Posts Tagged ‘Christopher Hampton’

THE SON: 2 STARS. “Jackman delivers a remarkable and authentic performance.”

“The Son,” director Florian Zeller’s follow-up to the Oscar winning “The Father,” is the story of a fractured family and a son struggling with mental illness.

The drama, adapted for the screen by Christopher Hampton from Zeller’s stage play, involves Peter (Hugh Jackman), a high-flying New York City lawyer with political aspirations. He is the father of 17-year-old Nicholas (Zen McGrath) and ex-husband of Kate (Laura Dern), but has rebooted his life, marrying Beth (Vanessa Kirby), a much younger woman who is the mother to their baby, Theo. Peter has a new baby and a new life that doesn’t leave much room for his older son.

When Nicolas begins skipping school, acting out and cutting himself as a way to channel his pain, Kate asks if Peter can step up and give the boy some guidance and a place to stay. “He needs you Peter,” she says. “You can’t abandon him.”

Life is weighing Nicholas down. “I can’t deal with any of it,” he says. “I want something to change, but I don’t know what.”

With Nicolas in the spare room, Peter attempts to “fix” him, searching for an explanation for his son’s behavior, trying to be a better father to the teen than his own father, played by Anthony Hopkins, was to him. An unapologetically bad father, Hopkins snarls, “Your daddy wasn’t good to you or your mama. Who cares? Get over it.”

“The Son” is the story of intergenerational trauma, of the sins of a father (Hopkins is despicable in a fiery cameo) being visited upon his son and grandson, and a child’s cry for help.

Compassion abounds in “The Son,” and Jackman astounds wit work that is tinged with vulnerability, tragedy and guilt, but the script offers few surprises. Zeller telegraphs the film’s biggest moments, as if he doesn’t trust the audience to follow along. Those early revelations mute the story’s emotional power, despite the fine, compassionate performances.

There are compelling moments in “The Son.” A showdown between Peter and Nicholas packs emotional heft, and Jackman’s struggle to understand his son’s acute depression is tempered with equal parts empathy and frustration.

Jackman delivers a remarkable and authentic portrait of a desperate father in a well-intentioned film, that, by and large, feels manipulative by comparison.

A DANGEROUS METHOD: 3 ½ STARS

a-dangerous-method-pic08With the release of “A Dangerous Mind,” the tautly told story of two psychoanalysts you’ve heard of, Dr. Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), plus one you’ve probably never heard of, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), director David Cronenberg is still exploring uncharted territory in his films.

On the surface the story seems simple enough. Two pioneering figures of psychoanalysis have a falling out over an intelligent, beautiful but troubled patient. In the hands of Cronenberg and writer Christopher “Dangerous Liaisons” Hampton however, the movie becomes an enticing stew of psycho-sexuality and repression that challenges commonly held beliefs about what is normal and what is not.

Cronenberg, always known for his crisp filmmaking, has rarely ever been this simply elegant. Shot compositions and camerawork are kept simple so as not to distract from the star of the show—the dialogue. As you can imagine, in a drama about three therapists (Spielrein became a doctor after her treatment with Jung), there is a great deal of talk. Separately and together they talk about their dreams, their pasts and, in the case of Jung and Spielrein, their future. It may be the most inward looking movie of the year, but in its introspection—and buried in the film’s subtext—is a restrained but fascinating glimpse into the lives and minds of these characters.

Keira Knightley delivers a brave, strange and Oscar worthy performance as Spielrein, while Fassbender expertly plays the repression that plagued Jung. Cronenberg muse Viggo Mortensen may seem an odd choice to play Freud, but he leaves behind the physical performances that have marked his best work to create a convincing portrait of Freud.

“A Dangerous Method” won’t be for everyone. The combo of love story and birth of modern analysis is an odd mix. The almost total lack of physical action—Cronenberg’s fireworks here are in the small moments and the ideas expressed in the script—means the focus is on the words, but where some will see a film rich with dialogue, others will see it as verbose. But that’s just the kind of duality the movie explores.