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‘The Son’ Review: Father Doesn’t Know Best

Hugh Jackman plays the father of a troubled teenager in Florian Zeller’s leaden drama.

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By Natalia Winkelman

At one point in “The Son,” directed by Florian Zeller and based on his play of the same name, a clinician briefs a divorced mother and father on their teenage son’s condition after a mental health emergency. “He’s in very good hands now,” the doctor says, referring to the hospital staff. “Now” is the key word; the implication is that the wealthy, well-meaning Peter (Hugh Jackman) and Kate (Laura Dern) are unfit to handle the issues their son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) is facing.

In my professional opinion (I’m a critic, not a physician), the same should be said of the movie surrounding Nicholas, which tackles adolescent depression about as deftly as an estate lawyer performing open-heart surgery. Despite its contemporary New York City setting, “The Son” seems to have appropriated a midcentury understanding of mental illness, and the emotion on display feels even more artificial than the rooftop vista erected outside the windows of Peter’s industrial-chic Manhattan loft.

Peter shares this apartment with his wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), and their infant son, and though his work as an attorney is consuming, he relishes his downtown idyll. But the sweetness curdles when Peter learns that Nicholas, who lives with Kate in Brooklyn, has been acting volatile and would prefer to move in with him. Never mind that the teenager is friendless, cutting class and has taken to self-harm; Kate and Peter agree that a change of scenery will restore the cheerful child they raised. (We eventually meet a 6-year-old Nicholas in flashbacks that are so euphoric they could double as airline commercials.)

The leadenness of “The Son” is puzzling given the ingenuity of Zeller’s “The Father,” which positions the audience within the point of view of an aging man with dementia. (The film won two Oscars in 2021.) Unlike that triumph of subjectivity, “The Son” declines to probe the perspectives of Peter or Nicholas, compelling the audience to survey the wreckage of their relationship from a distance. It also leaves the actors seeming somewhat stranded, trading clunky lines or lurching into tantrums without the psychological depth to underpin their affliction. The movie may take place inside a pit of despair, but the theatrics leave us with the uncanny sensation of feeling nothing at all.

The Son Rated PG-13. Divorce and remorse. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes. In theaters.

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‘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

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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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).

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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 disconcertingly 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 work, 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 the role of Peter, Jackman becomes a man caught up in his own kind of performance. 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. That means Jackman is essentially playing a man playing a dad.

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.”

“The Son” isn’t an easy watch, but it’s an important one at a time when 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 stepmother, 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.

Reviewed at Sepulveda Screening Room, Aug. 30, 2022. In Venice, Toronto film festivals. Running time: 123 MIN.

• Production: (U.S.-France-U.K.) A Sony Pictures Classics release of a Film4, Ingenious presentation, in association with Cross City Films, Embarkment Films, of a See-Saw Films, IntoTheVoid production. Producers: Joanna Laurie, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Florian Zeller, Christophe Spadone. Executive producers: Simon Gillis, Philippe Carcassonne, Hugh Jackman, Daniel Battsek, Ollie Madden, Lauren Dark, Peter Touche, Christelle Conan, Hugo Grumbar, Tim Haslam.
• Crew: Director: Florian Zeller. Screenplay: Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller, based on the play “Le Fils” by Florian Zeller. Camera: Ben Smithard. Editor: Yorgos Lamprinos. Music: Hans Zimmer.
• With: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Zen McGrath, Hugh Quarshie, Anthony Hopkins.

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The Son review: an emotionally manipulative family drama

“The Son strives to be a devastating and insightful family drama, but it ends up feeling more like a shallow, emotionally manipulative exploration of misery.”

• Hugh Jackman's intense lead performance
• Laura Dern's complex supporting turn
• An engrossing opening act
• Vanessa Kirby and Zen McGrath's underwhelming performances
• A repetitive second act
• An emotionally manipulative ending

The Son wants you to feel things — namely, regret, heartbreak, sorrow, and helplessness. Despite featuring a handful of talented and very game performers, though, the biggest feeling The Son creates is frustration. The film elicits such a reaction through not only the deeply flawed ways in which it tells its story but also through the myriad of easily avoidable creative mistakes that its filmmakers make across its laborious 123-minute runtime.

What’s even worse is that there’s no reason to go into The Son expecting it to be such an inauthentic, blatantly manipulative drama. In 2020, its director, Florian Zeller, managed to create a far better film with The Father , which was, like The Son , adapted from one of Zeller’s plays and even explores a similar tale of familial strife. Unfortunately, all the missteps that Zeller could have made in The Father he ends up making in The Son — resulting in a film that’s not heartbreaking so much as it is intensely irritating.

To Zeller’s credit, The Son doesn’t struggle to feel cinematic in the same way so many previous stage-to-screen adaptations have. While most of the film takes place in one New York apartment, Zeller and cinematographer Ben Smithard succeed at making the space feel expansive enough that The Son ’s scope doesn’t ever feel theatrically restricted. Zeller, in fact, makes great use of the film’s central space from its opening scene, which follows Peter (Hugh Jackman), a remarried man, and his second wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), as they receive a surprise visit from his ex-wife, Kate (Laura Dern).

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The conversation that follows effectively establishes the tension and history that exists between Beth, Peter, and Kate, and it also succinctly sets up The Son ’s story. Kate, it turns out, has been forced to ask Peter for help with their teenage son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), whose resistance toward his mother and proclivity for skipping school has grown too intense for Kate to manage on her own. Peter, in response, pays a visit to his son and it isn’t long before he’s letting Nicholas move in with him, Beth, and their newborn son. For most of its 123-minute runtime, The Son subsequently follows Peter as he unsuccessfully tries to reconnect with his firstborn son and, even more importantly, fails to acknowledge the severity of Nicholas’ depression.

As simple as its story is, The Son struggles to maintain a sense of momentum or tension throughout its first and second acts, which feature long sections that are not only repetitive but often dramatically inert. While the film’s dialogue does manage to occasionally capture a sense of raw naturalism as well, it’s often hurt by its own stilted language. The characters in The Son call each other by their first names so often, for instance, that an unintentionally cold distance is created between characters who shouldn’t, at the very least, feel the need to talk in such an awkward, overly formal manner.

Most of the film’s actors manage to overcome The Son ’s strangest quirks fairly well. Hugh Jackman, in particular, turns in another emotionally intense performance as Peter, a man whose own faults and pride make him blind to the complexity of his son’s despair. Laura Dern similarly shines as Kate, a woman whose kindness and warmth can be overwhelmed at times by the feelings of abandonment that her husband and son’s departures have left her with. Jackman and Dern don’t get to share many scenes in The Son , but the film often works best when they’re on-screen together.

Vanessa Kirby and Zen McGrath fare less well throughout The Son . While Kirby’s talent has been well established at this point, she’s left more or less stranded throughout The Son in a role that feels underwritten. McGrath, meanwhile, is given the difficult task of playing a character who, thanks to Zeller and Christopher Hampton’s screenplay, essentially oscillates between seeming either emotionally distraught or blank. McGrath’s performance, consequently, mostly comes across as flat, a fact which undercuts many of The Son ’s biggest emotional moments.

All of these flaws, unfortunately, don’t come close to matching the severity of the mistakes Zeller makes in The Son ’s third act. Rather than trusting in the dramatic power of the film’s story, Zeller resorts to the kind of emotionally manipulative gimmicks that rob The Son of any of the weight it had previously built up. The film ultimately feels less like an exploration of a complex issue and more like a superficial exercise in generating misery — one that hopes its audience’s empathy for its subject matter will make up all for the cheap tricks it employs in order to weaponize its viewers’ own sincerity against them.

