by Elisa Giudici
Today on the menu in Venice, there is only one option: crying your heart out. You can choose which missing son and worried parent will tear your heart in pieces, though.
THE SON by Florian Zeller
Who is 'the son' of the title? That's debatable. There is the troubled teenager Nicholas (Zen McGrath) that Peter (Hugh Jackman) had with his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern). Peter also has a newborn son he is raising with his new partner Beth (Vanessa Kirby). Maybe Peter himself is the titular character? He's learning some hard lessons in being a father while struggling with what it means to be the son of Anthony (Sir Anthony Hopkins). I would say the latter, considering how this movie works best as a reminder of Hugh Jackman’s considerable acting skill...
Can you make a comeback when you haven't stopped working? Jackman's role here feels like a fresh reboot at least. It's emotional and layered enough to signal to the Academy and audiences that this could open a significant new phase of the movie star's career. Keeping this in mind, it’s almost comical that the most memorable performance belongs to Anthony Hopkins and he's only here for five minutes! His detached mean father deepens our sympathy and understanding of Jackman’s attempts to be a different kind of father who can set his teenage son on the right path. Neverthless The Son is Hugh Jackman’s show. Dern and Kirby have little to do and Zen McGrath’s Nicholas is fits to neatly into the “depressed troubled adolescent” stereotype.
The Son (2021) is less impressive than The Father (2020) so perhaps we're discovering Zeller's limits as a filmmaker. Though, to be honest, is that fair? How many movies are as impressive as The Father? At the very least The Son proves as soulful an acting showcase for Hugh Jackman as The Father was for Anthony Hopkins.
Two more films...
BEYOND THE WALL (Šab, dākheli, divār) by Vahid Jalilvand
A woman (Diana Habibi) on the run from police, hides in the flat of a blind man (Navid Mohammadzadeh) . Beyond the Wall starts like a drama but it reveals itself to be more of a psychological thriller. That's a genre you wouldn't remotely expect to see from an Iranian movie in Venice.
There is definitely a degree of mastery here, from Jalilvand, director of No Date No Signature. It's most apparent in the way the timeline slowly unfolds and fragments. The duet at the center is also memorable with the unlikely blind hero trying to help the epileptic stranger hiding in his flat. Unfortunately Beyond the Wall tends to repeat itself rather frequently, with story enough for ninety-minutes tops, but stretched to a full two hours diluting its own momentum and thrills. We understand, for example, how distraught the woman is having lost her helpless young son in a riot before the police were after her. But how many scenes of her crying do we need? Would she really jeopardize her chance at an escape route just to have another cry?
DREAMIN' WILD by Bill Pohlad
If the story of the 30 year delayed musical succcess of the Emerson brothers wasn't true, Bill Pohlad might have had to invent it. After the producer-turned-director's artistic success with The Beach Boys film Love & Mercy (2014) he's managed to find a movie with the very same elements and themes he is so clearly obsessed with. Though we're somewhere else on the fame curve of course. And despite being a little more unconventional than a "regular" biopic film, Dreamin' Wild still struggles with cliché.
If you've seen Love & Mercy you'll know that Pohlad is game to explore the minds of men with an extraordinary talent for music composition. Fame in both movies, however, works against creativity, detracting from rather than adding to freedom. So fame causes Donnie Emerson (Casey Affleck) a lot of pain. He is hurt by the surprise late success that essentially asks him to be the teenage boy he was while writing the songs. His new fame is erasing the 30 years in which he grew up as a person and composer.
more tomorrow
Also...
#1 - Tár, White Noise...
#2 - Bardo False Chronicle of...
#3 - Bones and All, Monica, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
#4 - The Whale, Argentina 1985, Master Gardener
#5 - L'Immensità, Other People's Children, Love Life...
#6 - Banshees of Inisherin, Don't Worry Darling, Eternal Daughter
#7 - Saint Omer, Lord of the Ants, Dead for a Dollar