something they had little power to prevent? Some major contrivances and a complete lack of medication notwithstanding, I fear that it is.



At the same time, however, “The Son” is also so pornographic in its pain (and so utterly bereft of air or lightness) that it can’t help but feel like an argument against having children in the first place. What joy could possibly be worth such agony? How are parents supposed to accept that loving their kids may not always be enough to save them? These are brave and valid questions for any film to ask — “Better to see something in a dark light than to not see it at all,” one character rightly insists — but Zeller frames them in such clumsy and stilted fashion that love ends up seeming more like a liability than a reason to live.

Excellent in a film that makes great use of his preening vulnerability, Hugh Jackman stars as Peter, the kind of father who many dads in the audience may find all too relatable. I mean, who among us hasn’t divorced Laura Dern (similarly fantastic as the frustrated Kate), remarried the much-younger Vanessa Kirby (strong but sidelined in the role of Beth), and raised an infant with her in the spacious Manhattan apartment we pay for with our elite lawyer’s salary? No, Peter is so uncomfortably familiar because of his alleged determination to give his teenage son — a souvenir from the Kate years — all the love that his own father never showed him (“The Father” is played by a prickish Anthony Hopkins, stopping by for a one-scene cameo that briefly and erroneously hints at some kind of shared Zeller Cinematic Universe).



Easier said than done. In fact, we sense that Peter’s “failure” with Nicholas may have played a role in his decision to create a new family and start over from scratch. Played by Zen McGrath, a young newcomer stranded in the role of a recessive non-character who seems more like a generic archetype of teenage depression than he does his own human being, 17-year-old Nicholas is no longer the same bundle of wide-eyed joy that Peter so fondly remembers raising as a child. He’s been sulking in his room, skipping school every day for the last month, and frightening Kate to the point that she insists he go live with Peter, Beth, and baby Theo for a while.

The situation isn’t exactly improved by the change of scenery. It’s bad enough for Peter that Nicholas remains despondent, and that he makes Beth nervous with his benign incel energy — we suspect this isn’t the kind of movie that will go full “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” even if it proves hard to relax after that errant mention of an antique rifle in the first act — but worst of all is how living with his oldest son forces Peter to confront his own guilt, and feel the strain of being a father and child at the same time.

Even at its most airless (a purgatorial register that Zeller settles into from the start), “The Son” resonates with uncomfortable truths both large and small. Infusing the part with just enough clueless vanity to make Peter seem like a life-sized Gregory Peck, Jackman mines real tragedy from the myopia of his character’s logical approach to an illogical problem.

Many of the movie’s early scenes are rich with the stonewalled frustration of a parent trying to decipher their child’s mindset from the hieroglyphics of slammed doors and mumbled conversations. Peter assumes that Nicholas’ depression must have something to do with his love life, and doesn’t know where to turn after that; for all the stone-cold severity of Zeller and Christopher Hampton’s screenplay, no movie has ever so effectively dramatized how parents rely on their children’s schoolwork as a measure of their own success.

And yet, “The Son” is too suffocated by the severity of its writing and the sterility of its environments for the film’s characters to grow beyond the scenarios they represent. Yes, depression is a soul-sucking monster of a mental illness, and it’s admirable that Zeller would rather be turgid and broadly truthful in his depiction of it than riveting and harmfully false, but depriving Nicholas of any identifiable traits beyond his disease becomes artificial on its terms, and — callous as it feels to admit — makes the character far more annoying than he needs to be in order to frustrate his parents.

Similarly enervating is Zeller’s decision to trap the kid in such a drab and colorless world, which rings false in a film that eschews the degree of subjectivity that defined “The Father” (a strange choice, considering this story’s focus on how difficult it can be to reconcile the overlapping and often conflicting responsibilities the people in a family might feel towards each other). If Peter and Kate constantly find themselves caught off-balance, the audience spends every minute of this movie waiting for the other shoe to drop, and this time around there isn’t a formal structure to help seize on that schism. The one moment of levity — an impromptu family dance sequence that’s set to a Tom Jones classic — doesn’t feel like anything so much as the obligatory scene of forced happiness in the sad movie where everything goes to shit. Not even Hopkins’ appearance cuts deep enough to draw blood, even if it’s necessary to establish the hereditary kinds of hurt that Peter is so afraid of passing down to his own son.

[jo]

Not the official review by Variety ( that has already been submitted but more of an opinion piece by their Awards Section Editor) --

variety.com/2022/awards/awards/the-son-oscars-hugh-jackman-laura-dern-vanessa-kirby-1235363102/

In the Name of the Father: With ‘The Son,’ Hugh Jackman’s Best Actor Oscar Moment Has Arrived 
Florian Zeller's sophomore follow-up is an Oscar contender for Sony Pictures Classics


By Clayton Davis

The Son - Hugh Jackman

If you thought Florian Zeller’s debut film “The Father” was a downer, get ready to fill your handkerchiefs with tears and nose fluids as the credits roll on his sophomore effort, “The Son.” It might be a bruising watch, but the perfectly modulated drama will be an across-the-board contender in all categories including best picture. And it’s a film that puts Hugh Jackman at the forefront of the best actor race for his remarkable performance as a father struggling to help his troubled teenage son (newcomer Zen McGrath).

“The Son,” which debuted at the Venice Film Festival, tells the story of Peter (Jackman), a hard-charging lawyer who agrees to have his son Nicholas (McGrath) live with him after the kid gets in trouble with his school. Their reunion takes place years after Peter divorced Nicholas’ mother (Laura Dern) and started a new life with his second wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and their baby. As the film unfolds, Peter slowly begins to recognize the agonizing torment living within his depressed child.



Netflix Top 10: ‘Echoes’ Continues to Lead as ‘Devil in Ohio’ Debuts at No. 2
Jackman, one of the most beloved performers in the entertainment industry, only has a single Oscar nomination to his credit, for the musical “Les Miserables.” As well as a list of notable snubs that include “Logan” and “Prisoners.” That means the perpetually overlooked star may be hurtling toward his long-awaited moment with the Academy for a performance that allows him to plumb the kind of emotional depths usually reserved for Greek tragedies.

But that only comes towards the final moments of the film. What makes his performance all the more impressive is that for most of “The Son,” Jackman is meticulously reserved, internalizing the frustration of a man seeking a quick fix for his son’s deeply rooted mental health issues. Parts of the performance are reminiscent of his own career best turn in the criminally ignored “Prisoners” (2013). It’s a performance suffused with the kind of roiling frustration and mounting desperation that reminded me of previous best actor nominees such as Jude Law in “Cold Mountain” (2003) or Adam Driver in “Marriage Story” (2019).




Writer and director Florian Zeller has quickly become one of the most exciting visual storytellers in the game. His ability to make a central location feel just as vital as the actors that are inhabiting them is quite striking. In this case, much of the film takes place in Jackman’s modish Brooklyn apartment, a light-filled place that gradually feels more stifling. Like “The Father,” which similarly made great use of the protagonist’s living space, don’t count out the technical wizards for production design, cinematography and film editing to break through.