Not only does The Son fail to put you in the same emotional headspace as its characters, but it fails, even more severely, to make any of their emotions feel real at all.

The Son hits theaters nationwide on Friday, January 20.

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In God's Creatures' third act, however, Holmer and Davis’ steady grip becomes a stranglehold, one that threatens to choke all the drama and suspense out of the story they’re attempting to tell. Moments that should come across as either powerful punches to the gut or overwhelming instances of emotional relief are so underplayed that they are robbed of much of their weight. God's Creatures, therefore, ultimately becomes an interesting case study on artistic restraint, and, specifically, how too calculated a style can, if executed incorrectly, leave a film feeling unsuitably cold.

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As the rest of Dominik’s bold, imperfect film proves, Blonde is not just about the recreation of iconic moments, nor is it solely about the making of Monroe’s greatest career highlights. It is, instead, about exposure and, in specific, the act of exposing yourself — for art, for fame, for love — and the ways in which the world often reacts to such raw vulnerability. In the case of Blonde, we're shown how a world of men took advantage of Monroe’s vulnerability by attempting to control her image and downplay her talent.

Meet Cute wants to be a lot of things at once. The film, which premieres exclusively on Peacock this week, is simultaneously a manic time travel adventure, playful romantic comedy, and dead-serious commentary on the messiness of romantic relationships. If that sounds like a lot for one low-budget rom-com to juggle — and within the span of 89 minutes, no less — that’s because it is. Thanks to the performance given by its game lead star, though, there are moments when Meet Cute comes close to pulling off its unique tonal gambit.

Unfortunately, the film’s attempts to blend screwball comedy with open-hearted romanticism often come across as hackneyed rather than inspired. Behind the camera, director Alex Lehmann fails to bring Meet Cute’s disparate emotional and comedic elements together, and the movie ultimately lacks the tonal control that it needs to be able to discuss serious topics like depression in the same sequence that it throws out, say, a series of slapstick costume gags.  The resulting film is one that isn't memorably absurd so much as it is mildly irritating.

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The Son Reviews

Several movies portray the sensitive nature of suicide and depression. Unfortunately, Zeller’s movie provides a distorted reality of mental health.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2023

Zeller suffers a sad sophomore slump that perpetuates stereotypes about people with mental illness being dangerous.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 16, 2023

The Son is an emotionally devastating film with a shocking yet important cautionary message for all parents.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 25, 2023

Hugh Jackman you saved this movie but not enough for me to recommend it

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

While it isn’t afraid to show the ugliest, most toxic parts of ourselves, it also doesn’t judge us, because we’re all trying our best.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 20, 2023

The characters played by Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern are basically the upper-class equivalents of Dumb and Dumber’s Harry and Lloyd.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Apr 8, 2023

... A film about insecurities, and in which the weight of the performances are committed and emotionally mature. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 24, 2023

... A cold, soulless film that watches a family fall apart without caring much about it. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 23, 2023

If The Father (2020) was a powerful drama that left me disarmed with astonishment, then The Son made me eye-rolling several times.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Mar 23, 2023

The Son is an uncomfortable sketch about familial relationships in the 21st Century with better intentions than results. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 23, 2023

As much as it is full of good intentions and great performances, the film falls short, thanks to its frustrating characters, scenes of emotional manipulation, and little interest in delving into the character of Nicholas. Full review in Spanish.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 22, 2023

The Son comes across as a melodramatic parody of the play. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Mar 20, 2023

Zeller's too smart to make a truly "bad" movie, and there are some interesting ideas here... But the messaging is so blunt, and the narrative descent so predictable, it leaves little room for actual emotional engagement.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 10, 2023

Zeller explores family fractures that lead to denial and misunderstanding, but along the way prefers to tread commonplaces and employ emotional artifices. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 8, 2023

Two interminable hours that, in the end, only work as a reminder to always take contraceptive measures. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 7, 2023

By the end of this soaringly mediocre film, there is not a character you wouldn’t say that to, happily.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 2, 2023

A painful, relevant, and essentially tough film sustained by that kind of serious, solemn, quiet acting that wins so many awards.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 2, 2023

Devastating study on youth depression with a great Hugh Jackman. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 1, 2023

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, the saying goes – unless you’re "The Son," which has little in common with "The Father."

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 25, 2023

It's very simple: Do not watch this film, not even with its noteworthy cast. This is pointless, unadulterated suffering, unmoored from any sense of self or reality.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Feb 25, 2023

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‘The Son’ Review: Florian Zeller’s Follow-Up to ‘The Father’ Is a Sadistic Family Drama

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics releases the film in select theaters on Friday, November 25 with further expansion to follow on Friday, January 20.

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.

The full extent of that hurt isn’t revealed until the final 25 minutes or so, which makes for the single most sadistic ending to any movie this side of Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist.” It’s not what happens that’s so punitive, necessarily — in broad strokes, “The Son” couldn’t build to any other conclusion — but rather how Zeller rubs his characters’ faces in it, and ours as well along with them. While there’s great value in a film so willing to confront the terrible fact that love isn’t always enough, “The Son” doesn’t know how to do that without spiting us in the process, delivering sucker-punch after sucker-punch until the poignancy of Peter’s helplessness is canceled out by the deviousness of Zeller’s control.

I can’t remember the last time I cried so hard, or resented every tear that I shed. I raced home to hug my own son as soon as this movie was over, relieved that he’s still only two, but also more terrified than ever that he wouldn’t stay that way. As I wrapped my arms around his little body and lifted him into the air, I found myself questioning whether today’s unfathomable joy could possibly be worth tomorrow’s potential heartache. It’s a doubt that every parent experiences at one point or (and) another, but also one that left me immensely grateful I didn’t see this movie yesterday.

“The Son” premiered at the 2022 Venice Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics will release it in theaters on Friday, November 11.

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Review: Unfortunately, ‘The Son,’ starring Hugh Jackman, does not take after ‘The Father’

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The apple falls lamentably far from the tree where Florian Zeller’s “The Son” is concerned.

Keeping it in the thematic family — but not the same family — as his heralded 2020 directorial debut, “The Father,” which deservedly earned an Oscar for star Anthony Hopkins, the film, like its predecessor, began life as part of a stage trilogy dealing with various manifestations of mental illness.

But where the Hopkins vehicle delivered an unflinching, stirringly effective portrait of dementia as exhibited from the main character’s ambiguous point of view, here, the depiction of teenage acute depression settles for shallow character development and self-indulgent tropes that distract from a strong Hugh Jackman performance.

Settling into a second marriage with considerably younger Beth ( Vanessa Kirby ) and a newborn son, Jackman’s Peter Miller is a successful Manhattan attorney with political ambitions whose seemingly unflappable reserve threatens to burst at the seams after his troubled 17-year-old son, Nicholas (newcomer Zen McGrath), comes to live with them.

“You can’t just abandon him,” chastens harried ex-wife, Kate (Laura Dern), but Peter’s subsequent attempts to bond with his incommunicative kid are thwarted by decidedly darker, suicidal impulses going well beyond Nicholas’ resentment over his parents’ divorce.

They serve to untether Peter’s barely disguised dysfunctional relationship with his own bullying dad (Hopkins, in a brief but coldly efficient cameo), which further put his own parental abilities into question.

Just in case we somehow miss the conceit that both Peter and Nicholas could equally lay claim to the film’s title, Zeller keeps throwing in visual cues, including several shots of a washing machine’s spin cycle, which accentuate the pervasive sins-of-the-father undercurrent.

All that signaling serves to diminish the impact of a not unanticipated “shock” denouement that strives for poignancy but ultimately flirts with mawkishness.

