I will be honest, I saw this film listed on the movie channels and looked at the information and upon seeing it had Maria Bello and Michael Sheen in it, I wanted to watch it. The fact it was about parents dealing with the fallout of their sons college shooting pulled me in all the more.
Having just watched it, I wanted to have a look what others made of it. There is a review that picks at how the film was shot, and the bleakness of colours/background, but for me that made the film better. I think sometimes films working on low budgets actually make it better, there is something to be said for going a little old school.
The drab colours reflect what emotional turmoil the character's are going through, the fact that their world had literally plunged into unexpected and unwanted chaos when it wasn't perfect to begin with. We have two people who are already strangers to one another, there is an emotional and physical divide between them, and then this bomb hits their life and everything becomes isolated, bleak and numb. I think the directing, the photography and the actual film itself really encapsulates this feeling.
Of course this is a highly sensitive issue, and there was a lot of talk about We Need To Talk About Kevin, in which Tilda Swinton delivers a wonderful performance. I think these are very separate films offering different perspectives.
For Beautiful Boy, you don't have the son available to speak about his actions like the other film, you only get a couple of tiny snippets, the film doesn't focus on him or the shooting at the same time that it is entirely focused on them, but via the parents' reaction.
I think this film stands out because there is no way to determine any wrong doing, and it feels that there really isn't any. People do demonise the parents after events like this, and here we have two people who are so completely stunned that they go through a series of emotions. They pull together, they turn on each other, they leave each other, they cry, laugh and shout. They have the double whammy of not only dealing with their child's death, but the fact that he had it in him to kill so many people.
I don't think that Maria Bello and Michael Sheen deliver a well acted chemistry, I think they deliver a superb estranged numbness that would be evident in parents like them. It is a silent, subtle thing to act - and to also act out physicality in emotional ways, again - superb. They really turn the turmoil into a tangible assault for the watcher, you are compelled to follow them as they go through both individual and combined experiences and processes.
I think if you are a person that enjoys films for what they are, films that don't need anything but good actors with a good storyline to be brilliant, you should watch this. It is a great step into looking behind the scenes of the families that have to go through these types of events, where they may not have been perfect parents but they were by no means bad ones either. Just everyday ordinary people that raised a son, that loved him, that worried about him from time to time, but had no idea that he was capable of murder.
If offers no solid reason for his actions, I think that would detract from the film because though the storyline is about him, the film is about them. I also think you're meant to decide for yourself why things like that would happen, whether it is somebody in extreme emotional hurt that turns it outward or is innately bad or evil. Perhaps audiences are not ready to face that, there unfortunately is never a good time to examine this subject head on in this way, but Beautiful Boy offers the closest examination I've seen so far.
Having just watched it, I wanted to have a look what others made of it. There is a review that picks at how the film was shot, and the bleakness of colours/background, but for me that made the film better. I think sometimes films working on low budgets actually make it better, there is something to be said for going a little old school.
The drab colours reflect what emotional turmoil the character's are going through, the fact that their world had literally plunged into unexpected and unwanted chaos when it wasn't perfect to begin with. We have two people who are already strangers to one another, there is an emotional and physical divide between them, and then this bomb hits their life and everything becomes isolated, bleak and numb. I think the directing, the photography and the actual film itself really encapsulates this feeling.
Of course this is a highly sensitive issue, and there was a lot of talk about We Need To Talk About Kevin, in which Tilda Swinton delivers a wonderful performance. I think these are very separate films offering different perspectives.
For Beautiful Boy, you don't have the son available to speak about his actions like the other film, you only get a couple of tiny snippets, the film doesn't focus on him or the shooting at the same time that it is entirely focused on them, but via the parents' reaction.
I think this film stands out because there is no way to determine any wrong doing, and it feels that there really isn't any. People do demonise the parents after events like this, and here we have two people who are so completely stunned that they go through a series of emotions. They pull together, they turn on each other, they leave each other, they cry, laugh and shout. They have the double whammy of not only dealing with their child's death, but the fact that he had it in him to kill so many people.
I don't think that Maria Bello and Michael Sheen deliver a well acted chemistry, I think they deliver a superb estranged numbness that would be evident in parents like them. It is a silent, subtle thing to act - and to also act out physicality in emotional ways, again - superb. They really turn the turmoil into a tangible assault for the watcher, you are compelled to follow them as they go through both individual and combined experiences and processes.
I think if you are a person that enjoys films for what they are, films that don't need anything but good actors with a good storyline to be brilliant, you should watch this. It is a great step into looking behind the scenes of the families that have to go through these types of events, where they may not have been perfect parents but they were by no means bad ones either. Just everyday ordinary people that raised a son, that loved him, that worried about him from time to time, but had no idea that he was capable of murder.
If offers no solid reason for his actions, I think that would detract from the film because though the storyline is about him, the film is about them. I also think you're meant to decide for yourself why things like that would happen, whether it is somebody in extreme emotional hurt that turns it outward or is innately bad or evil. Perhaps audiences are not ready to face that, there unfortunately is never a good time to examine this subject head on in this way, but Beautiful Boy offers the closest examination I've seen so far.