Of course, reigning champion for original score Hans Zimmer (“Dune”) is back in the thick of the race again with “The Son,” demonstrating restraint in pivotal moments and knowing when to allow the groundswell of strings to take over. Also a previous winner for “The Lion King” (1994), the composer is on the table again in a significant way.

Sony Pictures Classics will be all-in on the movie and its awards campaign. They’ll have the difficult task of lifting both Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby into the supporting actress lineup. Dern has the more “traditional” role that tends to land acting noms, and could benefit from a key scene with Jackman in a restaurant where she picks at the scab of their failed relationship. Plus, Dern, an Oscar winner for “Marriage Story,” is a cherished figure in Hollywood.

However, Kirby is reinventing the wheel of acting with a masterfully executed physical portrayal, one that shows her mounting alarm at Nicholas’s behavior and her maternal protectiveness for her newborn. Coming off her first nom for her brave performance as a grieving mother in “Pieces of a Woman” (2020), like Jackman, she presents a masterclass in internalization. In fact, I believe her “Oscar clip” is a wide-eyed stare she gives to Jackman in an emotional scene in the couple’s apartment. Truly heartbreaking.

If there’s any category that’s been open to two actors from the same film, it’s supporting actress with 33% of Oscar lineups having two or more women from the same movie with nearly half eventually becoming winners like Melissa Leo (“The Fighter”) and Octavia Spencer (“The Help”). One obstacle is there will be multiple films trying to secure two noms from the same film such as “She Said” (Jennifer Ehle and either Carey Mulligan or Zoe Kazan), “The Woman King” (Lashana Lynch and Thuso Mbedu) and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (Jamie Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu).

What a discovery Zeller has made with the young McGrath as the titular son. In his debut role, McGrath gives, what is in my opinion, the best performance in the movie. He’s able to channel the endless faces that suffer from depression (I, myself am one of those faces). Brave is too trivial a description for what he achieves here. It’s damn near flawless, reminiscent of past winners like Timothy Hutton in “Ordinary People” (1980). McGrath will likely compete in the best supporting actor category even though the role straddles the line between lead and supporting.

Coming off his second win for co-writing “The Father” with Zeller, Christopher Hampton’s latest collaboration with the playwright could bring him back to the fold, especially given the fact that the adapted screenplay category looks a little light.

The main challenge for Sony Pictures Classics is to make sure that enough awards voters give the film a proper shake. “The Son” will be one of the multiple entities in the race that deals with heavy subject matter.

But I say, keep bringing it Zeller. The race is underway.

[jo]

From THE TELEGRAPH ( UK) --

The Son: what happened to Anthony Hopkins?

Robbie Collin - 1h ago
Comments
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Anthony Hopkins was famously at home in bed when he was awarded the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in The Father, so it’s particularly fitting that his victory made the film a sleeper hit. Florian Zeller’s lean and penetrating depiction of an old rascal succumbing to Alzheimer’s found its audience slowly but surely, and it’s now widely regarded as one of the greatest screen renderings of dementia just over a year on from its release.

Hugh Jackman in The Son

Zeller’s follow-up, The Son – like The Father, an adaptation of one of the 43-year-old French polymath’s own stage plays – tries to do the same for teenage depression. But as festival-goers at Venice discovered this evening, lightning has not struck twice. The film contains deeply felt work by Hugh Jackman and Vanessa Kirby, but it’s an otherwise drab, simplistic, mechanical thing that wears its workings right on the surface – a gun found early on in a utility room might as well be stamped “property of A Chekhov” – and it contains one especially ill-judged performance that reflects well on no one involved.

Jackman and Kirby play Peter and Beth, a well-to-do couple still acclimatising to the arrival of Theo, their new child. The boy is Peter’s second: in a previous marriage he also fathered Nicholas (Zen McGrath), who is now 17 years old and in a dark mental space. He frequently talks about feeling weighed down by life, plays truant regularly, while telling strips of scar tissue fleck his lower arms. His relationship with his mother Kate (a poorly served Laura Dern) is also at breaking point, so the lad moves in with Peter, who vows to help him turn things around.

Zeller has clearly worked hard to divorce the material from its theatrical origins, constantly shifting between locations (the original play unfolded in a single one) as well as adding an entirely new scene featuring Hopkins, who makes a brief, fun appearance as Peter’s own monstrously unyielding dad. But with the stagey, declarative dialogue left intact, the results feel less like a film than an upmarket soap opera, down to the mind-numbingly tasteful decor of Peter’s apartment.

As Nicholas, the 20-year-old McGrath has been either badly miscast or mis-directed. Warmth, danger, ambiguity: those are the qualities that would have made this character come alive on screen. But instead, Zeller appears to have been shooting for “authentically teenage”, which unfortunately translates dramatically as “mopey little twerp”. Hopkins might be the poisonous patriarchal villain, but it’s hard not to agree when he barks that everyone else just needs to get over themselves.

[jo]

Guy Lodge ( also occasional writer for Variety) has written a positive review of the movie (Film of the Week) and an even more positive account of Hugh Jackman's portrayal.

The Son
7 Sep
Directed by Florian Zeller
Running time: 2hr3 | REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE


Hugh Jackman stars in The Son

Halfway through The Son, amid a quagmire of familial hostilities and plunging personal despair on multiple sides, Hugh Jackman does a little dance. Someone flips Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual” onto the speakers, and the star’s famously supple hips — after some brief, half-hearted protesting on his part — start to shimmy. Then his arms loosen too, waving in disco-tastic formation, as his feet shuffle lithely across the hardwood floors of his character’s handsome, moneyed Manhattan loft.

French playwright Florian Zeller’s Oscar-winning first feature, The Father, established him as the kind of stern, pensive filmmaker from whom you wouldn’t expect a momentary dance break, and The Son — not a sequel, but certainly a companion piece — is cut from the same sober, shadowed cloth. But then Jackman, unexpectedly but effectively cast as a chilly, clammed-up workaholic lawyer who has let his responsibilities as a husband and father go drastically to seed, is already so far outside his star persona that a little Tom Jones boogie feels like a concession to him. Let the man dance, just for a minute, because things are going to get a lot tougher from here.

Peter (Jackman) has all the required markers of a good, upstanding, successful life: that gorgeous apartment is shared with his elegant wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and their adorable newborn son. They must both accept what limited time he can extract for them from an A-league career on the verge of transitioning into high-powered Washington politics. Except it’s his second time trying to pull off that balance. Largely edited out of that unblemished biography are his wounded, anxious ex-wife Kate (Lauren Dern) and their 17-year-old son Nicholas (Zen McGrath), who has grown from an apple-cheeked trophy toddler into a surly, self-harming adolescent whose mental health is in a severe downward spiral. That’s not nearly so pretty.

