User Reviews

This movie troubled me. As a father to a teenage boy it resonated deeply. Let me start off by saying that the effects of divorce on children can be massive. This is a fact based in reality. I've heard countless spiral stories including my own wife's where divorce was a cataclysmic explosion that nearly ended their own lives. Coupled with mental illness the result can often be tragic and perhaps impossible to recover from. In any case the acting here was brilliant on all fronts. Jackman was completely believable and the son nailed his part as a disturbed young man. I wanted so badly for things to end better but my rationale knew better. Would things have changed if the gun was removed from the picture? If the parents had left him at the psychiatric ward? Who knows. It could have merely delayed the inevitable. The boy was so troubled it would seem irreparable. In any case this film is designed with one grand purpose of that I am certain. To magnify and evangelize two colossal social issues: suicide awareness and mental health crisis. These are no joke and need to be addressed and berated even until we can attempt to find any cure. The film was a steady ascent up the mountain of doom and the climax was predictable. It simply didn't get better. The tragedy of what could have been haunts me. The scene where the son is at the hospital and cries out to his dad, "you know me!" nearly ripped me in half. All I know is that after watching this I hugged my son goodnight with a purposeful and emphatic grip that caused him to ask if everything was ok. I hope it is my little man. By God I pray it is.

This movie was written/directed by Florian Zeller, who won an Oscar for his screenplay of The Father. While The Father explored the crushing disease of dementia through the lens of a father/daughter relationship, Zeller's follow-up The Son explores mental illness through the lens of a father/son relationship.

When I first saw this movie, the synopsis provided by IMDb said "Peter has his busy life with new partner Beth and their baby thrown into disarray when his ex-wife Kate turns up with their teenage son, Nicholas." While this is somewhat accurate, it does not mention the predominate theme of the film, which is Nicholas' severe depression and the inability of his parents (Jackman & Dern) to cope with or even recognize their son's crippling mental illness. This is the real story this film is trying to tell, and it does so well through a difficult and heartbreaking two hours that ultimately ends up exactly where you fear it would.

Before it gets to the seemingly inevitable outcome, we increasingly see how blind both Nicholas' parents are to what is really happening to him, whether through ignorance or wishful thinking. Numerous times throughout the film, Peter (Jackman) frustratingly asks Nicholas (played exceptionally by Zen McGrath) to explain his bizarre behavior, in attempts to rationalize it to himself. At times, Nicholas says bluntly to his mother, Kate (Dern), "I'm not well" but she, too, either does not recognize his behavior as mental illness or simply prefers to rationalize it as something else, with Peter's leaving of Kate and Nicholas for another woman, Beth (Kirby) being the convenient scapegoat for his behavior.

When watched through the lens of someone with severe mental illness crying out for help to the people who love him most, only to have those people fail to recognize his illness and be unable to give him the help he truly needs, this movie is gut-wrenching. I felt it was a good analogy on how some view mental illness (even some of those who wrote IMDb user reviews trivializing Nicholas' illness and behavior) as something that is a choice and not a genuine disease with serious risks.

As is sadly too often the case, no one closest to him either recognizes or admits that Nicholas is seriously mentally ill, and that ignorance ultimately costs him his life. After a failed suicide attempt lands him in a psychiatric hospital, Peter and Kate go against the pleading of medical professionals and bring him home, in yet another example of them not understanding and/or downplaying the severity of what is happening to their son. Shortly after they bring him back to Peter's apartment, Nicholas kills himself with his parents in the next room. The final scene shows us Peter dreaming of an interaction with Nicholas where he survived his second suicide attempt and managed to turn his life around. For a moment, the audience is teased with the prospect of a happy ending, only for that to be shattered when Beth walks into the room and asks Peter what he's doing, and the viewer sees the room is empty. The final image we see in this film is Peter breaking down as Beth consoles him, a fitting ending for a film that explores the devastation of mental illness.

While admittedly not as good of a film as The Father, I did think this was a good movie, albeit a tough watch. The kind of solid performances you'd expect from this cast (which also included a cameo by Anthony Hopkins as Peter's father), and what I believe is a refreshing and brutally honest look at mental illness without the glossing over that films often do with this subject matter. I gave it a solid 7/10.

Having first hand experience with schizophrenia and bipolar I was curious how they would handle depression. They failed at every attempt.