Strip away the unnecessary directorial flourishes and you’re left with a script, again co-written by Zeller and Christopher Hampton (they shared a best adapted screenplay Oscar for “The Father”), that ultimately adds little of substance to the conversation about clinical depression and provides insufficient depth for its supporting characters.

While Jackman remains absolutely connected to the role of Peter — a man who ultimately implodes under the sheer weight of attempting to contain each new situation that arises, his co-stars have been given less to motivate them.

Dern, especially, who has in the past infused so many of her characters with a spirited spark , is wasted here, stuck in perpetually anguished mode as the wronged wife and distraught mother.

Zeller and Hampton, who also collaborated on the English-language translation of the first play in his trilogy, “The Mother,” which had a 2019 run in New York, starring Isabelle Huppert as a parent wrestling with emotional stability, have come up disappointingly short this time around.

Where “The Father” succeeded brilliantly in placing the viewer directly in the shuffling shoes of its mentally deteriorating protagonist, attempting to navigate the smudged boundaries between past and present, “The Son” persists in holding its characters and their all-too-real struggles frustratingly out of reach.

Rating: PG-13, for mature thematic content involving suicide, and strong language. Running Time: 2 hours, 3 minutes Playing: Starts Nov. 25 at Laemmle Royal, West Los Angeles, and AMC Sunset 5, West Hollywood, for a one-week awards qualifying run

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‘The Son’ Review: Hugh Jackman Can’t Save Florian Zeller’s Bleak, Empty Drama

Zeller's follow-up to 'The Father' never reaches the emotional honesty of his previous film.

This review was originally part of our coverage for the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival .

In 2020, Florian Zeller released his directorial debut, The Father , a tremendously moving and powerful story about the horror of dementia and the toll that disorder takes on his family and those around him. The Father earned Zeller and his co-writer Christopher Hampton an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (based on the play Le Père , which Zeller also wrote), and won Anthony Hopkins his second Oscar for his portrayal of the title character. Zeller’s first film took a deeply tragic and shockingly honest look at a family dynamic we rarely see, and in doing so, created a deeply affecting first film that made Zeller a riveting filmmaker to watch.

As a playwright, Zeller wrote a trilogy of plays, which began with The Mother , followed by Le Père ( The Father ), and concluded with Le Fils ( The Son ). For his second film, Zeller has decided to adapt the last film in this trilogy for The Son , and once more, Zeller has reunited with Hampton on the screenplay. Yet while The Father felt like a sincere, candid look at a tragic experience, The Son is the polar opposite: a film that never feels genuine and misses the humanity that made Zeller’s debut such a masterwork.

Several years after his parents got a divorce, Nicholas Miller ( Zen McGrath ) decides he no longer wants to live with his mother Kate ( Laura Dern ). Instead, Nicholas wants to live with his father Peter ( Hugh Jackman ), who is living with his new partner Beth ( Vanessa Kirby ) and their new baby. Nicholas has been skipping school for over a month, instead, deciding to walk around the streets of New York City all day. He states that life has been weighing him down and that he wants something to change. Nicholas’ attitude scares his mother, and Peter hopes that he can help his son deal with this clearly difficult time in his life.

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It’s clear from the very beginning that Nicholas is suffering from a deep depression, one that he wants to shake somehow, and that Peter wants to mostly avoid, hoping for the best and that everything will eventually be fine. Peter remembers Nicholas as he used to be as a child, and now, just assumes this is a phase that will pass eventually—despite the constant warning signs and Nicholas’ statements that he doesn’t feel right. Nicholas is throwing red flags all over the place, while his family mostly waits for Nicholas to go back to the normal, carefree child he once was.

Like dementia in The Father , this type of familial struggle with severe depression is certainly a topic that should be approached with care and understanding. This is an important subject, and one that deserves a compassionate look that Zeller simply can’t provide here. Even The Father was able to manage moments of levity and moments that were so true, the audience couldn’t help but laugh. The Son , however, is stark from start to finish, and one that only tackles these issues on a surface level. Instead of showing us how scared and uncertain Nicholas is in this story—again, like Zoller did with Hopkins’ character in The Father — The Son focuses on the family and how Nicholas’ pain negatively impacts them.

In one scene, Peter goes to his father Anthony (played by Hopkins), and it’s clear Peter still has animosity toward his father. When Peter begins to talk about his own son, Anthony takes this as a hint that Peter is trying to brag about how he’s a better father than Anthony ever was. To this, Anthony states that Peter should “just fucking get over it.” While it’s clear that Peter would never make such a blunt argument to Nicholas’ own depression, there is this sort of idea that Nicholas’ life isn’t nearly as hard as Peter’s life, and that maybe the best course of action for Nicholas might actually be to “just fucking get over it.”

These complex topics and generational traumas are all interesting in theory, but with The Son , they’re all handled in a stilted and awkward way. In some scenes, The Son ’s performances almost feel like aliens trying to act like humans recreating emotions, and some moments wouldn’t have felt out of place in The Room . Even reliable actors like Jackman and Dern suffer under this material, and at least Jackman improves the further the traumas of this narrative unravel themselves. Kirby is also quite good, but that largely has to do with her being an outsider looking in on these familial issues. But more unfortunate is newcomer McGrath—not necessarily because is performance is bad, but because Zeller and Hampton’s screenplay doesn’t give Nicholas much depth beyond being a sad seventeen-year-old. Even worse is the emotional manipulation Zeller presents in relation to Nicholas. For example, Nicholas mentions that he knows his father keeps a gun in the laundry room, and in case we forget about Chekov’s dramatic principles, Zeller continuously returns to the perpetually spinning washer, a morbid reminder that the worst can still happen if we ever get too complacent in this story.

Whereas The Father made its audience feel exactly what the eponymous character was feeling, The Son tells instead of shows, reminding the audience at every stop how they should feel, whether directly through dialogue, or Hans Zimmer ’s grandiose score that builds or tears down the audience at its will. Zeller has made a world so bleak and so suffocating, we begin to feel just how trapped Nicholas feels—even if not in the way that Zeller intended.

The Son is attempting to show the weight of depression, the unpredictable nature of such a mental state, and how that feeling can be unexplainable for those suffering through it, and yet Zeller’s overblown direction and script that feels more alien than honest, a somber affair without the emotional impact that a story like this desperately needs. With The Son , Zeller is trying to bring the same sincerity he brought to The Father into his second film, and instead, The Son unfortunately feels false throughout.

The Son is in theaters now.

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Moving drama about mental illness has themes around suicide.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Depression is portrayed in a raw and authentic way

Nicholas suffers from mental health issues, and is

The film explores a central character suffering wi

Parents find a knife under their child's mattress

A couple are seen kissing passionately with the su

Occasional use of the word "f--k" as well as langu

Characters drink wine at home on occasion. Two cha

Parents need to know that The Son is a heavy drama about teenage depression and the crippling effect it can have on a family, with themes around suicide, self-harm, and strong language. It stars Hugh Jackman as Peter, whose teen son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), comes to live with him, his partner Beth (Vanessa…

Positive Messages

Depression is portrayed in a raw and authentic way. The film displays the challenges in finding a connection between parents and children, especially when the latter become young adults. Also the helplessness parents can feel toward their children -- despite the love, compassion, and empathy they have for them -- as well as the impact of their decisions and life events, such as divorce.

Positive Role Models

Nicholas suffers from mental health issues, and is known to have self-harmed. His parents, Peter and Kate, love their child, dearly, but they make mistakes, such as ignoring a doctor's advice. The film explores their subsequent guilt.

