Hugh Jackman is playing his toughest role since Wolverine – but his new Oscar film is infuriating

All the workouts and horror diets in the world can hardly prepare for a role like Hugh Jackman’s in The Son. The former X-Men actor is more helpless in the drama than at any other time in his career. Because while Wolverine’s wounds heal by themselves, the new film by The Father author Florian Zeller cuts deeper into the soul with every minute.

That Drama about a depressed teenager is torture and infuriating. First because of the impotence in the face of suffering and then because of terrible directorial decisions that exploit this suffering for cheap effects.

The Son is part of The Father Cinematic Universe, so to speak

In The Father, Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar in 2020 as a father who loses touch with reality due to dementia. With it, the celebrated French author Florian Zeller adapted his own play, the part of a trilogy is. The second film was The Son, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Maybe The Mother will follow at some point.

Check out the trailer for The Son starring Hugh Jackman:

Hugh Jackman plays Peter, the father of teenager Nicholas (Zen McGrath). Years ago Peter left his wife Kate (Laura Dern) and their son to start a new life with Beth (Vanessa Kirby). Both now have a young son and live in a stylish New York loft branded with stainless steel doors and brick walls. Peter is about to make his dream come true as a campaign manager. Ex-wife Kate reports worried: Nicholas hasn’t been to school for a month and she doesn’t get along with him otherwise. So the boy moves into the loft with Peter, Beth and baby Theo. But there is no improvement.

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Teenager Nicholas struggles to express what’s bothering him. In conversations with his mother and father, however, he still manages to formulate clear warning signals: he wonders whether he was made for this life. He speaks of an inexplicable burden and repeatedly mentions a pain he wishes to channel through self-harm. Father Peter, however, first talks the problems up (this is only a phase) and then meets them with an impotent “Why?”.

The drama stars Wolverine star Hugh Jackman in a heartbreaking role

This impotence of the parents is staged extremely realistically and therefore makes all the more angry. In these phases, Zeller’s film comes across as extremely lifelike and carefully observed, without pillorying the helpless parents. After all, “Pull yourself together” is part of the standard response to mental illness. Nicholas’ new old life with his father is one disaster of inactionwhich gets a little tougher with almost every conversation.

The fact that ex-superhero Hugh Jackman plays this father is therefore a clever casting coup. Peter, the charismatic achiever who gets everything, despairs of his own child. Heartbreakingly, Jackman stars as Peter. You don’t see him in any other film as vulnerable as in The Son.

It is therefore all the more regrettable how Zeller exploits the boy’s illness in the course of the film. In one of the most terrifying scenes of the year, a possible suicide attempt is staged like a bomb under the table. Alfred Hitchcock used this picture to explain the principle of suspense. The audience knows about the fuel, the people at the table don’t.

In the completely miscalculated suspense production of The Son, Nicholas degenerates into a bomb. His suffering is trivialized and teased for shock like a jump scare in a horror movie. This also makes you angry, but for the wrong reasons.