Title – The Son (2022) 

Director – Florian Zeller (The Father) 

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

Plot – Successful businessman Peter (Jackman) and his partner Beth (Kirby) find their already busy lives upended by Peter’s son Nicholas (McGrath) coming to live with them as he battles significant mental health issues that cause Peter to reflect on his past, present and future. 

“What are you doing here?”

Review by Eddie on 27/09/2023

Esteemed playwright/director Florian Zeller must have thought the transition from stage to screen wasn’t too big of a deal after he and co-writer Christopher Hampton successfully transformed Zeller’s renowned stage play The Father to screens in 2020, leading to a lauded critical and audience run that finished up with multiple Oscar wins. 

Moving into late 2022, Zeller and Hampton’s release of partial The Father prequel The Son (featuring a cameo performance from Anthony Hopkins) was about as polar opposite of a reception as you’re likely to see from two dramatic features with critics calling the Hugh Jackman starring affair manipulative, audiences giving the film a major cold shoulder and awards far from coming thick and fast, despite Hugh Jackman competing in the Golden Globes thanks to his individual performance. 

A major part of Zeller’s three piece series of plays that also includes The Father and The Mother, The Son may be dismissed by many potential viewers due to its critical drubbing and lack of enthusiasm/chatter from across the film community but despite its confronting subject matter that refuses to give Hollywood answers, The Son is worth seeking out as one of recent memories more powerful and impactful major studio dramas. 

Centred around one of Jackman’s most impressive and layered performances in a long-standing career, with the beloved Australian icon as good as his ever been as successful New York businessman and arguably not as successful husband/father Peter whose new live with a young baby and Vanessa Kirby’s partner Beth is turned upside down by the arrival into their lives of Peter’s troubled teenage son Nicholas who is battling to overcome significant mental illness that has seemingly sprung out of Peter’s marriage breakdown with Nicholas’s mother Kate, played by the always enjoyable Laura Dern. 

Sharing DNA with many other similar in themes family centred dramas from long ago and more recent times, The Son has predictable patterns and set-ups but at the same time Zeller’s unflinching approach to tackling the hard to explore subject matters his film deals with should be applauded and after a somewhat rocky early patch, The Son assuredly morphs into a gut-punch exploration of parenthood, mental illness and love that will leave any viewers who have clicked with the films left with some of the most emotionally charged scenes of any product in the last year. 

One of the most polarising aspects of Zeller’s film has been and is likely to always be the performance of young Australian actor McGrath who enters into the Hollywood scene with one of the more difficult debut roles you’re likely to see and while his accent work can be distracting and early segments hard to understand, with more context and time with Nicholas the character you can begin to gain insight into why McGrath and Zeller constructed both the performance and the role in certain ways, ensuring The Son’s nerve-wrecking final segments are hard to watch but equally hard to turn away from, delving into territory other films would steer clear from, giving audiences material they may struggle to come to terms with in meaningful and powerful ways. 

Final Say – 

Led by one of Hugh Jackman’s most well-rounded leading turns and tackling material that is confronting but important to bring to life in ways such as this, The Son may not quite live up to the highs of The Father but its harsh critical and audience reaction upon release is a disservice for a film that is worth a chance or a reevaluation by those who dismissed it. 

4 earrings out of 5