Diverse Representations

The film explores a central character suffering with mental health issues. The family at the heart of this story are all White, meaning the film is made up mostly of White actors. There is a key character who is a doctor, played by a Black male.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Parents find a knife under their child's mattress and there are references to self-harm. A parent grapples with their child and pushes them to the ground. Suicide is a theme. Spoiler: A character attempts it and later succeeds in taking their own life. They shoot themselves -- it happens off-screen, but the gunshot is heard.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A couple are seen kissing passionately with the suggestion that this will lead to sex, but they are interrupted and stop.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Occasional use of the word "f--k" as well as language such as "a--hole" and "balls." A character who is suffering from depression is described as being "not right in the head."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters drink wine at home on occasion. Two characters order cocktails over their lunch. A parent drinks whiskey with their underage child

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Son is a heavy drama about teenage depression and the crippling effect it can have on a family, with themes around suicide, self-harm, and strong language. It stars Hugh Jackman as Peter, whose teen son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), comes to live with him, his partner Beth ( Vanessa Kirby ), and their baby. Nicholas is living with mental health issues and the film examines how his parents deal with it and how difficult that can be. The film also looks at how actions and decisions have consequences. The depiction of depression is raw and unforgiving, pulling no punches in the process. The film isn't very positive, and there isn't much optimism to take away. Spoiler: There is a suicide by gunshot, which happens off-screen, though the viewer does hear it. The language is strong at times, with uses of the word "f--k," while characters are seen drinking both at home and in restaurants, including Peter drinking whiskey with the underage Nicholas. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 4 parent reviews

Saved from cheating spouse

The son- a challenge, what's the story.

In THE SON, new parents Peter ( Hugh Jackman ) and Beth ( Vanessa Kirby ), find their world rocked when Peter's teenage son from another marriage enters their lives. Nicholas (Zen McGrath) doesn't want to live with his mother Kate ( Laura Dern ) any longer, so moves in with his father. But Nicholas' inability to feel settled extends to his new home, as it seems he's suffering from severe depression -- something Peter isn't quite sure how to handle.

Is It Any Good?

This drama from playwright turned film director Florian Zeller packs a quite striking emotional punch. Given the nature of the material The Son is a moving and powerful film that will leave you feeling almost breathless at times, trying to process what's happening in front of your eyes. Though a question remains; when a film is covering such subject matter, is it a real feat to be emotional or does that simply come with the territory? With that in mind, judging just how good a job Zeller has done is tricky, and it's fair to say this doesn't feel as well-rounded a piece as his preceding endeavor, The Father .

The film does take an interesting look at depression though, focusing on the illness from an outside perspective, as somebody who wants to help but can't. The film can be accused of perhaps shifting a little too much blame on to the parents, pointing the finger at decisions they made, which while wrong, came from a place of love. Either way, it's a movie that will provoke and start conversations, and that's always a good thing. Lastly, while performances are strong, Zen McGrath as the titular character does struggle with the heavier scenes at times. Although in fairness, even some of the best in the business would have a tough time with the complexity of this character.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how mental illness was portrayed in The Son . What impact did it have on the various characters? Discuss how mental illness is portrayed in other movies you may have seen.

The movie deals with some tough themes such as suicide. Did you think it handled these subjects sensitively? Why is that important?

Talk about the strong language used in the movie. Did it seem necessary or excessive? What did it contribute to the movie?

Discuss the relationships between parents and children as portrayed in the film. How did it compare to relationships with adults in your own life?

Movie Details

• In theaters : November 25, 2022
• Cast : Hugh Jackman , Laura Dean , Vanessa Kirby
• Director : Florian Zeller
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : High School
• Character Strengths : Compassion , Empathy
• Run time : 123 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : mature thematic content involving suicide, and strong language
• Last updated : May 23, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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The Son Review

When Florian Zeller first adapted one of his own plays for the screen, the result was one of cinema’s most remarkable depictions of ageing. In The Father , he put the audience, movingly and terrifyingly, inside the head of a man succumbing to dementia, reality constantly shifting in a way neither he nor the audience could keep up with. The Son is another adaptation of a Zeller play ( The Mother , as yet to be adapted, rounds out that stage trilogy). It’s another moving story, though sympathy is more baked into its premise than earned through the storytelling. It’s a familiar tale solidly told and well-acted, but without the remarkable invention of The Father .

Hugh Jackman reminds everybody what a strong dramatic actor he is, in his sturdiest role in years. He plays Peter, a successful Manhattan lawyer who has a new wife, Beth ( Vanessa Kirby ), and a new son. His first wife, Kate ( Laura Dern ) — whom he left for Beth — and teenage son Nicholas (Zen McGrath) are inconveniently keeping him from moving on. Nicholas is having terrible issues with his mental health, unable to face school and feeling permanently sad. He begs to come and live with his dad. Both hope it will fix everything, but Nicholas’ health gets steadily worse.

There are some lovely scenes between Peter and Nicholas as they try to figure each other out, and a brief appearance by Peter’s own dad ( Anthony Hopkins , walking off with the whole movie) gives interesting framing to Peter’s view of his son. Much of it, though, is played at a curiously melodramatic pitch. It’s not fully stagey, but there is an edge of artifice. Zeller presses hard on emotional moments to extract maximum pain, but it becomes more exasperating than affecting.

Everything is a little too self-conscious, but the longer the film goes on, the more it seems this artifice might be a deliberate choice

Nicholas is given to big speeches, expressing his torment in long, earnest monologues that don’t sound spontaneous. The characters often act as they should to keep the plot moving, rather than how they might believably behave. Beth, who has been nothing but kind to Nicholas, suddenly shouts terrible things about him in a tiny apartment where she will obviously be overheard. Wealthy Manhattanites Peter and Kate are remarkably uninformed about therapy. Everything is a little too self-conscious, but the longer the film goes on — and it does rather go on — the more it seems this artifice might be a deliberate choice, to make the entire world as dishonest and uncomfortable as Nicholas sees it.

The cleverest aspect is the way Zeller leaves the ending hanging over you like a curse. The seeds as to where the film might be going are sown early on, but the film quietly suggests many ways they may come to fruition. When the ending comes it’s simultaneously shocking and bleakly obvious. It’s a shame Zeller didn’t just let it sit starkly alone instead of adding a syrupy coda. Like much of this film, it could have been more effective by holding a little back.

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The complexity of The Son , as well as its flaws, are rooted in a fractured double portrait of family life. The fact is that Nicholas’s parents cannot always keep an eye on him because, for one thing, they are divorced, under circumstances that were hard for the younger Nicholas to make sense of, and for another, because his father is overly invested in his professional life, in ways that the movie ties to a broader history. Nicholas’s father, Peter ( Hugh Jackman ), is an attorney on the verge of taking a big job in politics. His own father (played, in a callback to The Father , by Anthony Hopkins ) sacrificed his relationships to his wife and son in pursuit of his career, and so Peter has gone out of his way to do the opposite.

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There’s no doubt that Zeller takes this subject seriously. But his conceptual skill isn’t matched by his writing of scenes. And the writing for Nicholas is particularly underwhelming. There’s a false idea behind it. The Son is interested in what Nicholas’s father misses, overlooks and denies — but the movie risks doing the same, by giving Nicholas such a threadbare selfhood in the first place. A movie like this feels prime for understanding a boy like Nicholas. But this one barely seems to try. The film is moving. It’s also a bit reductive. The flaw is in the way that one enables the other.

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Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern are imperfect parents in 'The Son' — and not in a sympathetic way

It’s a frightening moment when a parent realizes they don’t know their child at all. It’s also scary to be a child dealing with an undiagnosed mental illness who realizes their parents don’t really see them at all.

In Florian Zeller’s “The Son,” Peter (Hugh Jackman) and Kate (Laura Dern) are divorced parents co-parenting 17-year-old high school student Nicolas (Zen McGrath) in New York City. Between Nicolas’ deep unhappiness and secret monthlong truancy, he’s more than Kate can handle on her own. Kate’s scared of him and the hate she believes she sees in his eyes.