“Life is weighing me down,” Nicholas admits to his dad, who was hoping for more of a quick-fix pep talk: Peter lives his life trying to find ways to be there for people without actually having to be around them. (A brilliant, scarringly cold cameo from Anthony Hopkins as Peter’s own father makes quite clear the roots of his parenting impulses.) Nicholas isn’t coy with his warning signs, yet still Peter assumes that sensible, functional decorum will eventually prevail, as it did for him.

That dorky dad-dance, then, isn’t just a welcome tonal break in a clenched, discomfiting film — even a writer as serious as Zeller knows that burdened lives still feature sporadic disruptions of joy — but an exaggerated demonstration of the okay-ness that Peter has spent a lifetime perfecting, that his son hasn’t yet learned to feign.

One of Hollywood’s most bluff, affable leading men, Jackman here excels in a role gradually and cruelly stripped of its glibness;the remarkable McGrath, taut and stifled and unsettled in his skin, isn’t just his opposite number, but his suppressed mirror image. As in The Father, the missed cues, tacit accusations and lost time of parent-child relationships are explored here with a relentless high-stakes precision that takes The Son into psychological thriller territory — pained with tension, though perhaps suspenseful only to someone as bad at reading people as Peter is.

[jo]

Positive review from Chief Film Critic Pete Hammond of Deadline.com --

HOME
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‘The Son’ Venice Review: Hugh Jackman In Florian Zeller’s Gripping Follow-Up To Oscar-Winning ‘The Father’

By Pete Hammond

Pete Hammond
Awards Columnist/Chief Film Critic

‘The Son’ Venice Review: Hugh Jackman In Florian Zeller’s Gripping Follow-Up To Oscar-Winning ‘The Father’

September 7, 2022 10:15am

The Son
Sony Pictures Classics'


Writer-director Florian Zeller had such great success with his 2020 film adaptation of his stage play The Father which earned six Oscar nominations including Best Picture — winning for his and co-writer Christopher Hampton’s screenplay, as well as Best Actor for Anthony Hopkins — that he was able to move quickly in getting a film version going for his next play, 2018’s Le Fils. The result, The Son, premiering Wednesday at the Venice Film Festival in competition, is the second of a three-part stage and film series on stories dealing with mental health; in this case, a troubled 17-year-old boy who has been deeply affected by the divorce of his parents and is suffering severe problems. Of course, The Father dealt with one elderly man’s devastating descent into dementia and the effect that had on his family, and it was an intimate film production for Zeller, largely taking place in the man’s apartment, yet still managed to be cinematic despite its stage origins.



The same goes for The Son, a strong character-driven piece that is opened up a little more, but still has the feeling of an intimate family drama without obvious flashy technique that would sink it. Zeller is a unique new voice in cinema for that reason among others, and this is only his second feature film. Like having an actor of the caliber of Hopkins in The Father, this one contains a hell of a role for Hugh Jackman playing Peter, a lawyer on the precipice of a long-desired political career. He is now married to his second wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), and they have a baby boy named Theo. Their life however is turned upside down when Peter’s ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) shows up with their teen son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) and basically leaves him there to live with dad for his own good. It is a complicated arrangement to be sure but there is a reason as Kate tells him Nicholas has been AWOL from school, unbeknownst to her, for six months. He is severely depressed still over the breakup of his parents, and a change in living arrangements seems to be needed, especially since Kate herself is having trouble coping with her own life and is a bit lost in how to deal with her son.

Venice Film Festival 2022 Photos

Of course this complicates Peter’s life but he has no choice, convincing Beth it is something he must do even if Nicholas’ arrival comes at an awkward time. Beth as a new mother barely knows Nicholas and this also upends her life to say the least. When Nicholas tries suicide, Peter and Kate face the impossible decision of whether to follow the advice of a hospital psychiatrist and have him institutionalized for the near future until he can get better. The answers for all the characters in Zeller’s story are not simple, and the issue of mental health is one that, in some way or other, affects each of them in their own way, and for that matter affects most families at one time or another. That makes this, just like his The Father and dealing with the vagaries of age, so universal in so many ways. In fact, when seeing the excruciating detail that goes into this telling, I felt I knew this story on my own level, not just as a critic reviewing a film but a human being experiencing real life.



It is emotionally powerful stuff, and you can also thank the superb cast Zeller has assembled to tell it. Jackman went after this role when he heard a film version was in development, and for good reason: It is the most impressive dramatic performance of his career, one he jumps into with no movie star filter. He is a father, ex-husband, new husband, new father and ambitious man with political aspirations whose life is seemingly on an upside until it isn’t, and he has to face the reality of having a son with major problems, as well as his own inability to supply an easy fix. There simply isn’t one. He can’t escape his own responsibilities as a father, even if there is the temptation to put them under the rug for the sake of the life he now leads. But life isn’t that easy. His own past comes back to haunt him, and he knows the relationship and damage his own father put on him cannot be repeated with Nicholas. That comes crystal clear in a single scene where Peter visits his demanding dad, played in a cameo by Hopkins that is nothing like the father he played in that Oscar-winning performance a couple of years ago. He is the kind of man who never believed his son could be what he thought he should be, never good enough, and Peter shows the toll of being that son in this single, brilliantly acted scene.

As Nicholas, newcomer McGrath plays him as an extremely moody kid in need of tender loving care, a young man from a broken home who can no longer find himself. In the scene at the hospital where he begs his parents not to admit him, McGrath reaches heartbreaking intensity that pays off the rest of what is largely an understated and effective portrait of a troubled kid crying out for help in silent ways. Dern, as usual, is excellent and hits all the right notes as Kate, and so does Kirby, who is increasingly effective in every role she gets.



As with The Father, playwright and screenwriter Hampton takes the French-language text of the play and seamlessly translates the drama, and more importantly its intent, into English. Ben Smithard’s cinematography, Hans Zimmer’s low-key score and the production design of Oliver Holmes don’t bring attention to themselves, and that is as it should be.

Sony Pictures Classics releases The Son this fall. After Venice it will have its North American premiere next week at the Toronto Film Festival. Producers are Joanna Laurie, Iain Canning and Emile Sherman, Zeller and Christophe Spadone.

[jo]

From the UK's EVENING STANDARD --

Venice Film Festival: The Son movie review - Florian Zeller’s feature sits in the shadow of The Father
The French dramatist and filmmaker turns his attention to the damaged offspring of a broken marriage with mixed results

VIEW COMMENTS
<p>Hugh Jackman in The Son </p>


Hugh Jackman in The Son / Handout
By Jo-Ann Titmarsh
2 hours ago

After successfully adapting his play The Father into a multi-award winning film, Florian Zeller has turned his attention to the third play of his family trilogy, screening at the Venice Film Festival ahead of its November release. The Son deals with the complexities of father-son relationships, as well as the issue of mental illness.


