Reviews

This is an excellent movie...

The running theme was about the damage to lives that pride and hardheadedness can create, and that so many bad consequences result when you break up a family. The only honest person in the film was the daughter, aware of the truth, connected to her heart and honest about what she really wanted which would have been the best for everyone. The family together. The wife Sirin demanded divorce to go abroad, so divorced the husband, but ended up living down the road anyway. She had nothing against her husband, she was hurt that he didn't ask her to stay. So she didn't really need to leave the house, but did so out of pride and stubbornness. The husband Nader, was too proud to ask her back. He was too hard headed to ask the pregnant helper woman why she left the house and his father alone. He would not listen when she insisted that she did not take the money. She didn't steal it, so he pushed her for no reason... the money was used by the wife before she moved out to pay the piano movers! All the circumstances that led to unnecessary consequences were based in issues of pride and hard headedness, and carried a message that people need to be honest, and share what is in their heart and keep the family together... This movie was full of subtle communication and a very sweet connection between the father and his daughter. He was hard with everyone except her. He was willing to go to jail if she wanted him to confess... they had a beautiful honest respect. Lovely, amazing movie.

She is the wife of a rich industrialist in Milan who met her in Russia... she organizes dinner parties, but retires early, not so into the old family scene... I was disgusted with the trope of the family elder retiring and leaving the business to his son and grandson as a pronouncement that is handed down and obeyed. Boring. She is a great cook and appreciates food, and when Antonio, her son's chef friend, makes her prawns in his restaurant, she has a spiritual experience, and then she follows him to a town where his farm is, and he runs into her, and he takes her to the farm, and they kiss... then when all the family is out of town, she goes with him to the farm again for some days and they make love and cook and talk about her past. He asks about her life before coming to Italy. Is this supposed to show us he really cares for her? That doesn't convince me....

They bathe in nature, a stunning contrast to the earlier wide shots of the interiors of the rich family homes full of antiques, high ceilings and a lot of art on the walls. She goes from a stifling interior life in a rich family where she is in a certain station with a certain role, to running out of that life in the end, barefoot (she wore heels through the movie til then, usually) in a track suit.

I felt some disgust at her timing when she decides to leave the family home to be with Antonio... and the lack of mourning for her son who died when he hit his head retracting from her after he found out about her affair with Antonio. In that moment, he would not let her speak (oh brother - a super cheap trick to create tension).

Anyway, at the end, her son dies, she finds out and is just frozen, not crumpling on the floor in absolute loss and pain. I wondered if he was adopted? She loved him, I thought! And then next day she is still frozen, obsessed with running away. She was frozen when Antonio took her clothes off the first time. A bit inanimate. So next day when her other children are together mourning after the burial, she runs away. What? You abandon your children when they just lost the sweet emotional faithful brother? Her daughter the lesbian, gave her eye contact understanding and permission to walk out as she stood barefoot in the hallway. The husband had already told her, 'you don't exist' when she confessed in the cemetery that she loved Antonio.

I saw her as a love addict, not in love. These 2 lovers didn't know each other at all... and we didn't get to know them. They were 2 mystery characters attracted by the senses of food and sex and it seems like a connection that will fade easily because it's really a connection that carries her out of her frozen state to a more alive state of self determination... not a case of a strong bond with Antonio. And of course that is, in itself pretty awesome. I just wish we had more insight into Antonio and her in their personal journeys beyond food and sex chemistry.

James White, in his mid 20s. A guy in NY in pain over absent dad's death and meeting the Dad's new wife for the first time at the wake. He was excluded from the Dad's life; didn't know he had remarried! this angered him... he had a lot of anger inside. The dad had left when he was 5 or 6. He and his mom did not speak about the Dad. He carried abandonment, pain, anger around with him. He had a close friend and they went to bars, got in fights, and picked up dates together. In one scene they rented a hotel room with 2 beds and slept with the 2 people they met the night before. He was close to his mother. She was fun and accepting and she let his friends hang around and they got to know her too. But he was wanting space. He wanted a trip away in Mexico and he went and enjoyed his own space. The mom helped him go on that trip. But she wanted him to get a job, and she wanted him to write. He wanted to party with drinking and drugs. He was confused and in pain. We see how hard the mother pulled on him to be there for her. She seemed to ask a bit too much of him, expecting him to serve her and be there when she needed him. He felt smothered. He struggled with wounds around his absent dad and feeling smothered by Mom. So a detached father and overly attached mother made for a confused son that couldn't find his own ground and what he actually wants. When she starts the process of dying, he puts all his energy into being with her and puts his whole life aside. He isn't connecting to his own flow of life, but staying lost in his mother's flow, as she is needing him so much in her process of dying... and he really shows up for her, being an adult in that role for her... And when she is gone, he is not sure what to do now. She was his main reason for living... that codependence did not teach him what he could create for himself. So he is left with that empty space between feeling abandoned by Dad and being so needed by Mom and both are gone now. Where does he fit in that and how does he discover himself in the huge space he has left with no rails or guides?

