Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Wendy Ide

The Son review – Hugh Jackman excels in solid yet inferior follow-up to The Father

Hugh Jackman and Zen McGrath in The Son.
Hugh Jackman and Zen McGrath in The Son: ‘basic in its insights’. Photograph: Entertainment Pictures/Alamy

Let’s get this out of the way: anyone expecting Florian Zeller’s second film to match his Oscar-nominated debut, The Father, for complexity and ingenuity will be disappointed. The Son, which, like The Father, was adapted by Zeller from his stage play, is a solid, affecting domestic drama that deals with a parent – high-achieving lawyer Peter (Hugh Jackman) – struggling to cope with his teenage son’s mental health issues. It’s generally well-acted: Jackman is terrific, his expensive equilibrium knocked off kilter by his son’s failure to thrive. And in a single, scathing cameo, Anthony Hopkins drenches the screen in bile and hate. But compared with Zeller’s earlier film, this picture is rather more straightforward in its storytelling and basic in its insights.

The fact that this tale of depression is told from the point of view of the parent rather than of Nicholas (Zen McGrath), the child who is suffering from it, has proved to be controversial. But in fact this is one of the more successful, if uncomfortable elements. Zeller explores how sadness repels; how people involuntarily recoil from depression, perpetuating the isolation of the sufferer.

Watch a trailer for The Son.
Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.