Hugh Jackman stars as Peter, a successful New York lawyer with a young trophy wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and a new-born baby boy Theo. Yet this beautiful happy family contains other members, just as beautiful but much less happy. Peter has a bitter ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) and a depressed 17-year-old son Nicholas (Zen McGrath), who has been severely damaged by his parents’ divorce and specifically by what he sees as his father’s betrayal of the family. When an exasperated and scared Kate turns to Peter for help, it is up to the disappointing father and his new partner to take over parenting this fragile teen.

Zeller sets all this story up swiftly and deftly in the opening scene, which contains some lovely touches: when Kate shows up at the apartment, Beth stands guard at the front door, with no invitation to Kate to cross the threshold; in turn Kate can barely look in Beth’s direction. As the exes discuss their teen boy, the latest addition to Peter’s family can be heard crying in the background and right there in that hallway are so many of the potential complications lying in wait.

There is also a patriarch who appears little but looms large: Peter’s father Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) is a Washington politico with whom Peter has a prickly and distant relationship. Before father and son meet, we see Peter fielding calls from his dad, and he is obviously oblivious to news of pater’s recent health issues. When they do meet, well, suffice to say there is anger and bitterness on both sides.


This is the only scene with Hopkins, but his character plays a pivotal role: it transpires that he gifted Peter a hunting rifle, which is kept stored behind the washing machine. Nicholas finds it and from then on, Zeller repeatedly returns to the laundry room and we watch the machine in action, each time the cycle getting stronger. We all know the Chekhov’s gun dramatic principle, but Zeller lays it on a little too thick here, leaving the audience in no doubt as to what lies ahead.



As with The Father, once again Zeller has joined forces with Christopher Hampton, who translated his original play and co-wrote the screenplay (he won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Father). And, as with his previous film, the action rarely takes place outside the confines of four walls, yet the film never feels stagey.

Zen McGrath is making an impressive transition from child actor to more mature roles and he holds his own opposite his experienced co-stars. Kirby has a more thankless task, her character mainly unsympathetic, yet Beth does create the lightest moment in the film, when she gets Peter to show Nicholas his dad dancing (and kudos to Jackman for trying to fool us that he can’t dance).

Jackman and Dern excel as the concerned parents. Dern is so great at expressing heaps with the slightest moue or glance. Jackman has the meatier role and has more to do: he goes from happy new dad, to frustrated father to embittered son and then to horror as he recognises so much of his father in himself.

Shakespeare wrote that ‘the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children’ and it would appear from The Son that Zeller agrees with him. Unfortunately, the film lacks both the killer emotional punch that The Father pulled, as well as its disorienting, brilliant inventiveness. There is nothing new here – there have been many other movies dealing with teenage depression and the family fallout – but this is an intelligent and moving addition to the genre nevertheless.

[jo]

Putting this on both threads

[jo]

Sept 7, 2022 15:16:38 GMT -5 jo said:

Report from Variety --

HOME
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Sep 7, 2022 12:56pm PT

Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern Give Venice an Emotional Gut Punch as ‘The Son’ Earns 10-Minute Standing Ovation

By Marta Balaga, Zack Sharf

the son
Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images

Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern devastated the Venice Film Festival with the world premiere of Florian Zeller’s “The Son,” which earned a 10-minute standing ovation. Jackman appeared visibly moved during the film’s reception, as did the audience. Jackman hugged his young co-star Zen McGrath amid the ovation. The film, which centers on a gut-wrenching family tragedy, led to audible gasps from viewers during one dramatic scene.

“The Son” centers on “a family as it falls apart and tries to come back together again,” according to Sony Pictures Classics’ official synopsis. Jackman stars as a father whose 17-year-old son comes to live with him after deciding he can no longer stay with his mother (Dern) years after his parents’ divorce. Jackson’s character, Peter, has a new partner, Kirby’s Beth. As Peter overextends himself to give his son a better life.

Silent Ovation - clap! clap! clap!

[jo]

[jo]

From Next Best Picture --

“THE SON”
Tom O'Brien
By
Tom O'Brien
September 7, 2022



THE STORY – A couple of years after his parents’ divorce, 17-year-old Nicholas no longer feels he can stay with his mother, Kate. He moves in with his father Peter and Peter’s new partner Beth. Juggling work, his and Beth’s new baby, and the offer of his dream job in Washington, Peter tries to care for Nicholas as he wishes his own father had cared for him. But by reaching for the past to correct its mistakes, he loses sight of how to hold onto the Nicholas in the present.
​
THE CAST – Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Hugh Quarshie & Anthony Hopkins

THE TEAM – Florian Zeller (Director/Writer) & Christopher Hampton (Writer)
​
THE RUNNING TIME – 123 Minutes

At this moment, Nicholas (Zen McGrath) is having a great deal of mental anguish. Once a happy child, the 17-year-old has fallen into a deep funk after the divorce of his parents, Peter (Hugh Jackman) and Kate (Laura Dern), a split prompted by Peter leaving the marriage for his new love Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and siring a child with her. While living with Kate, the teen has been AWOL from school for a month and can only mutter about being bothered by life. In fact, his relationship with his mom has degenerated to the point where Nicholas announces he wants to move in with his dad, and Peter and an apprehensive Beth agree.

So begins “The Son,” Florian Zeller’s second film adaptation of his trilogy of plays and serves as a prequel to “The Father,” the 2020 film which garnered two Academy Awards. Where “The Father” played tricks on the audience’s mind, “The Son” is a more straight-ahead domestic drama, at least at first. Peter is a high-powered New York executive who is weighing an offer to join a U.S. Senator’s D.C. reelection campaign, but his first priority is his new family, Beth and his baby son Theo. He loves Nicholas but has ceded parenting duties to Kate long ago. So when his ex-wife tells him that she has become genuinely afraid of their son, Peter knows it’s time to step up.


Anxious to grasp this second chance at being a suitable father to Nicholas, Peter reinforces his son’s good behavior at every turn and is delighted when Nicholas starts getting As in school, making friends, and being invited to parties. Or so he’s told. What Beth sees is something else entirely — a kid who’s “weird” whom she is afraid of having around their baby. Still, Peter is determined to give Nicholas the kind of love and attention that his own father, Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), denied Peter throughout his life.

Hopkins has only one scene in “The Son,” but it’s a beauty. On a business trip to D.C., Peter drops by his father’s house ostensibly to tell his father about the troubles his grandson is having. Instead, Peter dredges up long-head resentments he has against Anthony as to how he failed him as a father and how at least Peter cares about his relationship with his son. Anthony pauses, takes his measure as he sharpens his bone-dry scalpel, and calmly proceeds to eviscerate his son and his humblebrag. One hardly needs reminding just how devastating Hopkins can be when he has a target in his sights, and his clipped condescension toward Jackman’s Peter is giggling with delight. Honestly, nobody does it better. Peter, humbled, returns home to prove his father wrong, but when confronted with proof that Nicholas has been lying to him all this time, the long-overdue confrontation must come down, and many harsh truths are at last spoken.

