[This piece was originally written for the newsletter of First Presbyterian Church of Del Ray.]
It shouldn’t—it couldn’t—have happened to them. They might not have been wealthy, but they were well off. The father was a writer, one of the few who could afford a comfortable living off his work with a book here, a Rolling Stones article there. They had a beautiful house on the California coast, far removed from the scuzzy streets and slums of nearby San Francisco. Theirs was a cozy life of books, music, and finger paints floating through an endless Indian summer; in short, the perfect environment to raise healthy, happy children. They were affluent, intelligent, loving, and to put an uncomfortable point to it, white. So why, then, was their eldest son, their precious Nic Sheff—aspiring writer and artist, lover of F. Scott Fitzgerald and David Bowie, teenage prodigy accepted to six colleges—found in an alley with a needle in his arm?
This incredulity lurks at the heart of Felix Van Groeningen’s astonishing Beautiful Boy, an adaption of David Sheff’s real-life memoir Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction. There have been many incredible films about addiction, but few have ever turned such a knowing gaze towards not just the addict, but the people who love them, specifically the emotional and psychological toll of caring for somebody they know they can’t truly help. In fact, the addicted son Nic, brilliantly played by Timothée Chalamet, is merely a supporting character, drifting in and out of the film, stealing the POV for maybe 5-10 minutes at a time before returning it to the actual protagonist, his father David. If Chalamet dazzles with his portrayal of a self-loathing addict, then Steve Carrell gives the performance of his career as a father perpetually cycling through the five stages of grief. We see his initial denial when he interrogates his son after he goes missing for two days and returns withdrawn and shivering. We see his anger as he explodes at Nic for being stupid, his ex-wife in Los Angeles for not being present in his life, at himself for not being a better father. We see him bargaining with his son, agreeing to pay for his college if he attends a detox clinic and spends half a year in a halfway house. We see his depression as Nic relapses and OD’s again and again, breaking promise after promise. And finally, tragically, horrifically, we see his acceptance that he will never cure Nic and that the son, the beautiful boy he held in his arms as a newborn and raised to manhood with his own two hands, may have been dead this entire time.
Noted film critic Matt Zoller Seitz commented that the film Beautiful Boy reminded him of the most was William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), as both center on parents struggling to save a child who seems possessed by evil forces, and indeed it’s easy to see otherworldly, supernatural horror in David’s eyes as Nic melts into a demonic gargoyle of hatred whenever he refuses to lend him money or demands he clean himself up. But in writing his memoir, David Sheff realized was that addiction does more than turn addicts into monsters, it strips the humanity from their support group as well. In one of the most telling scenes in the movie, a tearful Nic calls his dad and asks if he can come home for the umpteenth time after robbing their house for drug money and watching a friend overdose in an alley. An exhausted David gives him a flat, dead-eyed no. He can’t take it anymore. He’s not strong enough to survive watching his son kill himself and betray his family again.
Miraculously, in real life Nic survived his ordeal and has been sober for several years, even writing his own memoir from which Van Groeningen borrowed heavily. But let’s not kid ourselves—as residents of one of the national epicenters of the opioid crisis, we know the day-to-day reality of living with and around addicts and that the success rate for recovery is miniscule. The catharsis in Beautiful Boy, then, comes less from the triumph of Nic’s recovery (which is in fact largely glossed over at the end), and more in recognition of the emotional exhaustion addiction leaves behind on bystanders. Knowing and loving an addict is difficult, superhuman work. But you don’t have to do it alone.
Consider one of the many scenes in the film where David attends an An-Anon meeting with Nic. Hanging above the empty auditorium is a banner emphasizing the three C’s of recovery: you didn’t CAUSE it, you can’t CONTROL it, and you can’t CURE it. The key is understanding that the banner speaks for both patient and sponsors alike. It’s not your fault. It’s not their fault. Remember: acceptance is the first step in recovery.
