Pulling from moments exposed in Nic Sheff’s memoir “Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines” and carefully stitching them together with recollections from his father, David Sheff’s, own memoir “Beautiful Boy,” director Felix van Groeningen and lead actors Steve Carell and Timothee Chalamet bring to life an all too familiar vignette of America’s crippling opioid addiction.
Memories are rarely reflected in linear timelines and are seemingly provoked by sensory triggers unique to each person — these can come in the form of objects, smells and locations. This is the framework which “Beautiful Boy” is built on.
The first half of the film is composed of fragmented memories between David Sheff, portrayed by Steve Carell, and younger forms of his son Nic in a montage-esque fashion. This serves as brief intermissions between the meat of the film’s most crucial segments, the one-on-one moments and dialog between Carell and Chalamet, who takes on the role of a grown Nic Sheff.
As the film progresses the tight knit relationship between David and Nic slowly deteriorates as Nic falls for his love and eventual need of all drugs, especially heroin and meth. As Nic’s self-destructive spiral into drug addiction happens, David’s own personal life with his new wife Karen, played by Maura Tierney, is strained by his own addiction, his obsession with his son’s life.
It’s hard to separate Steve Carell from his long-term role as Michael Scott in the hit show “The Office, and Timothee’s recent role as Elio in the emotion rollercoaster of a film “Call Me by Your Name,” but as the film moves along it’s impossible to ignore the absolute chemistry the two actors develop with one another as they shed any previous masks they might have dawned in their acting careers.
Having read both “Beautiful Boy” and “Tweak” the film admittedly leaves out massive portions of each novel that could’ve added to character development, but with cinema that’s often the case.
What Groeningen delivers, though, is an impactful story that’s much larger than the chaos drug addiction delivers on to the Sheff family, but it’s a story of over 21.5 million Americans who every year suffer from addiction — which in many cases comes from genetics that are unknown until it’s too late.
What the film “Beautiful Boy” does best is vividly depict the effect of both sides of drug addiction. The toll it takes on the user and the toll it takes on the family and friends of the user.
The hardship of watching Nic inject poison into his body is equally as difficult to watch as watching his father and step mother come to terms with the fact that they did not cause his addiction. It’s a universal feeling many parents of addicts go through, the “what ifs” of the way they raised their kids.
What if they could have done better to warn their kids about drugs, what if it was the way they raised their kids that drove them to drugs or what if it was in the smallest of moments that at the time they didn’t think over that caused their children’s addiction.
As Nic struggles to become sober David and Karen struggle to accept the three C’s of Al-Anon, which is a help group for the people outside of drug addiction, “We didn’t cause it,” “We can’t control it” and “We can’t cure it.” For David and Karen, it’s a visibly hard pill to swallow to let the self-blame and guilt fall away, almost as hard as it is for Nic to shed his addiction to meth.
In the end, to watch this enthralling story told by such gifted actors is a privilege. As someone whose family has never been tainted by addiction, the final scene of Nic and David sitting silently at a rehabilitation center and watching Nic slowly crumple inward on himself with what can only be shame, sadness and pain served as but a brief glimpse into the grief millions of people face each waking day.
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Resourses:
- Al-Anon Family Groups of South Carolina
- American Addiction Centers
Colton Newman is the photo editor for the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted by email at photoeditor@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @Coltonperson.