The specter of mental illness is never far away in “The Son.” The particular pain of parents who see the child that they so desperately love is in need of help that they themselves cannot give is one that rings true to too many households, and Zeller and his collaborator Christopher Hampton capture it with skill and empathy in yet another extraordinary script by this Oscar-winning duo.




In directing “The Father,” Zeller had the daunting challenge of maintaining an enclosed, hot-house atmosphere while his script played mind games with the audience. Here, Zeller, though working on the wider canvas of New York City, still must bear down closely to these four people’s individual problems and anxieties, never losing their essential humanity. It’s still hard to believe that this is only Zeller’s second film — his assured direction resembles that of a longtime craftsman.

This is particularly displayed in his skill with actors. Vanessa Kirby, for example, has never been more appealing as she is here — with her combination of warmth and intelligence, you understand entirely why Jackman’s Peter would fall for her. And her scenes where she’s trying to protect her own baby from her suspected fear of Nicholas are riveting. As Kate, Dern has the particular challenge of capturing a woman who is torn between her longtime resentment of the husband who left her and having to work with him to give much-needed help to their troubled son. Dern has more than a few scenes where your heart simply aches for Kate, and Dern never gives too much — always making the audience come to her.


McGrath, the young Australian actor whom Zeller cast over Zoom for the part of Nicholas, has such an intelligent approach here. He never plays Nicholas as some teenage psycho but instead always makes sure we can see glimmers of that little boy whom Peter and Kate delighted in as a child. He allows you to feel Nicholas’ desperation at wanting to reconnect with both of his parents while racing against the clock and the gradual growth of his clinical depression. It’s a delicate tightrope of emotion that McGrath is navigating here and, in the process, delivers a performance that is skillfully calibrated while still being utterly heartbreaking.



In a career that encompasses being a superhero, a dramatic actor, and a song-and-dance man in one unique package, Jackman has never had a role quite like Peter, which calls upon him to shed his everyday good-guy image to probe deeper into the psyche of a successful man whose Achilles heel is his lifelong resentment of his father’s failures and his deep terror that he will make the same mistakes with his disturbed son. Jackman reveals a vulnerability in his performance in a way we have never quite seen before, and when that crack in his protective armor breaks, the result is devastating. It’s brilliant work from him.



For “The Son,” Zeller has brought back many of his crack production team from “The Father,” including editor Yorgos Lamprinos and cinematographer Ben Smithard while adding production designer Simon Bowles and composer Hans Zimmer, who contributes a gloriously melodic score. As with “The Father,” it’s first-class production work all across the board.

Offhand, I can’t think of another project as ambitious as Zeller’s, creating three plays (followed by three films) that probe with such insight the psychological damage that one can casually inflict within a family, even when (or sometimes, especially when) love is involved. The empathy Zeller shows toward his characters, particularly in “The Son,” is a distinguishing mark of his writing and makes me look forward to “The Mother,” the trilogy’s conclusion, should a film ever come to pass.



And to anticipate one likely question: yes, Hugh Jackman does dance in “The Son,” swinging to Tom Jones along with Kirby and McGrath in a joyous family moment that slowly turns dark, as does so much in Florian Zeller’s remarkable sophomore effort.

[jo]

Not a review ( although I am waiting for their review when they get to see it, as the AVClub usually comes out with credible and grounded comments) -- but a comment on Hugh's chances.

www.avclub.com/clap-watch-hugh-jackman-10-minute-applause-the-son-1849510899

Those who have followed the festival circuit will note—perhaps with exasperation—that while an extended ovation is a good way of taking a movie’s pulse, it doesn’t automatically translate to the best reviews. So it is with The Son: while Jackman now seems firmly in play for the Best Actor race, the critical reception is decidedly mixed.

[jo]

From the critic who best summed up Hugh Jackman's work in THE SON --

[jo]

"A wrenching performance from Hugh Jackman" --

‘The Son’: Venice Review
BY WENDY IDE8 SEPTEMBER 2022

Florian Zeller follows up ‘The Son’ with another family drama, starring Hugh Jackman and Vanessa Kirby

The Son

SOURCE: SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

THE SON

Dir: Florian Zeller. UK. 2022. 123 mins.

A high-flying lawyer, with a new partner and a baby, a chic Manhattan apartment and aspirations to move into the political sphere, Peter (Hugh Jackman) is a man who is accustomed to success. So when it becomes clear that Nicholas (Zen McGrath), his 17-year-old son from his first marriage, is struggling, Peter naturally assumes that he can fix the problem. But by attempting to correct the mistakes made by his own largely absent father, Peter fails to see the warning signs of his son’s deteriorating mental health. The second film from Florian Zeller, is, like The Father, based on one of his own stage plays. It’s undeniably powerful stuff, but a more straightforward piece of storytelling, lacking the slippery, shape-shifting quality of his debut.

Compassionate, acutely observed but also rather conventional

The Son is the second in a planned trilogy of films dealing with various aspects of mental health. And, with its themes of adolescent depression and parental guilt, it’s a particularly timely piece – although the film doesn’t address the pandemic and the subsequent epidemic of mental health issues, it is something which is lurking in the background. But for all its obvious quality, and in particular Jackman’s wrenching performance, this may be a tougher sell to audiences than The Father. It’s compassionate, acutely observed but also rather conventional.

The first hint that something is amiss with his Peter’s son comes with the news that Nicholas has been skipping school. And not just a day here and there: a full month of absences, during which Nicholas had left home as usual but then drifted off and wandered the streets. At Nicholas’s suggestion, it is decided that he will move in with his father. Peter almost manages to conceal his initial doubts about the idea. Almost, but not quite. And for a while at least, the boy seems to thrive. He starts a new school. He excels in maths. He even gets an invitation to a party. But just because his parents desperately want to believe that Nicholas has turned a corner, it doesn’t necessarily make it so.

What’s interesting about the film is the way that it captures the slightly unsettling quality of depression, the way that people feel uneasy in Nicholas’s presence. The spectres of cinema’s roster of teen psychopaths loom large. Zeller plays with emotive imagery to powerful effect: placing a knife, which Peter’s new partner Beth (Vanessa Kirby, excellent in a supporting role) has found under Nicholas’s mattress, in the same frame as the couple’s new baby suggests subliminally that the boy could be as much a threat to his infant step-brother as he is to himself. And Zeller seeds the film with hints that Nicholas may not be trustworthy – a missing pair of earrings takes on a loaded significance.

In the role of Nicholas, McGrath has perfected a dead-eyed stare which could convey a kid numbed by his misery or could suggest something more malign in his intent. We hardly blame Beth when she brusquely dismisses the idea that Nicholas might babysit her baby. But her words in the argument that follows cut deeply.