She enlists Peter — whom she’s described as abandoning his son since the divorce — to help Nicolas return to homeostasis. Taking time away from mom, with the dad he rarely sees, and enrolling in a new school would surely cure him of his teenage angst.

Nicolas also believes that living with his dad and his new family — Peter’s partner, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), and infant son Theo — will be the change he needs in a life that is weighing him down so much.

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These parents are willfully ignorant to their son's mental illness

Nicolas mostly obscures the extent of what is later diagnosed as acute depression from the adults in his life. As a teenager, he knows how to tell them what they want to hear. People with depression are certainly capable of putting on a façade.

But when backed against a wall — sometimes literally — he reveals he has “dark ideas.” He feels like he’s going crazy. He’s “in pain all the time, and ... tired of being in pain.” Zeller is not presenting the most nuanced depiction of depression, but it's far from unrealistic. There are some moments, such as when Nicolas is dancing in the living room with his dad and stepmom, that allude to how depressed people can have moments of relative levity.

Nicolas' concerning admissions don't seem to be as strong of a wakeup call as they should be for his parents, though.

Kate knows her son is not well, but nonetheless affectionately calls Nicolas her “sunbeam" — though he’s been anything but radiant. It’s more about reassuring herself, probably.

To Peter, Kate describes that Nicolas is merely different from the others. And she’s not the only one deluding herself into thinking he’s the same boy he’s always been and can be cured with just some extra attention from his parents.

Peter and Kate both have flashbacks to an idyllic family trip when Nicolas was around 6. The smiling little boy on the boat must still be buried deep inside him somewhere, they seem to believe. As such, the parents fail to accept the truth of how much their son is suffering. Their denial prevents them from doing research on his condition, speaking with specialists and getting the help he needs.

What these parents do with the fact that their son is plagued with depressive thoughts and has no coping skills to deal with them can be a life-or-death choice. Unfortunately, Kate and Peter don't seem to realize that.

More: 'Missing' is like 'Searching' on steroids. You better hold on.

How 'The Son' is connected to Anthony Hopkins' 'The Father'

Peter is so focused on being physically present for his son — unlike his father (Anthony Hopkins; more on that later) — that he doesn’t see the ways he is not emotionally available for Nicolas.

For Peter, the problems are clear: Nicolas is self-harming, and that is unacceptable. Nicolas has missed weeks of school and has been lying about it. That, too, needs to stop. He’s more concerned about what’s going to become of his son, who should be preparing for the SATs, than the invisible pain that Nicolas experiences almost every second of the day.

We see, though, that Peter didn’t have a great example of paternal love. His unnamed dad is the same one that Hopkins portrays in “The Son’s” 2020 prequel, “The Father,” which Zeller also wrote and directed. Both are adaptations from a trilogy of plays he penned, “Le Fils” (“The Son”), “Le Père” (“The Father”) and “La Mère” (“The Mother”).

Peter is still resentful that his father left him and his hospitalized mother during her fatal illness when he was younger. We learn this in a scene between Jackman and Hopkins that is more of an Easter egg for those who've seen "The Father" than something that deepens the plot.

Peter's determined to be nothing like this guy, so of course he starts becoming just like him.

It’s not a backstory that absolves Peter. Whether it’s Jackman’s at times wooden performance or Peter’s lack of empathy, this is not a character that is easy to emotionally connect with. It’s a wonder that Kate and Beth want anything to do with him, really.

More: 'The Father' can be tough to watch. Anthony Hopkins makes it hard to look away

Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby deserved more

The only time we see Kate working, she’s too distracted by her concerns about her son to be productive. Meanwhile, Beth is tired. She is a mom of a newborn who receives jewelry as apology gifts from her workaholic significant other and is given the unexpected responsibility of parenting a mentally ill teenager — which she handles as well as she could, to be fair.

It’s clear that both women are too good for Peter.

Despite her feeling that Peter has not been present for Nicolas since the divorce, Kate defends her ex-husband to her son. And Beth sees the warning signs in Nicolas that Peter’s too busy to notice. So it’s too bad that these maternal figures aren’t given much more to do except worry about their progeny in “The Son.”

Given the seventh circle of hell these parents have found themselves in, it feels as if Zeller is leading us to feel sympathy for these characters. This is especially evident in the film's final scene, which would have been better on the cutting room floor.

Instead, I can’t help but resent Kate and Peter for being incapable of really seeing their son.

More: Streaming now: 3 political TV series to make you forget that speaker of the house debacle

'The Son' 2 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Director:  Florian Zeller.

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

Rating:  PG-13 for mature thematic content involving suicide and strong language.

Note:  In theaters Jan. 20.

Reach Entertainment Reporter KiMi Robinson at  [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter  @kimirobin  and Instagram  @ReporterKiMi .

Support local journalism.  Subscribe to azcentral.com today .

Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – The Son (2022)

March 28, 2023 by Robert Kojder

The Son , 2022.

Directed by Florian Zeller. Starring Hugh Jackman, Zen McGrath, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby, Anthony Hopkins, William Hope, George Cobell, Isaura Barbé-Brown, Mercedes Bahleda, Akie Kotabe, Erick Hayden, Danielle Lewis, Van Pierre, and Jesse Cilio.

Peter has his busy life with new partner Beth and their baby thrown into disarray when his ex-wife Kate turns up with their teenage son, Nicholas.

There’s a shoulder-shrugging indifference for most of The Son ‘s running time (playwright Florian Zeller adapting his work alongside screenwriter Christopher Hampton). It’s a film about mental health, generational trauma, and fighting against repeating the father’s sins, anchored by a committed Hugh Jackman who wants an Oscar.

Then the last 20 minutes happened, which is expected since the clunky acknowledgment of a specific object meant it would come back into play for an attempt at emotional devastation. But there’s no preparation for how grossly cheap and shamefully manipulative Florian Zeller executes this. It’s so poorly done that it made me wonder if he even understood why his own breakthrough Oscar-winning hit, The Father (also a stageplay and a loose sequel to this story), wrecked people on the inside.

Being intentionally vague, Florian Zeller tries to utilize some storytelling trickery during the ending, somewhat similar to his playful but heartbreaking study of dementia in The Father , which here reeks of another tasteless plea for audience tears. It’s stunning that Florian Zeller actually goes through with the ending, yet it keeps getting worse and more offensive, to the point where the sheer notion of giving Hugh Jackman praise for this is nauseating. It raises the age-old question of whether or not a good performance is worthy of industry recognition, even if it comes from a terribly misguided film.

With that rambling disclaimer out of the way, The Son admittedly is trying to tell an important story about acute depression that deserves to be told. It is another question entirely whether it should be told in the same universe as The Father . However, it does allow Anthony Hopkins to steal the movie with five minutes of screen time, laying out why Hugh Jackman’s titular son Peter is the way he is and how his actions toward his troubled son are a reflection of that bumpy upbringing.

As The Son begins, Peter’s ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) knocks on his apartment door. She mentions that their 17-year-old son Nicholas (an unfortunately miscast rough performance from Zen McGrath) has scars on his arm, is having dark thoughts, and hasn’t gone to school in a month (there’s a random subplot that he is also a skilled hacker, which explains how schools never quite catch on to his absence). The boy thinks that living with Peter and his baby brother from the new girlfriend he cheated on Kate with, Beth (Vanessa Kirby, who might give the only honest performance in this overwrought exercise), will benefit his mental health.

