Beautiful Boy is the greatest all-round Oscar snub this year, with Chalamet, Carell and the script especially deserving of recognition

By Daisy Game, First Year, English

Amazon’s latest biopic has not received the critical praise it may have anticipated. Snubbed by the Academy and received with lukewarm praise by the papers, might Beautiful Boy have made more friends if it had been willing to make stronger enemies?

One element of the adaptation to have come under particularly heavy fire is its constant twitching between the past and the present. We watch as Nic convulses from boy to man to boy and back again. For some, this only served to frustrate, rendering the narrative a disorientating, tiresome chase. But for me, this shuddering structure proved one of the film’s most insightful moves.

Addiction cannot be neatly diced into start, middle and end; it is a disease for which ‘middle’ cannot be distinguished from ‘start’, and ‘end’ may very well be the beginning. ‘I look at him – this kid that I raised – and I wonder who he is,’ David tells us with disturbing resignation in the film’s opening minutes. When Nic walks down the stairs today, who might he be? When, exactly, are we? So – this odd, dizzy storytelling? It’s perfect.

London Film Festival / Beautiful Boy

The relationship between Nic and David is fostered with the utmost care by both Timothée Chalamet and Steve Carell. Chalamet viciously snaps Nic from soft big brother to violent stranger, the gentleness with which he plays Nic’s good days making the inevitable return to illness all the more unsettling. Chalamet’s talent is one which should be coated in bubble wrap and submerged in Styrofoam peanuts. Remaining steadfast against the headwind of praise whirling about him is a feat I can only hope the 2017 Oscar nominee is strong enough to carry through. Perhaps, bitter as his fans might be, his obvious snub by the Academy this year will do him a favour.

Carell’s is a quieter achievement. Aching always, he carries David with an apprehensive tightness, and sense of detachment from anything which doesn’t concern his son’s recovery. It is a desperate thing, watching this father trying to fix his little boy. ‘I just want to know. What is it doing to him? What can I do to help him?’ David asks, convinced that information must be the answer. If it is understood, it can be reversed. But children become adults, and sons become people. People cannot be fixed by understanding alone.

It is in its small, quiet moments that Beautiful Boy truly proves its worth. Luke Davies’ script is wonderfully modest, allowing its actors to show, not tell, the Sheffs’ story. ‘You’re still the same old Nic,’ Jasper informs his big brother whilst burrowing into a mess of sand on a family trip to the beach. Of course, Nic is the same. He loves his siblings just as he always has and, in some squeaky-clean world, this is the life a young man might lead. Family; college; the beach.

But in darker ways also, Nic remains unchanged. ‘Is Nic on drugs again?’ Jasper later asks David in the school car park. This little person pottering along besides his Daddy on the way to the swimming pool, all golden and curly haired. What an awful question for a person so small to be capable of asking. Addiction is not an isolated disease, and the shattering effect Nic’s real life illness had on the Sheff family is beautifully observed throughout the film.

Despite Beautiful Boy’s brilliant observations concerning the impact of addiction on others, its portrayal of the individual’s experience arguably remains a little soft; the filter used too warm and glossy. Sat in the cinema, I was surprised to see the 15 rating flash up. Davies’ decision to exclude details of Nic’s prostitution, or how he almost lost his arm following the infection of a needle wound, ultimately rendered the film somewhat incomplete.

Might this adaptation have done better had it been brave enough to reach for the 18 certificate? A willingness to exclude a few more people, whilst further horrifying an older audience with these lost details, may have allowed it a sharper layer of grit.

This is an important film. The performances are devastating, the direction smart. The manner in which it addresses the reality of addiction might not be quite harsh enough, but it effectively delivers the facts we need to know. Under ten percent of rehabilitations following methamphetamine addiction are deemed successful. Recovery from the substance is within the single digits. Overdosing is now the leading cause of death in Americans under the age of 50.

We can only hope Beautiful Boy’s invitation to the Oscars got lost in the post.

Beautiful Boy is available to watch on Amazon Prime.

Featured Image Credit: IMDb / Beautiful Boy / Amazon Studios

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