During this time of year, there is so much quality filmmaking it’s hard to decipher where to spend your consumer dollar. On top of that, the two biggest opening weekends in October history happened this year. First, it was Venom taking home $80-million and then, this past weekend, Halloween surprised everyone and took home $77-million. Long story short, there is plenty of competition at the box-office right now. With two Best Picture contenders (First Man and A Star is Born) making their highly anticipated debuts just a few weeks ago, it will be difficult to stand alone in a crowded marketplace. Beautiful Boy has had its fair share of buzz up until this point, and rightfully so, but it didn’t manage to reach a bar that was set pretty high.
Much (well, most) of the attention surrounding the project comes from the performances. Timothée Chalamet has had something of a meteoric rise to stardom. Aside from his breakout role in Call Me by Your Name, for which he was nominated for Best Actor at the 2018 Academy Awards, he also played a sizeable role in Lady Bird: both Best Picture nominees. Chalamet delivered this portrayal with such fragility and internal turmoil, it’s often painful to watch. His character, Nic, constantly disappoints but the grinding nature of the addiction cycle was distinctly at the forefront of this story. The young man from Manhattan brilliantly balanced the ups and downs and could very well find himself in one, or both, categories again as his portrayal of a helpless and seemingly hopeless addict has already garnered plenty of attention. This young man just continues to add to his diverse portfolio of strong roles.
Not to be outdone, Steve Carell was fantastic playing Nic’s father, David. It’s not as though Carell has never ventured into dramatic territory before, but this was unfamiliar ground for him. David is mostly trying to help his son, desperately, but the constant push and pull is exhausting and watching him go through the give-and-take is just as painful as Nic’s self-destruction. Carell delivered a powerful and heartfelt performance that will stand out as some of the best work of his career. I’m not sure if Amazon Studios is going to try and push both actors for awards later in the year but, if they do, they may find it difficult to categorize the performances accurately.
Belgian born Felix Van Groeningen was an interesting choice to captain this ship. He was, and probably still is, basically unknown by the American public and had made exclusively Belgian films. This was a tremendous opportunity for Van Groeningen who directed and co-wrote this film based on two separate memoirs by David and Nic Sheff. In a strange narrative choice, both David and Nic are shared main characters, which works well as individual stories, but there’s an inability to focus that prevented some basic cinematic functionality. The character narratives have trouble sharing the space and something’s missing as a result. His script was strong and encompassed a great deal of authenticity and heart which jumped of the screen but the pendular shift between characters slowed too much and too often.
As beautiful as this movie is at times, there’s an emotional plateau fairly early on. We are introduced to David once he has already run out of options to help his son and frustration and desperation have set in. From there we go back in the timeline, and generally, jump to different times throughout their lives, where we see instances that may or may not have influenced Nic’s behavior and subsequent drug abuse. In those moments, we see both very good and very bad times but, as the audience, we already have a pretty solid idea of what bad looks like and there’s a general assumption that things weren’t always that way, leading up to the worst moments. Functionally, we are shown these things in order to paint both characters in a sympathetic light and demonstrate that there is no one thing that caused the problem. Narratively, there’s a lot of going around in circles which, at least artistically, thematically reflects the addiction cycle but it slows everything down. Even with the dynamic performances, subject matter took center stage and the film was as much about addiction as it was the characters involved.
In order to break some of the monotony, or at least frame some of the redundancies a bit differently, Gabe Hilfer put together an excellent collection of songs to serve as the emotional backbone of the movie. Aside from John Lennon’s title track, Beautiful Boy, and David Bowie’s Sound and Vision, there’s a deep cut from Nirvana and powerful and frightening piece, Haiti, by Pan Sonic in the middle of the film. Hilfer gathered a really eclectic blend of musical artists to capture a wide array of emotional tones.
The visual aesthetic and storytelling were some of many strong foundational elements. Ruben Impens, who directed photography for one of my favorite films last year (Raw), has a penchant for interior framing and robust exteriors. He had a good understanding of where this film needed to go and mixed those interior shots with plenty of mid-range closeups shot in natural light. There was also a strong focus on lush, green trees in the exterior shots; seemingly meant to evoke a connection between nature and human nature. The combination of serene and peaceful B-roll shots mixed with some dark, dreary, and dramatic moments fueled the cyclical nature of the film and provided a distinct optical identity for each mood.
To borrow a term from the world of professional sports, Francine Maisler is an absolute casting “beast”. I’ve bee singing her praises for the last couple years, but she’s been doing this a long time and her name is usually attached to at least one of the Best Picture nominees. This year alone she’s already done White Boy Rick, First Man and The Sisters Brothers (which I will discuss is my next review) so it’s really no surprise to see her name connected to another film garnering a lot of buzz. Besides the A-listers getting top billing, Maisler also recruited skilled veterans such as Maura Tierney, Amy Ryan (pictured below), Andre Royo, and Timothy Hutton to play clutch roles in the saga of Nic and David.
The strengths of this movie are readily on display throughout both the advertising and the film itself, although the trailers don’t really divulge how deep the rabbit hole goes. There was potential for greatness here, backed by superb performances based on authentic stories of real people, but the eventual end was more of a foregone conclusion by the time we arrived there. This was a very good, well-made film with far more positives than negatives but didn’t quite come together as one of the great films this year.
Recommendation: See it for the performances from Carell and Chalamet. For those who know someone who’s struggling or has struggled with addiction, this will hit closer to home and could be hard to watch at times. However, there is still a great deal of positivity to be gained from the experience and exposure for the subject of addiction, which seems to be haunting an increasing number of people.