Watch enough movies at a film festival and sure enough, potential double bills start to emerge. Nothing about Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, in which a morbidly obese man (Brendan Fraser) begins eating himself to death, and Florian Zeller’s The Son, about an estranged couple (Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern) struggling to get through to their depressive child (Zen McGrath), indicated that the films would have anything in common. Yet viewed on two consecutive days (combined with a grim lack of sleep), striking similarities spring up.
Both present a snapshot of the way teens speak a language that parents are desperate to learn the vocabulary of; of how even terrible choices, when viewed in the rearview mirror, might not inspire regret. Both also deal with mental afflictions (binge eating, depression). More specifically, both feature fathers who focus on their children’s untapped potential and ignore their wasted present. Both these men broke up their marriage and walked out on their children at a young age, which is perhaps why they view parenting as a redemption arc rather than a vocation. Pivotal moments in both films are flashbacks set in open water. One child is scared to death he won’t grow up to be like his father. The other is terrified that she will. The emotions of one film reach a fever pitch only in its last 10 minutes. The other has a climax that aims for emotion but lands on blatant manipulation instead.
Beyond these narrative parallels, however, both films find their otherwise-masterful directors out of sync with their own style. Misfire is too strong a word, but both The Whale and The Son are oddly flat, lacking the striking imagery and fully-realised worlds that mark their respective directors’ previous films.
The Son begins with attorney Peter Miller (Jackman) finding out from his former wife Kate (Laura Dern) that their son Nick (McGrath) has been skipping school. Prodded, Nick replies, “It’s life, it’s weighing me down” (an apt sentiment for this leaden screenplay). In a later scene, the camera cuts from Peter, his new wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and Nick dancing together in their living room, to Nick separated from the group, staring vacantly into space. The visualisation of his affliction remains external rather than internal, a dangerous strategy for a film about depression. After all, as long as Nick “looks” happy, Peter is content enough to assume he actually is.
Zeller doesn’t put us inside Nick’s head in the vivid, visually-inventive way he did with his protagonist in The Father (2020), in which dementia was represented on screen as a series of non-linear scenes, multiple actors playing the same character and sets that appeared altered whenever they reappeared. Where The Father was naturally heart-wrenching, The Son works hard to induce that emotion in the audience. Characters talk in writerly lines, describing how they feel without actually conveying it.