This is not a film which passes judgement on fallible parents who are doing their best in an impossible situation. However Peter’s own father (Anthony Hopkins in volcanically toxic form) is depicted as an irredeemably bad dad, whose neglect might have sown the seed for his grandson’s malaise. Meanwhile, Peter obsessively replays the memories of happier times, as if somewhere buried deep within the uncomplicated joy of a family holiday in the Mediterranean a decade before lies the key to what went wrong.

[jo]

[jo]

The website Film Experience was created by Nathaniel R ( remember him?)

Venice Diary #08 - "The Son", "Beyond the Wall", and "Dreamin' Wild"
DateThursday, September 8, 2022 at 10:03PM
by Elisa Giudici



Today on the menu in Venice, there is only one option: crying your heart out. You can choose which missing son and worried parent will tear your heart in pieces, though.


THE SON by Florian Zeller

Who is 'the son' of the title? That's debatable. There is the troubled teenager Nicholas (Zen McGrath) that Peter (Hugh Jackman) had with his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern). Peter also has a newborn son he is raising with his new partner Beth (Vanessa Kirby). Maybe Peter himself is the titular character? He's learning some hard lessons in being a father while struggling with what it means to be the son of Anthony (Sir Anthony Hopkins). I would say the latter, considering how this movie works best as a reminder of Hugh Jackman’s considerable acting skill...



Can you make a comeback when you haven't stopped working? Jackman's role here feels like a fresh reboot at least. It's emotional and layered enough to signal to the Academy and audiences that this could open a significant new phase of the movie star's career. Keeping this in mind, it’s almost comical that the most memorable performance belongs to Anthony Hopkins and he's only here for five minutes! His detached mean father deepens our sympathy and understanding of Jackman’s attempts to be a different kind of father who can set his teenage son on the right path. Neverthless The Son is Hugh Jackman’s show. Dern and Kirby have little to do and Zen McGrath’s Nicholas is fits to neatly into the “depressed troubled adolescent” stereotype.

The Son (2021) is less impressive than The Father (2020) so perhaps we're discovering Zeller's limits as a filmmaker. Though, to be honest, is that fair? How many movies are as impressive as The Father? At the very least The Son proves as soulful an acting showcase for Hugh Jackman as The Father was for Anthony Hopkins.

[jo]

Another review from the Italian press --

2022

THE SON, THE REVIEW: HUGH JACKMAN BETWEEN FEELINGS OF GUILT AND REGRETS
The review of The Son, the film by Florian Zeller with Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby, presented at the Venice Film Festival 2022.

REVIEW by ANTONIO CUOMO — 08/09/2022

The Son Hugh Jackman

The Son: Hugh Jackman in a scene from the film


Some films have the ability to creep into our soul and stay there to continue talking to us even after watching. As we will tell you in the review of The Son, Florian Zeller's new work is one of them, a story that we return to think about since we came out of the press screening as part of the Venice Film Festival 2022, which sees it in competition. The director of The Father tells us an intense and touching story, assisted by an excellent cast that sees Hugh Jackman as a central figure, accompanied by Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby and the young Zen McGrath.



The sorrows of young Nicholas

The story of The Son starts from Peter, a successful man who lives a hectic existence made of work and a newborn son with his new partner, overwhelmed by the return to his life of the ex and especially of his son Nicholas, now a teenager. The boy is not having an easy time, he has been missing from school for a month, he is tormented, and so Peter welcomes him home to try to take care of him, to return to his life and be that father that his parent had never managed to be. But these efforts, this excess of attention, is not what Nicholas needs, trapped in a deep discomfort that even he cannot explain.


Depression, an invisible enemy

It is not easy to talk about depression. It is not easy to stage it, to tell it, to make it understood. Because it is a subtle disorder, which oppresses and extinguishes those who suffer from it, preventing them from living and reacting to life, but it is not easy to understand for those who have not had concrete evidence, direct or indirect. Precisely for this reason it is important to deepen the topic, underline the dynamics and behavior of those who suffer from it, but also the possible errors in which those around a depressed person can run into, between the desire to shake and push to react, neglected signals, behaviors that cannot be explained and accepted.

The Son Zen Mcgrath Laura Dern Hugh Jackman

The Son: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and Zen McGrath in a scene from the film

Florian Zeller does it in the best way, outlining behavioral and narrative dynamics that manage to stage depression and its consequences. It does not pretend to explain, while telling us about the family context in which Nicholas' discomfort developed, but illustrates a situation and the difficulties that the boy's parents have in managing it.


Hugh Jackman's feelings of guilt

In fact, we have mentioned an excess of attention, an effort on peter's part to take care of his son and try to be part of his life. That of the character of Hugh Jackman, suffered, intense and effective in the role of a successful man who cannot have control of that part of his life, is a reaction to a lack suffered by his father, to an absence that he himself had suffered, but also the result of the feelings of guilt matured after leaving his wife for a new partner with whom he recently had another child very small.


The Son, Hugh Jackman: "I chased this role"

Between feelings of guilt, regrets and a solidity that crumbles in front of the wall of incommunicability with the boy, we manage to empathize with Hugh Jackman's Peter, with a father who cannot find the lost harmony with his son and overcome that invisible wall that depression has erected around him.

CONCLUSIONS

We arrive at the final lines of the review of The Son still shaken by the emotion with which we had begun to write, because florian Zeller's new film is a harsh fresco of guilt and regrets against the background of a disease that when it strikes sinks the individual immersing him in a sea of suffering from which it is difficult to emerge. A good cast, starting with Hugh Jackman, helps to stage and convey the emotion, helping us to empathize with the characters and their strong emotions.

MOVIEPLAYER.IT

3.5/5

[jo]

VENICE 2022 Competition

Review: The Son
by Elena Lazic

08/09/2022 - VENICE 2022: Florian Zeller’s sophomore feature is an uncompromising statement on depression, generational trauma and parents’ responsibilities to their children

Review: The Son

Zen McGrath, Laura Dern and Hugh Jackman in The Son
How do you deal with someone you love acting in ways you cannot understand? Florian Zeller explored that question in The Father [+], centring on a man living with dementia. Likewise based on one of his plays, the Venice competition entry The Son [+] isn’t an exploration of any kind — it is a forceful, unambiguous statement.


The film opens on a picture of domestic bliss: a mother, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), is humming a tune to her baby, while the father, Peter (Hugh Jackman), looks on. This harmony is, however, quickly shattered when Kate (Laura Dern), Peter’s ex-wife, knocks on their door and tells Peter she is worried about their teenage son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath). Thus the scene is set for a film that, unlike The Father, progresses not just in chronological order, but discursively. Peter tries to fix his child’s unhappiness one step at a time, surfing through this crisis armed with logic, reason and strength. But all of his attempts to help fail. The true discursive drive of the film isn’t his pragmatic method for “fixing” his son, but rather his complete inability to do so: without him noticing, his every move makes his son feel worse.

