Ryan McNeil
In any fight, it’s possible to see one combatant tap-out. Broken, bleeding, or breathless, a simple gesture is a sign from one side to the other that the fight needs to end. It often comes after the challenger has tried every countermeasure, and considered every option. It’s seen as an admission – “I cannot beat you”.
Such a gesture is more than an admission though. It takes understanding of self, and the grace to know when one is powerless.
It’s not surrender – it’s a plea for mercy, if only for a moment.
BEAUTIFUL BOY is the story of the Sheff family. Specifically patriarch David (Steve Carrell) and his eldest son, Nic (Timothée Chalamet). As Nic has graduated high school and is preparing to go off to college, his struggles with addiction begin to bubble to the surface. Before he so much as sets foot inside a dorm room for the first time, he is committing himself longterm to in-patient rehab.
His family – both David and his second wife, Karen (Maura Tierney) – are caught unawares, but are as supportive as any parents can possibly be. Fuelled by thoughts of Nic’s better virtues, they believe that their “beautiful boy” is stuck somewhere inside the addict they face.
Throughout the film, there are times when David has Nic on a tight leash, and times when he loses track of him for months at a time. There are moments when Nic seems like a walking catastrophe, and others when he stands as a totem of redemption.
Nic’s story will take him back towards his mother, Vicki (Amy Ryan), and her partner, Spencer (Andre Royo) – who seem to offer deep amounts of empathy. Nic’s story also often pulls his college girlfriend, Lauren (Kaitlyn Dever), into his orbit – a woman who tends to enable his habits.
So it goes for this beautiful boy – a daily push-and-pull through his young adult life, trying to keep the demons of addiction at bay.
BEAUTIFUL BOY is a complicated story; moreover, it asks difficult questions that come with complex answers. It’s fitting that the story opens with David speaking to a medical professional in the hopes of understanding what he’s up against with his son’s addiction. Here we see a journalist trying to use his logic and investigative skills to understand an issue. It also fits with Steve Carrell’s persona and demeanour. He believes in order and methodology – someone whose books are alphabetized and tee shirts sorted by colour.
Unfortunately, David is in for a rude awakening, since addiction does not submit to logic or investigation. For this reason, we become every bit as saddened and frustrated as David does whenever his approach fails. We watch him try everything from speaking the language to calling bullshit when he senses Nic is lying. We watch him invest in pricey rehab treatment and eventually try tough love.
None of it sticks.
But all logic dictates it should – he researches voraciously, speaks to anyone who will give him time, listens not only to what his son says but how he says it, and even pokes through Nic’s work to pick up whatever clues he can. Like any good journalist, he is doing his utmost to get to the truth, which leads us to the contradiction: the truth is a series of lies.
Nic’s disease will lie to him. It will let him feel fine for weeks, sometimes years, lulling him into a false sense of security. It will convince him that he can stand up and be an example to others, maybe even to himself. But it won’t ever let him be completely honest – not with his family, not with his sponsor, not with his fellow addicts, and certainly not with himself.
This is ultimately what will deny Nic’s father from finding an answer and discovering the truth. Because the truth is a moving target.
Watching Chalamet take this journey is stunning in its melancholy. His portrayal of Nic is one that is complicated, multifaceted, and genuine. While this film does include the typical scenes of an addict slumped on a bathroom floor, it dedicates far more time to the various masks a person dealing with the disease tends to wear. From moment to moment, Nic is contrite, sweet, sad, combative, effusive, and warm. None of them come off like an act, which directly counters David’s assertion that these masks aren’t “who is is”. Every version of Nic is real, and Chalamet finds ways to underline their veracity, breaking our hearts in so doing.
BEAUTIFUL BOY would succeed on these two fronts alone (methodology betraying David, and the puzzle box that Nic’s personality has become). However, by adding a third prong to its attack, the film elevates itself to something truly special.
The film employs a broken narrative – taking us back and forth in time with the Sheff family. It’s not employed as a gimmick of any sort, where understanding how the story adds up provides some sort of narrative twist. Instead, what it does is help us understand the challenge of facing addiction within a family unit.
By allowing us to fall in love with Nic at his most joyful, the film is able to tie our guts into knots by showing him at his most numb. Sometimes the physical changes are only slight – a reddening of the eyes, a curling of the lip. To look at him across the room, he seems like himself; the kid we just watched two scenes ago romping through a sprinkler with his young siblings. It allows us to understand why coping with and accepting such violent change in a family unit is so difficult for those affected; the joyous memories are too clear, and they feel as if they just happened yesterday.
BEAUTIFUL BOY wants to offer clemency – to the afflicted, as to the affected. It wants to say with a full voice that there is no way to definitively win a fight with addiction. The demons have nothing but time and can lay in wait for any show of weakness. Lean into the fight … step back from it … it doesn’t matter. The fight can only be endured, and those who endure deserve mercy – even if it is just a moment.