Beautiful Boy – A Tale of Unconditional Love
Beautiful Boy, a poetic film with a heart-breaking story that explores the rawness of drug abuse and its harsh reality.
The feature is based on journalist David Sheff’s memoir about his son’s drugs rocky road and directed by Felix Van Groeningen (The Broken Circle Breakdown).
We follow a father, David Sheff (Steve Carell) that after facing his son’s Nic (Timothée Chalamet) crystal met addiction desperately tries to help him and goes on a daunting journey from hitting the streets looking for answers to experimenting the cause of all the darkness.
Carell performance transcends by not being outrageous and accurately translating the father’s deep pain and sense of helplessness.
The Belgian director, Felix Van Groeningen intelligently connects timelines between flashbacks, shifting through Nic’s happier times from years past and the sombre reality of his addiction; that works as a key element that enriches the narrative and absorbs us into this family cycle of grief, resentment and fear.
When David (Steve Carell) asks the son, Nic (Timothée Chalamet) “– Why? And the answer is – I don’t know, when I tried, I felt better I ever had so I keep it on doing.” Here we can reflect and conclude that addictiveness is strongly allied with emptiness and filling a void which commonly lies underneath our society. Chalamet embodies it with disarming and pure talent hardly described by words, we just feel it and go along in his quest as Nic.
The role play between the two actors is effortless and impressive in portraying a father-son relationship pushed to the limits in the ferocious battle against drugs.
A teardrop emotional drama that hits right into our hearts like a sharping needle, too painful for some of us.