June 15, 2023

Day: 15, Movie: 15

Today’s June Swoon 2 film is on Netflix and it deals with a very heavy subject. The Son was a film directed by Florian Zeller and starred Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern. Depression is a tough challenge that many people struggle with daily.

Peter (Hugh Jackman) and Kate (Laura Dern) split up years before when Peter met and fell in love with another woman Beth (Vanessa Kirby). The divorce was tough for their son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), who held on to the pain he felt.

When it was revealed that Nicholas had been skipping school, Kate chose to have him go live with Peter to hopefully help him. Peter was very busy at work and he saw what he wanted to see when it came to Nicholas.

Nicholas continued his struggles at his father’s home, slipping back into some negative behaviors.

There was a lot of melodrama in this movie to the point where it felt like there was too much. While the performances were solid, the material was not up to par. It seemed as if there was nothing deeper than what was shown and some of the dialogue was iffy.

I had a major problem early on that pulled me out of the story. As someone who works in a school, I can not imagine how a student could skip school for a month at a time without someone checking on him. It happened in this movie with two different schools and that just did not feel realistic to me and that caused me to disassociate myself with the story.

Anthony Hopkins appeared as Peter’s father, but he was completely wasted in the film. His appearance was literally just a few minutes, making this role nothing more than a cameo.

The key is that there is not enough specifics or development of the character of Nicholas. He is very surface level and, because of that, we are unable to access the important part of the story that would help with the emotional beats of the film. Zen McGrath does a good job with what he was given, but there just was not enough of a portrait of this character.

The Son was a sad story that does not go any deeper than that. The actors are very good with the limited details they are given and instead of three dimensional characters we get melodrama.