Rating: PG-13 | Runtime: 123 minutes
Release Date: November 11th, 2022 (USA)
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Director(s): Florian Zeller
Writer(s): Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton / Florian Zeller (play “Le Fils”)

It’s better to see something in a dark light than to not see it at all!

You can’t win them all. I don’t know Florian Zeller’s life story, but I wouldn’t be surprised to discover he had a parent battling Alzheimer’s. Or that he never had a child battling the sort of depression depicted in The Son. I could be wrong.

I hope I’m not, though, since what he and co-writer Christopher Hampton put on-screen is a gross manipulation of emotions that does little beyond show how the real person who needs to be in therapy is the father due to him being so messed up with his own Daddy Issues that he’s unable to recognize his drive to succeed isn’t a personality. Because this is ultimately Peter’s story (Hugh Jackman). Nicholas (Zen McGrath) is nothing more than collateral damage.

Perhaps that’s why the latter’s performance feels so stilted. Most of it is the script and direction since no one delivers anything resembling authenticity—not even Jackman despite what so many say while bending over backwards to praise something within this mess. They’re all robots spouting dialogue straight out of a theater group exercise wherein the responses are intentionally drawn to be as oblivious as they are counterfeit.

The only reason I can fathom for this choice is that we’re seeing everything from Peter’s eyes. The eyes of a man watching the person he promised to support fall apart. It’s his refusal to actually listen to his son that makes it seem like Nicholas is putting on a show. I honestly thought Zeller would pan to McGrath’s tearful face turning hard and unfeeling numerous times. But this sadly isn’t We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Zeller is playing it all in earnest. I therefore wish I could have at least laughed at the proceedings rather than roll my eyes and wait for the inevitable—the thing everyone from Peter’s new wife (Vanessa Kirby) to Nicholas’ psychiatrist (Hugh Quarshie) warned would happen.

All I could hope was that it was working towards something more than hollow flashbacks (it’s telling that Peter must go back eleven years to find a moment of shared happiness with his son) and an epilogue that only proves Zeller’s desire to make Peter the victim. Let’s call the movie The Son, but center Dad’s struggles. Let’s render the character that needs help a catalyst for another to look inwards and pity himself rather than wake-up.

What then is the point? To sympathize with Peter? Maybe, since Mom (Laura Dern) is only allowed to speak when talking to or about him. Is it to make parents feel better about their guilt when a tragedy like the one that occurs here happens to them? Maybe, since we never actually get to hear from Nicholas beyond the words he uses to punish his parents for what he sees as them punishing him. Just like he was an afterthought in Peter’s life, he’s an afterthought in the film.

He’s there to push Peter over the line. To show us the temper Peter inherited from a father who actually embraces his villainy (Anthony Hopkins, not reprising his Oscar-winning The Father role) that we can speculate from little pieces of dialogue sprinkled throughout. I don’t know. It merely felt like I was watching a narcissist destroy his life while the film played a heartfelt score to pretend as though he was trying his hardest and couldn’t catch a break.

I would have at least taken some visual flourish to distract me from the one-dimensional cutouts going through the motions of a generic case study for what not to do with someone who’s having suicidal thoughts, but Zeller doesn’t even give us that. The Father was so ingenious in its cinematic construction.

So, the otherwise generic cinematography and transitions marred by blatant stunt blocking to ensure the object of heated arguments is listening out of view every single time makes me wonder if the former’s success was all on Peter Francis and Cathy Featherstone’s brilliant sets. Because The Son, much like Jackman’s Peter, is devoid of personality. It’s just scene after scene of “Afterschool Special” dialogue with zero room to let any of the actors breathe. They, like us, know the other shoe is about to drop from frame one. And the waiting is painful.

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Hugh Jackman as Peter and Laura Dern as Kate in THE SON. Photographer: Rekha Garton. ©See-Saw Films Limited. Courtesy of See-Saw Films / Sony Pictures Classics.