Beautiful Boy
4 stars
Director: Felix van Groeningen
Stars: Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, Maura Tierney
Duration: 120 mins
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd

Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet offer two profoundly affecting performances in Beautiful Boy, based on the true story of David Sheff and his son Nic, who fell into the abyss of drug abuse, while David looked on completely powerless.

At the age of 18, Nicolas Sheff had a bright future to look forward to. A good student who loved to read and draw, he had excellent prospects to attend any one of six colleges of his choice.

Although his parents were divorced, he grew up a happy child, spending time with both his mother and his father’s new family. As a young teenager, Nic experimented with drugs, however by the age of 18 he was a complete addict.

Father and son both wrote memoirs detailing the experience from their respective points of view. An acclaimed journalist, David wrote the memoir that bears the film’s name, while son Nic detailed his journey in the book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines. The events depicted in the film draw on both.

What results is a thoughtful drama which charts Nic’s swings from sobriety and his promises to quit for good, to his drug-taking binges. Before our eyes this confident, amiable, dashing and handsome young man shrivels into a gaunt, aimless, angry being refusing any help.

And it is an awful thing for his father to behold, as David, his second wife Karen (Maura Tierney) and two young children witness Nic’s self-destruction first-hand, threatening the family unit for good.

Keeping things grounded and remarkably authentic is a small but sturdy ensemble including Tierney; Amy Ryan as Vicki, Nic’s mother; and Kaitlyn Dever as Lauren, Nic’s onetime girlfriend, all of whom are fully invested in their small but significant roles.

A simple tale of ordinary people fighting what is a powerful disease

But the film is most definitely driven by the one-two punch that is Carell and Chalamet. The more roles of this calibre Carell takes on, the harder it is to remember he started out as a comedian.

He is faultless as a loving father trying so hard to do the right thing by his boy. He sends him to rehab and then to college, only to have his spirit crushed each time Nic takes refuge again in the needle.

“I don’t know how to help him,” he rails at Karen at one point after Nic disappears for the nth time, unquantifiable pain and anguish etched upon his face. “You can’t!” is her devastating comeback… and the acceptance of the truth of that statement leads him to make a devastating decision about his beautiful boy, that would not be expected of a parent in such circumstances.

And the transformation of that beautiful boy into the angry lost soul bent on self-destruction is a graceful and natural one in the hands of Chalamet. Having wowed audiences with his astonishing Oscar-nominated turn in Call Me by Your Name, the young actor once more tackles a mature role with a poignant combination of honesty and heartbreak.

The dynamic between the two actors is electrifying, making the chasm that grows between father and son all that more difficult to see especially with each flashback to happier times that director Felix van Groeningen inserts, showing the seemingly unbreakable bond that existed between the two.

Beautiful Boy is a simple tale of ordinary people fighting what is a powerful disease. And that is basically the nub of the film. There is neither unnecessary drama nor false sentimentality; no exposition about a tragic incident that may have sparked off Nic’s addiction; no judgement about his actions.

And, it ultimately offers no easy answers to this blight on society. It must be said, it makes a change to see the problem so devastatingly represented in a comfortably affluent, upper-middle class family and the havoc it can so swiftly and indiscriminately wreak.