It almost feels like Zeller has ticked off all of the examples of what not to say or do to a struggling loved one listed in a “helping someone with depression” pamphlet — from reminding them that they are failing school, to telling them that when they cut themselves, they are also hurting you. If his neatly constructed, didactic film avoids coming across as an after-school special, that is because it isn’t simply about a father mishandling his child’s mental-health problems. By focusing on Peter, the film in fact boldly — and perhaps controversially — sets out to reveal the very tangible roots of Nicholas’ depression.

Those origins might be more immediately obvious to viewers in the know, but Zeller only progressively reveals them, starting from the very first words uttered by Jackman: Peter greets the visibly distressed Kate with reproaches, his callousness especially shocking after the tender opening scene. Soon, however, this moment of cruelty is revealed to be part of a behavioural pattern, Peter emerging as a man with little patience for any problems outside of the office. As fathers go, he may initially seem better than many of them, always approaching life’s problems with optimism and never raising his voice. But when Peter adopts a conciliatory tone, he also minimises others’ worries; he talks and behaves like a politician, and sure enough, he is on track to become one.



These character traits may not seem all that dangerous. After all, others appear to be handling Peter’s denial and desire for control well. But that, too, is an illusion. When Peter casually talks to Kate about his new wife and baby, she tears up, more hurt by their divorce than he'd ever realised. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says; “I know,” she replies, smiling, though her words sound more resigned than forgiving.

The theory that Nicholas might simply be struggling with his parents’ separation suddenly appears less clichéd: more than a split, to Nicholas and Kate, Peter’s decision to leave was a bewildering break with reality. That Kate and Peter now present themselves as amicable exes is just another one of Peter’s convenient illusions in his well-managed pick-and-choose existence. “I have the right to reinvent my life!” he tells his son.



Forceful denial and compromise — is this what adulthood has in store for Nicholas? At the office, as Peter’s mind drifts towards his son, the superficiality of his life comes into focus and he, too, begins to look like a scared little boy. When he pays a rare visit to his father (Anthony Hopkins), a man even more callous than he is, we understand that he once was just as lost as Nicholas. He might still be.

Zeller plays with our expectations by revealing his characters to be more self-aware than we had initially assumed: even Peter, who knows that he talks to his son with the same domineering attitude as his father’s. He simply doesn’t know better, and neither does his child. “I can’t deal with living, and it’s your fault!” Nicholas tells him. As the young man gets worse and his father persists on the same tack, we may start imagining all of the things that Peter could do, but doesn’t: tell his son that school tests don’t matter; take time off work to stay by his side; say that he loves him no matter what.

The Son is a UK production staged by See-Saw Films and Film4. Its international sales are overseen by Cross City Films and Embankment Films.

[jo]

The Son Review: Florian Zeller Returns In The Folds Of A Heartbreaking
Family Drama (Venice 79)

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Anthony Hopkins

Director: Florian Zeller

Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half star)




Florian Zeller continues his investigation of the family world with The Son, his second feature film after the success of The Father, which won an Academy Award for Best Non-Original Screenplay. His new work, in competition at the Venice Film Festival 2022, is based on a play by the director himself (as in the case of his first feature), who adapted it for the big screen with the help of Christopher. Hampton, with whom he had shared the statuette on the occasion of the previous film. It doesn’t fly, but for some people, it’s always there: high up. Unattainable, proud and exemplary like a great superhero. The first that every son or daughter meets on his path. The fate of fathers is strange: if they stay in the sky they cast too much shade, but if they fall or disappoint they struggle to get up.

The Son Review

Florian Zeller knows it well, and he returns once again to explore the intricate realm of domestic affections just two years after the splendid The Father. We open our review of The Son by immediately recalling the surprising first work of a playwright turned director. An illustrious and at the same time uncomfortable precedent, just like the superhero fathers. Because The Father had told the story of sickness and senility by blending drama and psychological thriller with an enviable mastery, this The Son (linked to its predecessor since the title) welcomes his legacy with a great weight on his shoulders. A responsibility that Zeller manages with great naturalness, through a more canonical and classic work, but no less disruptive from an emotional point of view.


The Son Review: The Story
The Son is the story of Peter (Hugh Jackman), a successful man who has recently become a father again with his partner Beth (Vanessa Kirby). While living his dream of joining the team of a senator who aims for the White House, Peter is reminded of his parental duties when his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern), whom the protagonist had left after falling in love with Beth, speaks to him worried of their son Nicholas (Zen McGrath). Withdrawn teenager who shares a house with his mother, the young man hasn’t attended school for some time and shows anger towards the world that worries Kate. Perpetually devoted to his career, Peter decides to welcome the boy into his new home, hoping to make up for lost time with the young man and to help him get out of the dark abyss in which he is.


We remain in the shadow of the fathers and start with a confrontation. The Father was a story in which memories disappeared, became confused and evaporated little by little. This time The Son, like a good rebellious son, does the exact opposite: he asks the past to come back to the surface. He succeeds Peter, an esteemed manager engulfed by work, struggling with a second marriage and a second child. A second chance interrupted by the sudden request for help from her first child, Nicholas, is problematic and difficult to manage. Peter is thus forced to take off the successful man’s jacket and roll up his sleeves as a father, thus having to face a series of mistakes made in the past and which, perhaps, can still be remedied. The Son is a slow tuning into old frequencies, a gradual and delicate recomposition of a father-son relationship in which, however, too many variables converge. Because Peter has a new family to look after, because the time spent away from Nicholas leaves scars, and above all, because Peter, perhaps, still has some ghosts in the closet.


The Son Review and Analysis
A ball difficult to unravel so is the familiar heart beating in The Son’s chest. A battered heart, in which family affections walk in a fragile balance between hope and despair, the desire to start over and resentments too big to overcome. A film that truly resembles a long psychotherapy session in which a father and a son (and maybe even some spectators) look their frailties in the face. On a dramaturgical level, Zeller is very skilled in weaving a canvas in which relationships are blurred, and the presumed family hierarchies are ready to fall. We understand this from the title, which opens up a double interpretation.

Because The Son at the center of the film is not only Nicholas, a soul in pain to decipher, but also Peter himself. A man who sees in his relationship with his son the son he was, the father he didn’t have and (above all) what he can’t be. A game of perennial projections that involve envelops and above all maintains a constant level of tension that anguishes him. A dangerous game in which Peter (a thoughtful and imploded Hugh Jackman) and Nicholas (a surprising Zen McGrath) walk hand in hand all the time, trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, peering into two different abysses. With his father struggling with a past full of regrets, and a son frightened by a future that is difficult to imagine.

