Zeller's follow up to The Father never reaches the emotional honesty of his previous film.
In 2020 Florian Zeller released his directorial debut The Father a tremendously moving and powerful story about the horror of dementia and the toll that disorder takes on his family and those around him. The Father earned Zeller and his co writer Christopher Hampton an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay based on the play Le Père which Zeller also wrote and won Anthony Hopkins his second Oscar for his portrayal of the title character. Zellers first film took a deeply tragic and shockingly honest look at a family dynamic we rarely see and in doing so created a deeply affecting first film that made Zeller a riveting filmmaker to watch.
As a playwright Zeller wrote a trilogy of plays which began with The Mother followed by Le Père The Father and concluded with Le Fils The Son. For his second film Zeller has decided to adapt the last film in this trilogy for The Son, and once more Zeller has reunited with Hampton on the screenplay. Yet while The Father felt like a sincere candid look at a tragic experience The Son is the polar opposite a film that never feels genuine and misses the humanity that made Zellers debut such a masterwork.
Several years after his parents got a divorce Nicholas Miller Zen McGrath decides he no longer wants to live with his mother Kate Laura Dern. Instead Nicholas wants to live with his father Peter Hugh Jackman who is living with his new partner Beth Vanessa Kirby and their new baby. Nicholas has been skipping school for over a month instead deciding to walk around the streets of New York City all day. He states that life has been weighing him down and that he wants something to change. Nicholas attitude scares his mother and Peter hopes that he can help his son deal with this clearly difficult time in his life.
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