Ben is Back (Review)
Ben is Back Shows the Terrible Toll Addicts Disease Takes on Their Families.
Addiction seems to be a theme resurfacing in theaters in 2018 first with Beautiful Boy and now with Ben is Back. While the previous focused on a father’s battle with his son’s addiction, Ben is Back looks to a mother’s perspective. Despite having similar themes and elements, Ben is Back is nothing like Beautiful Boy and adopts a much more dramatic approach when it comes to telling its story of addiction and features much more complicated (and slightly less likable) characters.
Julie Roberts plays one of the most intricate characters of her career as Holly Burns, a mother fighting to save her son, Ben (played by Lucas Hedges, who you might remember from Mid90s or Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), from his addiction. What immediately caught my attention is that Holly seems to care a great deal more about Ben than the rest of her children or even possibly her husband, and fights to protect him from any perceived threat no matter who it comes from. This blind maternal instinct proves to be both a gift and a curse when it comes to Holly. The love she has for her son, despite his mistakes, speaks volumes about who she is as a person, but the fact that she slowly seems to adopt the same habits her addict son portrays in order to protect him slowly soured my taste for her. She’s quick to blame everyone else when it comes to her son, especially in a scene where she chews out a doctor for “turning her son into an addict” by prescribing him pain medication after an accident when he was a boy. However, she’s quick to offer Ben forgiveness when he admits that he got a friend hooked on the drugs that eventually killed her. In fact, Holly goes so far as to tell Ben that he didn’t “force her to stick a needle in her arm.”
Despite her character being so tumultuous, Roberts gives an emotionally-charged performance. However, she’s met every step of the way by Hedges who’s performance is so incredible because he managed to master one little detail essential to playing an addict for Ben is Back. You can tell when he’s lying. I don’t mean that in an obvious way either. It’s a subtle performance that seems to let the audience know he’s untrustworthy without being so blatant that you question why anyone would possibly believe him. With Holly as the perfect enabler, it becomes easier and easier for Ben to lie even though it’s obvious how much it hurts him to do so. It’s clear that even despite their on-screen chemistry, these characters are a perfect storm when paired together.
Ben is Back is a far cry from what we’re used to from writer-director Peter Hedges. His other films were all light-hearted characters studies, but Ben is Back is a cold and stoic film, which fits it perfectly considering that it takes place in the dead of winter over the course of a day. However, it’s far from making my list of the best Christmas movies. That doesn’t make it any less engrossing a tale though and I believe it might be the best writing we’ve gotten from Hedges to date. It’s clear that there is a lot of history when it comes to Ben, but we never get a full rundown of all his secret shames. Instead, the film only hints at the things he’s done. This is mostly because he’s kept them secret from his mother and over the course of their time together Holly has to come to terms that her baby boy might not be the person she thinks he is.
As good as it is though, Ben is Back is an incredible downer of a movie. Holly pushes everyone away in order to protect Ben, and because of that, she’s quick to snap at everyone, including her loving husband and daughter who seem to understand that Ben is toxic for the entire family until he manages to make it through recovery. It’s hard to watch her constantly come to her son’s aid, especially as he proves time and time again that he doesn’t deserve her trust. However, it’s that character flaw that serves to emphasize one of the most difficult parts of loving an addict. No matter how much you want to help them and save them from themselves, you can’t. They can only do it for themselves.
Ben is Back is not a fun movie, but it is a powerful one. Roberts and Hedges put in career-defining performances tackling one of the most painful epidemics ripping its way across our country. Ben is Back doesn’t take a grandiose look at the new wave of opioid addiction, but instead focuses on the people who are affected the most by it. Ben isn’t a bad guy, he’s sick and he needs help. However, before all that he needs to decide to stop himself from hurting the people he loves. It’s that aspect that makes Ben is Back so painful, but also so damn good.