From the moment Peter confronts Nicholas about self-harm, there is unmistakable dishonesty in the performance from Zen McGrath, although, to be fair, he is let down by a stagey script more concerned with bombastic dialogue than cutting to the core of these severe issues. The entirety of The Son feels made by a team of filmmakers that don’t understand depression or how to convey it authentically on screen.

That’s also a shame considering the inner dilemma within Peter is convincing enough, even when he frustratingly makes the wrong choices. There is a genuine struggle in trying to support his son even if he fails at the right way to approach the situation, which manifests in ways that disgust him as if looking into a mirror and seeing his father. His dedicated work assisting political campaigns also gets in the way of properly caring for his son and nurturing the relationship between him and Beth (the only dynamic that feels somewhat organic).

Still, it doesn’t amount to much because the entire time, it’s apparent that Florian Zeller doesn’t actually care about exploring depression and generational pain in The Son , but making his way to the insultingly cloying shock value ending. It’s enough to make one wonder if he actually gave a shit about honestly depicting dementia in The Father or if he fluked his way into an outstanding debut.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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‘armand’ review: ingmar bergman’s grandson directs renate reinsve as a mother defending her son in ambitious school-set drama.

Writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tondel makes his feature debut with this contender in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section.

By Leslie Felperin

Leslie Felperin

Contributing Film Critic

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Norwegian writer-director Halfdan Ullmann Tondel takes some big swings with his first feature Armand , not all of which connect, but the ambition and risk-taking are largely impressive.

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Reception in Cannes has been largely warm following its debut in the Un Certain Regard strand, and Armand has racked up some offshore sales.

Bit by bit, Ullmann Tondel’s screenplay reveals that Elisabeth and Sarah have more history than shared playdates for their kids. They’ve known each other since they were children at this very same school, and Elisabeth was married to Sarah’s brother, who is now dead, possibly from suicide after a tempestuous relationship with Elisabeth. Reinsve plays her character here as a woman trying to live as normal a life as possible and be the best mother she can be, even though she’s well aware how her fame changes the dynamic in every room she enters — though egalitarian-minded Norwegians often try to seem unimpressed.

The atmosphere could be cut with a popsicle stick from the start already, with prissy, judgy-faced Sarah ready to call the cops at any second and keen to put all the blame on Elisabeth. But Elisabeth is not to be trifled with, and she defends her son vigorously, pointing out that it’s only one kid’s word against another and questioning whether or not what was said was misinterpreted.

Back and forth the bickering goes until Ullmann Tondel starts to throw strange shapes into the drama. In the press notes he talks about the influence of films by Luis Buñuel, especially The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel , and that’s felt in the increasingly surreal touches, as when Elisabeth suddenly gets an uncontrollable fit of giggles — a scene that goes on uncomfortably long. While that feels closer to Buñuel’s taste for shock moves and absurdist mystery, the sequences of Elisabeth suddenly breaking into a choreographed pas de deux with the school janitor (Patrice Demoniere) and later an almost orgiastic ensemble dance with a larger cast just seem self-indulgent and silly.

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What to watch with your kids: ‘The Garfield Movie,’ ‘Furiosa’ and more

Common Sense Media also reviews “Atlas” and “Angry Birds Mystery Island.”

The Garfield Movie (PG)

Legendary cat’s animated adventure has peril, lots of ads.

“The Garfield Movie” is the first fully animated mainstream release based on Jim Davis’s popular comic strip about the iconic orange cat who loves lasagna and hates Mondays. It follows Garfield (voiced by Chris Pratt) from his kittenhood meet-cute with owner Jon (Nicholas Hoult) to an unexpected reunion with his long-lost father, Vic (Samuel L. Jackson), that puts Garfield’s survival skills (or lack thereof) to the test. Expect lots of slapstick violence, including falls and face-smackings; a scene where a cat swallows a bird and another in which a bird is electrocuted; and many chases and confrontations in which main characters are nearly injured or killed (or, in one case, land in a pile of manure). There’s also one mildly suggestive scene that’s likely to go over kids’ heads, plus a few insults like “worthless,” “outcast” and “crazy,” and a use of the British slang “bloody.” Garfield’s laziness, size and larger-than-life appetite are played for laughs (including a fatphobic joke about him breaking a scale). The movie’s frequent, overt product placement makes it seem like an ad for Olive Garden, Sony, Popchips and more. All of that said, there are clear themes of perseverance, teamwork and forgiveness, as well as the importance of communication between parents and children. (111 minutes)

Available in theaters.

Furiosa: A Max Max Saga (R)

Stunning, intense prequel has near-constant peril and violence.

“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” a prequel to the 2015 reboot “Mad Max: Fury Road, ” tells the origin story of Imperator Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) after she’s taken from the Green Place as a child by a group of bikers led by a feared warlord (Chris Hemsworth). Expect constant, intense violence, including explosions, dismemberment, torture, references to sexual assault, and lots of warring and death. Cannibals are shown, and people are shot and stabbed. Language is limited to a few uses of “b-----d,” “bollocks” and similar terms. Only one relationship could be interpreted as romantic, but it never crosses beyond deep affection and forehead touching. While there’s little racial diversity in the primary cast, Furiosa is a determined, courageous and strong woman who is selfless in the face of nearly impossible odds. And despite all the violence, the movie does promote teamwork and resistance against oppressive authority. (148 minutes)

Atlas (PG-13)

Tense sci-fi action tale has strong violence, language.

“Atlas” is a sci-fi action film with graphic violence and swearing that centers on a woman named Atlas (Jennifer Lopez) who must fight against AI robots to save humanity. She and a colonel, played by Sterling K. Brown, are the film’s heroes. There’s a recurring theme that women are considered weak if they’re emotional and hostile if they’re driven. Atlas demonstrates courage in facing her fears. But many people and robots are killed or destroyed, including through electrocution, firearms, explosions, crashes, fights, dismemberment and falls. Characters also suffer graphic bodily harm and deal with psychological trauma from feeling responsible for the deaths of others — including colleagues and a parent — and from witnessing or anticipating AI attacks on humans. Language includes “f---,” “s---,” “a--,” “hell,” “goddamn,” “damn” and “b----.” (118 minutes)

Available on Netflix.

Angry Birds Mystery Island (TV-G)

Castaway story has new faces, less violence and more teamwork.

“Angry Birds Mystery Island” is a comedy series based on the popular mobile game. It introduces four new teenage characters: three hatchlings and a piglet (voiced by Harvey Guillén, Kate Micucci, Nasim Pedrad and Dominic Monaghan) who get stranded on a mysterious island. As in other versions of the franchise, the show puts the pigs and short-tempered birds in typical cartoon comedy situations — especially falling from great heights or being crushed by heavy objects for laughs. But unlike previous Angry Birds series , this one focuses less on competition and destruction and more on themes like working together and caring for one another. As castaways on a mysterious island, the hatchlings encounter volcanic activity and threatening monsters, like a carnivorous plant and a giant sand worm. They must rely on teamwork to find their way, build a home and concoct a plan to escape the island — all while creating a new family of their own. (Eight episodes)

Available on Prime Video.

Common Sense Media helps families make smart media choices. Go to commonsense.org for age-based and educational ratings and reviews for movies, games, apps, TV shows, websites and books.

• Cast & crew

The Commandant's Shadow

Follows Hans Jürgen Höss, the son of Rudolf Höss, the Camp Commandant of Auschwitz when he confronts his father's involvement in the murder of over a million Jews during the Holocaust. Follows Hans Jürgen Höss, the son of Rudolf Höss, the Camp Commandant of Auschwitz when he confronts his father's involvement in the murder of over a million Jews during the Holocaust. Follows Hans Jürgen Höss, the son of Rudolf Höss, the Camp Commandant of Auschwitz when he confronts his father's involvement in the murder of over a million Jews during the Holocaust.