So many times in this movie, I thought, What? that doesn't make sense... In1914, this Armenian woman would not be so familiar with a man she just met. And a super poor old couple gifts him their donkey? doubt it.. And when they were attacked in the streets after the church singing they were invited to take refuge in a hotel. Wouldn't they ask the people in the lobby what the heck was going on? The whole town had suddenly burst into fighting while they were in church!! But they just stole away up into their room without any questions or discussion they were joking and smiling. What? But mostly the dialogue was so flat with a purpose to just push the plot forward, or it was nonexistent. And I didn't see the attraction building between the 2 lovers; they just suddenly were in love after very few encounters that didn't seem too meaningful... it was a boring, nonexistent buildup and I had no empathy for their love story which is the funnest part of a romance. I love Christian Bale and he was great with his role of patient tolerant lover who was the one that developed most. His acting seemed a little cloying towards the orphans near the end of the movie... and why wouldn't he stay by his lover's side when they were being bombed?? What? A bit too many tropes and unrealistic human behaviors fill the movie. It was beautiful filming and an important story of the plight of Armenians I was grateful to learn about.

I watched the movie, "Beautiful Boy" about a teenager addicted to drugs. It was a hard movie for me to watch... seeing a father constantly communicating to the son what he was NOT doing, and how it did not make sense to the father. The father would not allow himself to connect for even a minute to the dark hole the son was sitting in to understand why the drug was so important to him.

The father, instead, focused on externalities, like the BEHAVIOR of the son, the SCIENCE of addiction, the PROGRAMS for treatment, but he would not allow himself to suspend his own mental world to be in the world of his son, and that was SO painful for me to watch.

I slid down in my seat and put my hands to my face... so uncomfortable. I am an addict myself, related to food and attention... not drugs... trauma in childhood was about being abandoned by both parents for a while, and then ignored by them after their own experienced traumas.

I was a bit triggered, and had trouble sleeping last night, having sorrow for all the children that are misunderstood by their parents who have a set of expectations for the child who they think they 'created.'

To me, a child is a spirit soul who has come through the parents with their own set of qualities and conditions. They are a flower that parents can nurture to bloom, and how they bloom is supposed to be a joyful process of discovery. Not a craft project.

I want parents to learn the skills and emotional intelligence needed to BE with their child in their own unique experience that may not be at all related to the parent's perception. It's the only thing I wished I had as a child.

I was starving for connection and understanding. Nic Sheff in this movie, was starving for understanding from his father, and Timothee Chalamet (who portrayed Nic) did the most incredible job of portraying the ultimate frustration of a child that only wanted to be received / accepted / understood in his dark puddle of intense existential pain.

When the father told the son, "I have done all I can do," I felt angry, because NO, he did not. He never suspended his world to just BE with his son in that dark, scary, horrible place when his son invited him there. The father 'researched' how addicts take drugs, and science of how it changes their brains, but he did not look at himself or how he was being with his son.

Timothee's character laughed in frustration, "Research??" To me this was a cry for, 'I just want understanding of ME as a person, in this place right now!' And he confronted him his dad with, "Well what are YOU doing?" and that was my question too! I saw the father avoiding what was going on with his son, not willing to really be with him... and not looking at himself but running away from truly being present for his son in the purely emotional plane.

Instead of researching the science and treatment of addiction, he would have better served by learning compassionate communication, how to just be present, and getting his own therapy to get a better look at his own blind spots in his life and in his relationships.

This movie opens up the most important conversation about disconnection and isolation that leads to addictive behavior, and I hope people see it and discuss these topics with a light shining on solutions for being open and vulnerable to be with others in their dark spaces with full acceptance and love.

I think there is DEFINITELY a sequel to this movie in how the family moves into a space of creating more connection with vulnerable communication and self-reflection... and taking a look at the trauma that Nic Sheff experienced as a young child when his parents split and moved apart... what did that abandonment experience create for that child, when his mother was so far away?

#addiction #beautifulboy #timotheechalamet #nicsheff #empathy #communication #vulnerability