The father gets never an answer and still believes till the end that his son has no serious condition. Utter denial. That was the part that hurt me the most, I got the full support from home, I could stay in the hospital/ward for as long as they, the doctors, deemed good. Here the doctors could not get the message clear enough on the table for the parents. The parents were played into every corner by the son and every time they bought into the meaningless words.

It was very hard to watch, I fully agree with primal_1 above. I too had to laugh sometimes where I was certain, that it wasn't meant to be funny.

What was more, it is depicted as if wanting the boy back home, is love. It isn't, they fail to see that real love is letting the son get the treatment he needs.

Denying that need isn't love at all. This movie shows more the struggle of the parent themselves, the trouble they get into, when they deny that the son really needs serious treatment.

The parents play a very detrimental part, and that's shown as sensitive, caring, loving. This movie misses the mark on all points. I still gave it 6 stars, because the acting was very good, so, for someone who knows nothing about mental afflictions, this movie is very watchable.

It has taken me a few minutes to calm down from crying harder than I have cried in a very long time to start. What a ride. This movie was one of if not the most emotional movie I have ever seen in my life because, well I am the son but the reason I'm here writing this review today, figuratively and literally, is how this movie shows the important of a single decision and is truly a masterpiece of a film.

My my was/is the mother, my dad was is/the father, stepmom and half sister with similar age range. I found my self in a center similar to this in the exact same scenario except mine was enhanced with drugs but I had that same exact conversation with the doctor and my parents. My parents listened to the doctor and forced me to stay and if it wasn't for that single decision I would have been the son and would most likely not be here today. Frankly I'm not sure how I still am trust me I tried. My next phase was even worse but I'm happy to say I am almost 30 and am genuinely happy with myself and am working towards what I truly want to do and was able to break away from the control the father has over the son but my father makes his father look amazing.

This movie showed me a 3rd person view of my legitimately exact same scenario and showed me how damn far I have come and how much I truly owe it to some higher damn power that I am here today. This was hands down the most emotionally intense movie for me as it hit so close to home in landed in my lap.

Let me tell you from experience. It's describes the feeling and scenario extremely accurately.

Oh boy that movie...Let's start with this: do NOT watch that movie if you have been, or are going through depression before. It could easily have been called "Depression and what not to do". I also need to point out that if you are suffering from mental health, there are a lot of resources online to help you, but you need to let people help, you cannot do this alone. Hugh Jackman plays the father of young Nicholas ("the son"), who is going through acute depression. After going through a tough divorce, Kate has custody of their son, and Peter is married to Beth, who just had a son. Nicholas feels lost, and is quite violent against his mother, and decides to go live with his father, thinking that a change of scenery will help him get out of the numbness he is suffering from. Unfortunately the father is quite absent from his son's life, even while living with him, because he spends all of his time at work, where he is a lawyer, and trying to become director of campaign for a presidential candidate. Nicholas is left mostly unattended, and while he is given all the tools to get better, he just cannot do it alone. And this is where it gets tricky, after a first suicide attempt, he is committed to a clinic, where the medical team understands that he is at risk, and needs immediate care. And Nicholas manages to manipulate his parents enough that they take him out of necessary care. It is very clear that the director/writer has been through some story like this, with someone in his family going through acute depression, and he tries to show what cannot help. It is just not a movie I can recommend for anyone suffering from mental health issues.

If you're trusting your child and take them out of psychiatric hospital under your supervision the very first thing you do is you remove any guns from your house, but of course the writers decided that's not needed so no wonder why the kid killed himself.

This is a great example of a movie which has an important message but fails big in terms of how they could deliver that message. The build up could've been better. Instead we are served with the obvious chain of events that everyone can predict pretty easily.

Lastly, if you're watching this movie because you struggle. Talk to someone. Please, just talk to someone.

The parents clearly were not equipped to deal with their sons mental illness and I was rooting for them to understand they needed to get him professional help and pay more attention. Then right at the end when it seems they do understand, they fall back into their old habits and take him home?!?! It is not like the signs were very subtle, he told them multiple times he found life to hard to experience. And if the parents learned how to deal with that, if we would see more development within the father through his relationship with his father then maybe there would have been something interesting happen.

The lead up to that gunshot was super intense (also, the dad not taking out the gun from the bathroom tells you enough of how serious they take his mental health).