Much The father AS Son They are works in which the mental health of their protagonists plays a predominant role, they are in the foreground and infect and absorb as well as feed the story and the rest of the characters that accompany them.
The structure is different from that of the debut of Florian Zeller, playwright of both pieces in which he worked with Christopher Hampton (dangerous liaisonss) to adapt them to the big screen.
And even if it says that Son is a prequel to The fatherANDhere he “jumps” a generation, because the son in question is the nephew of Anthony, the character that earned him his second Oscar for best actor for Anthony Hopkins In The father (2020).
Here the father of the son and the son of The father -even if it wasn’t in that movie- it is Hugh Jackman. It is Peter, a very successful lawyer, in his personal and professional life. He is tempted by a senator, who is running in the primary for president of the nation, so he has to go to Washington DC. But there is something that binds him to New York, where he lives.
between parents and children
It is that he receives a visit from his ex-wife (Laura Dern) right in the apartment where he now lives with his new and young partner (Vanessa Kirby), with whom he has a child. Kate doesn’t bring good news: Nicholas (Zen McGrath) hasn’t been to school for the past month. In other words: he every day he left the house to go to school, but he never went in. He learned about it from a phone call from the school. Nicholas asks to move in with his father.
We have said that Peter has also had a successful life in his private life. He’s split from his wife (Laura Dern) to be with Beth, distraught at the arrival of her partner’s teenage son, with her problems behind her. Suddenly she becomes the mother of two children, a newborn and a young man who cannot express why she is sad.
We mentioned that Zeller wanted to explore another dimension of mental health. Which is very different, and not only for the age of its protagonists, compared to The Father. If in his work The Mother the theme was depression, to close the triptych he chose to focus on a restless teenager who doesn’t know what he has. “I’m not built like other people,” Nicholas insists. “I am always in pain,” he can barely bring out from within.
He is a young man in crisis.
Anyone would say it’s a cry for attention, a call for help, a silent cry to one’s parents. And also any viewer understands that, having noticed the marks on his arms, the product of certain cuts that he has inflicted on himself, something terrible can happen.
While the film is certainly heartbreaking at times, there is a back-and-forth in the plot, not so much in terms of the parents’ feelings about what to do with their child, but, let’s call it, self-deception of the three.
Because Peter is a workaholic – as was his father – he does not want to repeat the abandonment he himself suffered at home, by Anthony, his father. And it is in that scene in which Peter goes to see Anthony that another of the central questions of the film is revealed: to be or not to be, or rather, to feel or not to feel like an ideal father.
can also be seen at Son like a film about insecurities, and in which the weight of interpretations – perhaps leaving aside adolescence – is committed and emotionally mature.
“Son”
Drama. UK/France, 2022. Original title: “Son”.123′, SAM 16. From: Florian Zeller. With: Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Zen McGrath, Vanessa Kirby. Rooms: Cinépolis Recoleta and Pilar, Cinemark Palermo, Hoyts Unicenter, Showcase Belgrano and Norcenter.
Source: Clarin