• Daniela Volker
• Adolf Hitler
• Rudolf Hoess
• Hans-Jürgen Höss
• 2 Critic reviews

• (archive footage)

• (as Hans Jurgen Höss)

• Höss' Autobiography read by
• (as Kay-Uwe Höss)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• May 29, 2024 (United States)
• Warner Bros.
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• Runtime 1 hour 43 minutes

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Kevin Costner Wills His Own ‘Yellowstone’ Into Existence With ‘Horizon: An American Saga’

Going full Francis Ford Coppola and producing an epic passion project at great cost to himself, Costner attempts a classical Western that could use a modern update 

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There might not be a more appropriate and straightforward way to open an American Western than with a scene of a white settler tracing the foundations of the house he wants to build on some seemingly available plot of land. The colonial question at the heart of the genre is thus immediately introduced in Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 , the first film in Kevin Costner’s epic four-movie series (the second installment has already been shot) that he produced ( at great cost to himself ), cowrote, directed, and starred in. Costner’s perspective on that question, however, isn’t entirely clear in that opening sequence, but it does end with the settler and his young child being killed by Apaches who are defending their territory, highlighting their rightful anger. In this sequence, a rousing old-fashioned score, plenty of cross-fades, and an orange sunset give the brutal encounter the look of a monumental, foundational, almost elemental event, like a big bang—a natural, terribly meaningful catastrophe.

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It is through such small yet symbolic stories that Costner starts to paint his very large and detailed picture of pre– and post–Civil War America. Jumping from one setting to another, the filmmaker introduces us to various archetypes of the American West, from the English settlers too posh and sophisticated to do any work while traveling on the Santa Fe Trail (Ella Hunt and Tom Payne), to the housewife with a dark secret (Jena Malone) and her naive husband (Michael Angarano) hoping to get rich through gold, to the foulmouthed sex worker (Abbey Lee) whom everyone despises, except for the hero (Costner, naturally), who finds himself protecting her. In a series of extended vignettes, their personal dramas unfold and sometimes intersect, with occasional time jumps to speed things up and show the consequences of their decisions. None of these stories are particularly original or compelling, retreading old tropes and recalling television both visually and structurally. (It’s hard not to think of Yellowstone , the Western series starring Costner; it was during that show’s hiatus that he made this film.) For instance, the past of the housewife, Ellen, comes back to haunt her when we learn that she once was a sex worker herself and killed a powerful criminal who had abused her: The idea that the Wild West allowed for self-reinvention but was also fueled by the exploitation of women is a staple of the genre—and could still be interesting to explore—but Costner struggles to keep all his plates spinning at once, offering only a quick glance at one prototypical story before moving on to the next one. Instead of making us feel the unbearable weight of history through this amalgamation of survival tales—or creating at least a sense of time and place—this first “episode” indeed functions as a technically efficient but not very appealing series pilot, setting the scene but not giving its protagonists enough room for us to get invested in them.

Making an American Western in 2024 means coming after a long line of films, the first succession of which established the genre’s often white supremacist and pro-colonial codes. Later, revisionist Westerns adapted these tropes to suit different eras, taking into account changing mentalities about the romanticization of America’s violent past and materialistic tendencies (think of The Wild Bunch and its explosive, balletic, devastating gunfights, or the spaghetti Western For a Few Dollars More ), and, eventually, the oppressed were put at the center of the narrative, be they women or Indigenous people themselves. ( Killers of the Flower Moon is the most recent example, but Soldier Blue from 1970 may be the most strident.) Costner, however, doesn’t seem all that interested in looking back with a critical eye, and he’s also not trying to tell a story about the past that could be relevant today. Instead, he’s aiming for the timelessness of myth and adopts a centrist approach: Colonialism was an unstoppable engine that everyone, Indigenous or white, was simply caught up in. After a deadly Apache attack, First Lieutenant Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington, who seems determined to act in projects that will be made over several years or decades of his life ) has to remind the surviving white settlers that this land is not, in fact, simply where they live, but that it belongs to Indigenous people; still, the pioneers refuse to leave. Costner spends time on the unwelcome inhabitants and their sorrow and helplessness but also cuts to the Apaches—they, too, are having internal disagreements about whether this attack was ultimately necessary. Yet if these two points of view could allow for some interesting ambiguity, revealing the moral dilemmas and doubts of people on both sides, in Costner’s vision, the two parties are stuck in a dynamic that is completely outside their control and has a will of its own—rather than one born of the colonizers’ endless thirst for more land. (Costner’s production company is in fact called Territory Pictures Entertainment.) No one is really responsible. Playing a blasé colonel, Danny Huston puts it bluntly: “Let this place do what it’s done since time immemorial.” But isn’t this time still relatively fresh in the Apaches’ memory?

This idea of a manifest destiny that pushes for colonization, whether its participants approve of it or not, appears as much in the film’s aesthetics as it does in its narrative. Costner’s camera repeatedly focuses on and emphasizes old-fashioned and at times offensive clichés of the genre: a dying white man refusing to let an Apache take his violin, thus defending civilization against barbarism until his last breath; a priest solemnly digging graves for fallen pilgrims on Apache ground; men working hard to build infrastructure where there was once only nature; a teenage son choosing to fight back against the Indigenous alongside his father rather than hiding with his mother and sister. To quote Vampire Weekend : “Untrue, unkind, and unnatural, how the cruel, with time, becomes classical.” If his old-school conservatism wasn’t apparent enough, the filmmaker also gives his actors cheesy dialogue that even John Wayne couldn’t have made cool. (“It’s what drove us across the ocean to this country in the first place: hope.”) Whether they’re full of threat or flirtatious (as between Sienna Miller’s widow, Frances Kittredge, and Gephardt), conversations tend to be tedious exchanges of witty comebacks, with no one saying what they really mean until they’ve exhausted all possible innuendos and the scene just cries out for a resolution—an unintentional parody of the typically charming repartee of the best cowboys of the silver screen, from Wayne to Jimmy Stewart to Montgomery Clift. So far in the film series, only Luke Wilson and Michael Rooker come across as believable men of the time, the former thanks to his Southern drawl and natural ease, the latter because of his ability to find depth and emotion in the otherwise one-dimensional, obedient, and kind sergeant he must play.

But what about Costner the actor? Naturally, he plays the strong, silent type—always his strongest suit—as Hayes Ellison, a straight shooter who accidentally gets involved in the revenge campaign that threatens Ellen because of her past rebellion. Although he only appears after about an hour of exposition, the humility of that delay vanishes almost instantaneously. As he gets off his horse, Marigold (the sex worker played by Lee) lays eyes on him and, for no apparent reason other than the fact that he’s the film’s protagonist, decides to try seducing him again and again—despite his repeated rejection and almost offensive disinterest—instead of trying her luck with any of the other men who just got into town. In one of the film’s most successful and enjoyable scenes, however, Ellison lets Marigold do all the talking, his silence pushing her to almost turn double entendres into just plain sex talk. Here, Lee is showing much more range and playfulness than she’s ever had the chance to as an actress, so it’s particularly disappointing that Costner later gives the two of them a completely lifeless and preposterous sex scene in which she tells him, word for word, “You just lay there,” and he does so, looking almost bored as this beautiful woman half his age does all the work.

With its hubris, traditionalism, and sprawling, messy structure, Horizon feels like a relic of the 1990s, back when Costner was at his peak and he could indeed almost just lay there and be perceived as the masculine ideal. There is still a chance that Chapter 2 will reveal a deeper questioning of the American past and, by the same token, the more toxic aspects of masculinity tied to colonialism and violence. Still, considering how far and with how much conviction Costner has pushed it here, it seems unlikely that the cheesy style of this opus will be abandoned for something that’s more grounded and that spends less time glorifying both its star and conservative ideas of property, national identity, women, and progress. After all, the horizon always appears to stay at the same place.

