Beautiful Boy (Review)

Beautiful Boy Tells a Painful Story but Does So Perfectly.

Growing up in the 90’s I was subjected to the D.A.R.E. program which tried to scare me off drugs for good. The thing is that the program would have been all the more successful if it had just shown me a film like Beautiful Boy. Director Felix van Groeningen tells a gut-wrenching tale from the eyes of a father who has to watch his son destroy his life with drugs, helpless to do anything to save the beautiful boy he once knew. It’s a harrowing tale, beautifully told, but hard to watch and one that will resonate with anyone who had known addiction in their lives, whether themselves or through a loved one. As someone who has seen addiction before, I applaud everything that Beautiful Boy gets right about it, no matter how painful it was having those memories trudged up again.

Steve Carrell sports a beard for his performance as David Sheff, so you know he’s deadly serious. Sheff is a freelance writer who was granted custody of his son, Nic( played by Timothée Chalamet of Lady Bird and Call Me by Your Name fame), who slowly goes from recreational drug user to addict over the course of a few years. These two are the cornerstones of Beautiful Boy. While there are definitely other characters in the movie, they are inconsequential because they all stand on the shoulders of these great actors. Carrell is forced to watch his son spiral out of control trying desperately to help him in any way possible. The hard truth is that his son is an addict though and no addict has ever been saved by someone else until they were willing to be saved. That horrible truth is something that slowly becomes more and more evident as Chalamet’s Nic manages to get clean and relapse over and over again. As much as Carrell’s David is willing to do whatever it takes for his son, he has to face the cold reality that there really is nothing he can do.

For Beautiful Boy, Felix van Groeningen adopts a very objective film style that gives the audience an almost voyeuristic feeling. Many shots are from such positions as the back seat of a car watching the two leads talking in the front, because of this the audience feels like they are a part of the story simply watching the events unfold. This combined with the incredible effortless performances by Carrell and Chalamet and the quick yet fluid pacing cause Beautiful Boy to feel almost like a documentary. There’s something so natural about watching the events unfold and that’s because Groeningen focuses mostly on the moments that define the story. This causes Beautiful Boy to not necessarily have a conventional story structure, but it’s incredibly effective when it comes to this tale. Most impressive of all though is that Groeningen is a director who believes in showing instead of telling. This is most evident when it comes to the love shared between the two leads in the film.

I simply cannot express enough how spectacular Carrell and Chalamet are together. Both of them are perfect choices for these roles and their chemistry is electric. Because of this though, Beautiful Boy is all the more heartbreaking. Carrell embraces the anguish of his character who is helpless to do anything to protect his son from himself. At the same time, Chalamet is a character who very much suffers from a disease but doesn’t want to face it. Together they’re caught in an orbit, constantly circling around each other, but pulling farther and farther apart from each other despite wanting so desperately to reach each other. Despite everything though, Carrell’s love for his son never fades. Even when he’s forced to cut his son off and stop enabling him, the pain he feels is palpable. It goes to show that addiction is very much a disease that can and will affect everyone in your life. When you’re an addict, the suffering is no longer just your own and that’s what Beautiful Boy gets right.

There’s little doubt in my mind that Beautiful Boy is one of the best-told films of the year. The cast put there all into there subtle and details performances that really capture the different types of suffering their characters are experiencing and the director manages to capture the exact moments that matter the most to this story. As wonderful as it is though it’s excruciating to watch at certain points, especially as Nic starts to lie and steal from the very family that wants to help him more than anything else. That being said this is a film that should be seen by anyone who has been touched by addiction in their lives. Personally, I can’t recommend it highly enough.