Break out the tissue: Carell and Chalamet are superb in wrenching addiction drama
Screenwriter Luke Davies knows a thing or two about writing tearjerkers — his adapted screenplay for the missing boy drama Lion was nominated for an Oscar last year — so it’s no surprise that his follow up is equally adept at pulling the heartstrings. Also based on a true story, Beautiful Boy is a gut-wrenching portrait of a son’s battle with addiction and his father’s unwavering quest to help him. With Oscar nominees Steve Carell (Foxcatcher) and Timothée Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name) as the father and son, respectively, Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen scored in the talent department, and it’s hard to imagine two other actors doing justice to the roles.
Davies adapted his screenplay from a pair of memoirs: Beautiful Boy by the father, David Sheff (Carell), and Tweak by the son, Nic Sheff (Chalamet). Davies does a nice job balancing the father and son’s perspectives so we get a sense of their conflicting feelings and reactions during key moments, especially considering the two are most often at odds. Raised in Marin, Nic experiments early with pot and alcohol, and, in college, becomes addicted to meth. The picture doesn’t shy away from showing the brutal truth of drug addiction: shooting up in dismal bar bathrooms; sketchy nights on the street (many scenes were shot here in the Tenderloin); hope for rehab and recovery, and the backslides into depression and using. The movie’s strength is this portrayal of the vicious cycle of sobriety and relapse, and the toll it can take on not just the addict, but on his family as well.
Chalamet has the showier role, and nails every scene he’s in, conveying the blissed out highs, the rock bottom lows, and the constant battle between self-pity and guilt and the perpetual pull of the drugs that can numb all those feelings. But Carell is absolutely outstanding here as the pained father, and does some of his best work alongside his former Office co-star Amy Ryan as Vicki, Nic’s mother, and David’s ex. Their conversations and arguments are authentic in their rawness, anger, recrimination, and fear. Equally good is Maura Tierney, as David’s second wife Karen, who has the unenviable role of being the stepmother to a difficult young adult while trying to raise and protect her own small children from their troubled half-brother.
The film is not without a few minor flaws; the middle drags a bit, and too many cuts back and forth in time get confusing. The story tightens once the flashbacks stop and the narrative becomes more linear. A recurring through line of David and Nic using the shorthand phrase “everything” to stand in for “I love you more than everything,” becomes treacly with overuse. Similarly, playing the Fiddler on the Roof song “Sunrise, Sunset,” feels a little too saccharine. Better is Van Groeningen’s use of the eponymous John Lennon song, which David recites to Nic as a small boy in one particularly heartrending scene: “Close your eyes/Have no fear/The monster’s gone/He’s on the run and your daddy’s here.”
Of course the irony is that the monster of drug addiction is not gone, and no matter how much David wants to help, ultimately there’s only so much he can do for his boy. “I don’t think you can save people, Vicki,” David says to his ex-wife in another heartbreaking scene. But, the movie tells us, you can be there for them, always, even through periods of tremendous suffering.
Such is the film’s central question: How can we help an addict? How can we watch someone we love struggle, and continue to love them unconditionally? The film has no easy answers, but it does show the toll addiction can take on those involved: the heavy weight of grief, helplessness, and despair spares no one in addiction’s orbit. The power of parental love is monumental, we’re often told, but Carell’s David allows us to actually witness that love in all its unrelenting fierceness. The film also has one of the most beautiful, understated endings of any film in recent memory, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the clip that’s played when they announce Carell’s name during the Oscars, because yes, his nomination is inevitable, and deserved.
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Beautiful Boy opens today at Bay Area theaters.