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Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon’ Is a Misogynistic, Racist, Retrograde Mess

ANOTHER WATERWORLD?

Kevin Costner mortgaged his house to make this three-part saga. “Chapter 1” premiered at Cannes, and is an interminable, confusing, and somewhat offensive disaster.

Esther Zuckerman

Cannes Film Festival

Early on into the three hours of viewing Kevin Costner ’s Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 I thought back to last year’s Cannes Film Festival , where I saw Martin Scorsese ’s Killers of the Flower Moon for the first time. That brilliant movie is a full throated condemnation of the genocide of Native Americans by white people who claim the U.S. as their own. Horizon is not that.

Instead, one of the inciting incidents in the unwieldy film that Costner directs is a violent Apache assault on a settlement. The mostly white settlers are portrayed as terrified innocents. Sienna Miller’s Frances hides beneath her house with her similarly blonde daughter (Georgia MacPhail) while her husband and son are murdered. They are shot in beatific fashion, meanwhile, the Native American assailants are shadowy figures who attack unprovoked. There are nods to nuance that come later, but far too little in the first part of Costner’s passion project, which debuted at the festival.

Everything about Horizon is retrograde. Men are noble heroes (like Hayes Ellison, the drifter played by Costner), or brutes who toss around the women, themselves either saintly like Miller or frivolous and nagging. Even the score from John Debney, with its sweeping strings, feels like it was piped in the ’90s. But Costner was better in that era—there’s more nuance in Dances with Wolves than there is here.

But the biggest problem with Horizon is that, even with its lengthy running time, Costner has only scratched the surface of the “saga” he’s trying to tell. There is no arc to what happens, just the seemingly unending introduction of characters. Chapter 1 doesn’t end. Rather it just trails off into a clip reel of what’s to come like one of those “this season on…” promos that comes at the beginning of a television show. That montage at least depicts how some of the disparate threads will collide. It finishes, however, on a shot of Giovanni Ribsi’s face as a character we have yet to meet, a befuddling choice.

Horizon doesn’t even feel like three episodes of an hour-long drama, because those usually tell some sort of complete story. This just feels like fragments, during which it is impossible to tell how much time has passed.

So what is Horizon , which Costner co-wrote with Jon Baird, about? Well, too many things. But to put it simply, it’s about a bunch of people in the American West in the 1860s in the piece of land in the San Pedro Valley deemed “Horizon.” There’s the Miller storyline, in which she and her daughter are taken in following the destruction of their camp at Horizon by a group of kindly Union soldiers, including Sam Worthington as First Lt. Trent Gephardt, with whom we will eventually see her have a romantic relationship. Some of the survivors, meanwhile, go off to seek revenge, which starts to weigh on a small boy.

Costner shows up about an hour in as Hayes, who runs into the promiscuous Marigold (Abbey Lee), who is forced to take care of a child when the enemies of the kid’s mother (Jena Malone) arrive in town. (One of the most mortifying scenes involves Lee’s character mounting Costner’s saying she's going to help him go to sleep by having sex with him.)

There is, separate from all of this, a bit about a group of pioneers in covered wagons in Western Kansas. They are led by Luke Wilson’s Matthew Van Weyden, who has to deal with some fussy Brits played by Ella Hunt and Tom Payne. We also briefly meet an Apache played by Tatanka Means. I assume he will have more to do later, which is also what I can say for most everyone on screen.

The lack of conclusion for any of the characters—except for the ones who die—make it almost impossible to evaluate Horizon without caveats. But at the same time, it is punishing to ask audiences to invest this much time in a theater, especially given that there are apparently three more parts coming. The first two are due to be released this summer, with Chapter 1 in June and Chapter 2 in August.

I’m not sure why Costner didn’t turn this into the television project it so wishes to be. Perhaps he just wanted to one up Yellowstone , the wildly popular Taylor Sheridan show, on which he played John Dutton, and which he decided to leave. But as a cinematic experience it is aggravating in multiple ways. If you’re not mad at how offensively backward it all is, you’ll be pissed about all the stage setting.

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"The Blue Angels," a nonfiction film about the Navy's flight demonstration team, was made for IMAX, in two senses of the phrase. 

First, technically: according to Cineworld's website , "'The Blue Angels' was shot with Sony's Venice 2 IMAX-certified digital cameras and features IMAX exclusive Expanded Aspect Ratio (EAR) throughout." 

Second: it's mainly, perhaps almost exclusively, a spectacle, and as much of a demonstration of new technology and the professionals who've mastered it as the Blue Angels themselves. 

There are lots of low-angled "heroic" shots of the pilots and moving shots taken from over their shoulders with a Steadicam as they stride through long corridors, and slow-motion shots of them walking towards and away from planes, taking off sunglasses and putting them on, and moments where they move abreast in a "power walk" formation familiar from many a Hollywood action flick. The movie is an ad for The Blue Angels, the Navy, planes, the military generally, and an iconography-based sense of patriotism, as much as the " Top Gun " films, the first of which was memorably described by New Yorker critic Pauline Kael as "a recruiting poster that isn't concerned with recruiting but with being a poster."  (The precision flying showcased in the "Top Gun" movies is inspired by The Blue Angels, and it just so happens that one of this film's producers is Glen Powell , costar of " Top Gun: Maverick .") 

And the flying itself? And the filming of it? It's technically impressive. Not surprisingly framed, much less poetic (probably almost no one wanted that), but impressive. I saw The Blue Angels a couple of times as a kid and remember thinking that it seemed physically impossible for such large metal objects to fly so close to one another while roaring through the sky at hundreds of miles an hour. But they did it. They do it here, again, for the IMAX cameras, which seemingly were affixed to multiple parts of the planes' exteriors and cockpits. (How is it possible that we never see those cameras in the shots? Were they digitally erased later? Or are the cameras just that small, and the camera crew just that smart?)

Director Paul Crowder , who also helped edit the movie, tries to find a narrative through-line by sketching out the members of the Blue Angels team. He focuses mainly (though not exclusively) on the Commanding Officer and Flight Leader, aka " Boss ," Captain Brian Kesselring, who eventually left the Angels and is now Deputy Commander, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 5. "My feeling is, you should never feel too comfortable in the suit," he says. 

Other members of the squadron drift in and out of the foreground. There's a bit of material about the strain placed on marriages and families by the pilots being on the road 300 days a year, but no talk of affairs, divorces, or anything like that (the Navy wouldn't have permitted it anyway). Towards the end of the movie, through a fluke of production timing, we also get to meet the Blue Angels' first-ever female pilot, Amanda Lee , and watch her be inducted. 

But make no mistake: the planes are the stars of this production, and as hard as the filmmakers try to reassure us that there are human stories going on as well, the precision flying and all the training and practice that allow it to exist are what everyone paid to see, and the movie never forgets it. 

The cutting almost never lingers on shots, though, which may seem odd. If you're going to shoot and exhibit in IMAX, complete with state-of-the-art, bone-rattling surround-sound, why not let the viewer experience a " scissors cross ," a " delta breakout " or a " loop break cross " from the perspective of one of the flyers for a long enough stretch that it feels as if the G-forces are bearing down?

Still, the totality does leave an impression, thanks to the crystal-clear imagery (by Jessica Young , Lance Benson, and Michael FitzMaurice ) and the diving, climbing, rolling aircraft. The moments that resonate aren't just about the flying, but the emotion the pilots feel as they appreciate what it was like to become part of an elite group that has inducted just 260 people since its creation in 1946. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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