You can smell the stage in the houses of The Son. Less claustrophobic and sophisticated in the staging of The Father (damn comparisons!), but always very theatrical in the recurrence of domestic spaces and in the renunciation of open spaces (which not by chance are confined to memories). It is once again a question of sofas to talk about, of living rooms to deal with, of rooms in which to close oneself to confront each other. Zeller confirms himself as a director who is very good at making rooms speak through furniture, but he is also an author who is attentive to the bodies on stage, their movements, gestures and the unspoken. In this sense, the choice of an inspired Hugh Jackman in the title role is very intelligent and meaningful. Because Jackman’s body, powerful and charismatic in always stealing the show, is a centralizer just like Peter. A man is always at the center of his world. A rational world is made up of simple answers to complex problems.

A body that is, despite a few too didactic passages, in which the characters underline in words things that are understood very well even without speaking, The Son excites and shakes with a dramatic film from start to finish. A work in which it is easy to reflect and be frightened. A work certainly less exciting than The Father, but which (just like The Father) takes note of an uncomfortable truth. Because where love ends and dies, sometimes there is no better glue than pain to return to feeling like a family. Zeller decides to set almost all of the title indoors, making the closure of the characters prisoners of their convictions and unable to communicate with each other.

The Son

In particular, Peter looks at the city from the top of his office, located on the top floors of a skyscraper, very far from the life below and from its inhabitants, as well as from his son, who suffers from abandonment and paternal absence following his romantic getaway. A choice, that of man, taken without evaluating the consequences on the people close to him. It is exactly about the consequences that the film argues, dwelling above all on the results of actions, rather than on their fulfillment: we are not shown the origins of the love between Peter and Beth; we don’t see Nicholas cutting himself, seeing only his scars; the meeting between Peter and the senator takes place behind a closed door, but we understand that the politician has decided to welcome him into his team. The feeling of a life lived in his present comes only in the flashbacks, the only ones in the film, dedicated to the moments spent together by Peter and Nicholas during the latter’s childhood; a time that appears remote, during which the union between father and son was as great as the distance that now separates the two.

As in the case of his first work, Zeller transforms a story born for the theater through the language of film. In the case of The Father, the director used the medium of cinema to convey the sense of disorientation of the elderly protagonist suffering from senile dementia (to play him was Anthony Hopkins) with a staging that opened the doors to the life of the character with fragments of images. An intuition that justified the adaptation and that demonstrated how the French author wanted to exploit the tools granted by the seventh art in the passage from the stage to the screen. Compared to what was done on that occasion, The Son appears as a step backward for the director.


The aforementioned approaches add little to what was not already present in the theatrical performance and a general flatness weighs on Zeller’s direction, thanks to an incredibly glossy photograph and a camera that does little besides standing still, aseptic, in the room to fixedly capture the dramas of the characters. Hugh Jackman puts all of himself in the shoes of a parent struggling not to let his son slip into his hands, finding himself thinking about his role as a son, but the Australian actor does not have the strength of Anthony Hopkins (present in the film as Peter’s father) to make up for such a faded direction. What saves The Son is mainly a subject that paints the inevitability of depression, which slowly but surely swallows its victims like quicksand.

However, Zeller, as a director, does little to give the source material a reason to exist on the big screen, doing the bare minimum knowing that he can count on an intelligently selected cast and a theme that can easily hit like a punch in the stomach. . Portraying the parental one for the difficult job it is, studded with feelings of guilt and continuous questioning of one’s choices, the title will certainly know how to touch the hearts of many spectators, but it cannot help but disappoint for its reduced size cinematic value, unable to completely free himself from his theatrical derivation.



The Son Review: The Last Words

After The Father Florian Zeller again fits into the open wounds of a family drama full of anguish. The Son makes us experience a complex father-son relationship in which the past and future are uncomfortable places to imagine. Florian Zeller while not signing a new masterpiece like The Father, brings a smaller but more powerful story to the big screen with The Son. A story of parents and children, of shadows from the past, of helplessness and pain. A film that grows inside, dramatic and exciting that leads the viewer to immerse themselves in the difficult role of a parent put to the test both by a child and by life itself, underlining how requests for help can be presented in the most disparate ways.

filmyhype google news

3.5 ratings Filmyhype

[jo]

From TimeOut--

The Son
Film
4 out of 5 stars
The Son
Photograph: Venice Film Festival


Time Out says
4 out of 5 stars

Hugh Jackman soars in Florian Zeller’s hard-hitting follow-up to ‘The Father’

Playwright-turned-fillmaker Florian Zeller continues his one-man war on the world’s tear ducts with another hard-hitting portrait of domestic life in extremis. A loose sequel to the Oscar-winning The Father, and again adapted from his own stage play and featuring a bang-on-form Anthony Hopkins, The Son is a portrait of parents and teenagers, and the chasms that can grow between them. And like The Father, it’s a tough but rewarding watch.

Hugh Jackman plays hotshot lawyer Peter Miller, a man who seems to have it all: a loving partner, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), and new baby, the kind of Manhattan apartment that appears in Wallpaper* magazine, and the prospect of a political career in the offing.

But when his ex-wife, Kate (Laura Dern), appears at his door with news that their depressed 17-year-old son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), has been skipping school for a month, the first crack appears. Soon, Nicholas is shrugging off his desperate mum’s efforts to help and moving in with his dad and stepmum. And that’s when the wheels really come off.

Mental illness acts as a kind of stick in the spokes of complacent parenting here. As Nicholas falls deeper into despair, Peter is horrified to discover that his toolkit for helping is closer than he thought to that of his cold, selfish father (Hopkins in a small but magnificently spiky role). Anger and frustration begin to come more quickly as fatigue and anxiety bite. Is he, god forbid, slowly turning into his own monstrous dad? More importantly, does he even understand, or trust, his son?

Florian Zeller continues his war on the world’s tear ducts with another portrait of domestic life in extremis
Certainly, the film doesn’t paint Nicholas as entirely trustworthy: he’s not above manipulating his parents and may be gaslighting Beth by hiding her belongings. But his actions stem from a deeper survival instinct – cries for help that Peter struggles to answer.

Zeller, who again co-adapts with Atonement writer Christopher Hampton, isn’t as successful at shaking off The Son’s theatrical roots as he was with The Father. Beyond some gauzy flashbacks to a long-ago holiday, it’s a very internal film, full of meaty dialogue scenes but with less of the cinematic sleight-of-hand to challenge your perspective on what you’re seeing. There’s a Chekhovian plot device that’s too clunky by half – you’ll know it when you see it – and an ending that belies the subtlety of what’s come before.

But there’s also real power in this depiction of the precariousness of family life. With Jackman on career-best form – he’s surely a strong shout to pick up his first Best Actor nomination – and fellow Aussie McGrath bringing edge and unpredictability as the spiralling Nicholas, The Son is smartly played and full of empathy and compassion.

The Son premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It’s out in US theaters Nov 11.

Phil de Semlyen
Written by Phil de SemlyenThursday 8 September 2022

[mamaleh]

"First Best Actor nomination"? That Time Out reviewer seems to have forgotten about HJ's Oscar nom for LES MIZ.

Ellen