November 12, 2018 3 min to read

Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Boy has some gorgeous scenes in it, but falls short of it’s ambitions by throwing it’s emotional punches too early.

by Zach Saul

Beautiful Boy is a challenge to watch. That’s not an indictment of the film, everyone with a pulse who saw the trailer, heard snippets of the soundtrack, or read the book brought their handkerchiefs with them to the theatre. The movie focuses on Nic (Chalmet) David’s (Carell) complicated and strained relationship, and the trials and tribulations of trying to help someone with serious meth addiction. We skip around in time trough Nic’s childhood and adolescence to see him depressed in his room drawing unsettling comics, conniving to steal his siblings savings, agonized over his own failures, and manic at different points during his attempts at recovery.

In a particularly heartbreaking scene (there’s no shortage in Beautiful Boy) in the movie to be when a distraught young Daisy gets blamed by her brother Jasper for stealing his life’s savings ($8) from his piggy bank. Insisting her innocence she calls to her father in tears, and David quickly realizes that he lent his car to Nic the night before and connects the dots as to who stole the cash. When he confronts Nic about it, he storms out and shouts obscenities back at his father and stepmother.

I thought what this movie handled most sensitively wasn’t necessarily Nic’s experience, but his parent’s struggle and had quite a bit to say about what it means to care for a user. I felt the same way as an audience member about Nic that his parents probably did - that he was like an Eel, impossible to grab onto and despite how desperately we want to help him and see him succeed we don’t know how. As a parent your most basic instinct and in some respect sense of self-worth is wrapped up in your ability to protect your children - and Beautiful Boy is a tragic compilation of what it means to reshape those instincts. Right before the movie ends we see David and Karen (Nic’s stepmom) sitting in a support group (Al Anon) after Nic latest incident listening to another woman talking about her child’s struggle with drugs and having to “mourn the living”.

The 3 C’s the group preaches to its members are that “You Didn’t Cause it”, “You Can’t Control it” and “You Can’t Cure it”. Real life David Sheff says he’s come to accept the second two, but hasn’t quite come to grips with the first C: “You Didn’t Cause it”. In the movie, every millisecond Carell spends on screen this agony is visible - and when he lashes out against his wife or Nic it’s because he feels guilty, or wants to know the unknowable as to why his son is using. Whether drug addiction is the work of nature or nurture is something we’ll likely spend the next eon debating - but the shitty part for parent like David? They’ll blame themselves for either explanation.

The Good: Beautiful Boy is a deep, thoughtful and well-acted adaptation of a serious subject matter, and has enough tear-jerking scenes to extend your next few hugs 15 seconds or so. The soundtrack is excellent, and does it’s part in setting the mood and giving the montages of Nic and David’s early years added “texture”.

The Bad: The movie is edited in a strange way. I left the theatre feeling like all the scenes you’d expect from a heavyweight addiction film were there, and done correctly - but the sum equalled less than its parts. The book is his father’s memoir - so on some level it makes sense that David is a more nuanced character than Nic. However I found myself wishing Director Felix Van Groeningen would have leaned into this being a requiem for parents - as that was the film’s strongest angle. On a completely unrelated note - casting Amy Ryan as Nic’s birth-mom feels lazy, and gratuitous to me. I have nothing against Amy Ryan who is a fine actress - but Steve Carell is a larger than life figure to an entire generation of millenials and casting Ryan as his wife (Ryan plays Hollie, Michael Scott’s wife in ‘The Office’) in a serious addiction drama only serves to inappropriately insert “The Office” universe where it doesn’t belong.