RECESS  |  CULTURE

'Beautiful Boy' is an honest depiction of addiction and loss

film review

"Beautiful Boy" explores the relationship between father David Sheff and his son Nic, who suffers from addiction.
"Beautiful Boy" explores the relationship between father David Sheff and his son Nic, who suffers from addiction.

What “Beautiful Boy” lacks in finesse, it makes up for in heart. The film, helmed by Swedish director Felix Van Groeningen, chronicles the true story of journalist David Sheff’s (Steve Carell) desperate attempt to salvage his deteriorating relationship with his son, Nic (Timothée Chalamet), who is addicted to methamphetamines. Both the older and younger Sheffs compiled the history of these tumultuous years into two respective memoirs, each told from their respective point of view. David Sheff’s memoir, “Beautiful Boy,” serves as the baseline for Van Groeningen’s screenplay of the same name, co-written with Luke Davies (who received an Academy Award nomination for best adapted screenplay for “Lion”).   

The film marks Carell’s first foray into a purely dramatic role, one that he plays well even if the directing only half-heartedly captures his acting strengths. Chalamet, on the other hand, shines in his part as a recent high school graduate who floats in and out of himself as the alternating waves of addiction and sobriety roll over him. He plays youthful earnestness with great subtlety, an ability he proved in the 2017 film “Call Me By Your Name” and which he cultivates in “Beautiful Boy.” To the detriment of Carell — and perhaps to the movie as a whole — Chalamet is a magnet on screen who manages to invert the film’s implicit focus on David and his desperate endeavor to understand how best to love a son who seems already half-gone. 

Certainly, Van Groeningen has structured the film and screenplay to stay true to David Sheff’s account. The film is not about addiction nor “the addict” as much as it is about what it is like to love and cherish a user. Nic does not even show up on screen until nearly 10 minutes into the movie, and our first conceptions of who he is are molded by his father, who we see forlornly cherishing his son’s childhood photographs and organizing his son’s desk as he waits for Nic to finally come home after a string of nights spent shooting up. We never see how, exactly, Nic passes his days on the streets nor when, precisely, he starts getting into hard drugs. We simply see the aftermath, on his face and in his behavior, and we see how it destroys David. 

It appears comical at best (and outright bizarre, at worst) to watch David snort cocaine himself in an attempt to understand what his son is experiencing, but it is scenes like these that underpin Van Groeningen’s desire to encapsulate what it’s like to be trapped on the outside and desperately want to get to the inside. We never see the nitty-gritty of addiction, nor do we taste the grit. Although the real Nic spent much of his days on the street, prostituting himself and picking food from dumpsters, none of that is on display, perhaps because David never knew or because he did not want to know.

But it is not this narrow focus but, rather, the lack of a wholehearted commitment to any focus that detracts from the film. Addiction is a multifaceted issue that is linked to many factors, including wealth, race and access to health care, but even if every one of these factors plays into the Sheffs’ story, together they are too many to wrap the narrative of one movie around. 

This is why Van Groeningen specifically hones in on David and his attempts to salvage the father-son relationship, though his precision is somewhat lacking in both the directing and the screenplay. The narrative lacks strong coherence, with the frequent flashbacks to Nic’s childhood days bonding with his father feeling somewhat contrived. We understand that father and son cultivated a tenacious bond in Nic’s childhood that faces destruction as his addiction rages, but these scenes fail to explain what it was, exactly, that brought them so close together, with only sideways hints at an early childhood divorce. This means that when Van Groeningen attempts to juxtapose the relationship of the past with the present, the contrast falls flat. 

The directing also, at times, fails to capture Carell’s strengths, which is a particular travesty when Chalamet is so captivating an actor. Carell’s verbal acting lacks a certain substance, in that some of the punchiest lines tossed to him in the screenplay (my favorite one being “Who are you, Nic?”) feel all too blunt or forced. His physical embodiment of the character would compensate for that, though, if Van Groeningen trained the camera on Carell’s face more often than he actually does. Some of the best scenes in the film occur when we stare straight at David’s face as he rifles through his son’s notebook or speaks to a methamphetamine expert in a last-ditch attempt to understand his son’s addiction. 

Chalamet, on the other hand, is excellent all-around with his deft portrayal of Nic’s youthfulness as well as the guilt and fear that lurks beneath the surface. In one particularly well-done scene, Nic relapses in his girlfriend’s family’s bathroom during a family dinner. As he sits back down at the dinner table and attempts to convince himself and others that nothing has gone wrong, we watch a multiplicity of emotions pass over Chalamet’s face, layered in a way that frankly has to be seen to be believed.

So, is “Beautiful Boy” worth watching? If you’re a stickler for narrative, not so much. But it is safe to say you will be missing out on an up-and-coming actor at his (up until now) best. 

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