THE STORY – A wildly successful but aging author summons his two estranged children to make a startling announcement.
THE CAST – Bill Nighy, Noah Jupe, George MacKay, Johnny Flynn, Dominic West & Imelda Staunton
THE TEAM – Pablo Trapero (Director/Writer) & Sarah Polley (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 119 Minutes
The familiar story of the troubled successful artist who neglects his family is well-trodden in cinema and art. But for Pablo Trapero’s latest film “& Sons,” adapted from the David Gilbert novel of the same name, there’s a twist that adds a complex and intriguing layer of depth to the analysis of love and self that usually accompanies these tales. And while these topics are criminally under-explored in the film, strong acting by an ensemble cast together with the thought-provoking premise make it enough to be worth enduring yet another film exploring a familiar topic.
The impenetrable auteur at the heart of Gilbert’s story is A.N. Dyer (Bill Nighy), one of the most beloved and most famous writers in the world, but one that is a stranger and, really, a jerk, to most of his family. He lives with his youngest son, Andy (Noah Jupe), and their housekeeper. Andy is nearly 20 but feels like he does not know his father at all, since the elder Dyer is usually cooped up in his luscious, old wood-laced writing studio, seclusive and reclusive other than to ask for a drink or spin some invective against someone. Andy, other than being a nice kid with a sunny disposition, resembles his father to a tee. Andy is shocked to find out that his father communicates, over email of all things, with his adoring fans. He gives that method a try, only to soon find out that the emails are being ghost written by his father’s agent. The point is, the elder Dyer is inaccessible.
He’s also old and dying, or so he feels. So much so that he summons his two estranged children (played by George MacKay and Johnny Flynn), who he had with his equally estranged wife (Imelda Staunton). The two were traumatized by the breakup of their parents’ marriage after 31 years, and it shows. The elder is five years sober, but cannot find a purpose of his own, attracting execs, including one played by a greasy Dominic West, interested in his screenplay writing talents only as a way to land a meeting with his father. Such is the level of pain that his father – the elder Dyer – has never met his sixteen-year-old son. The younger of the two – the middle child – copes with everything by filming everything, but he too has been unable to find purpose in life. Only the mother (a moving Imelda Staunton) appears to have moved on – but, she only appears this way.
After a somewhat methodical set up, the film delves into its principal plot twist: the elder Dyer makes a startling announcement to his two eldest sons, one that’s entirely fantastical and unbelievable (and convinces them that the old man is finally bonkers), but also deathly serious and shocking. Struggling with whether or not to even believe their father, the two, together with their mother, embark on a difficult journey to try to understand the incomprehensible man over the course of the next few days. The young Andy, meanwhile, continues to struggle with how similar and yet how different he feels to his father.
At the end of the proceedings lies the most awaited message: that each of us has autonomy, the power to escape our destiny and chart our own path. This is a beautiful and believable message for the younger Andy, but a bit harder to swallow for the two boys who were so viciously neglected and even emotionally abused. The book’s author and the film’s screenwriters surely did not intend this, but the implicit “they could have gotten over it” message that the autonomy morale of the story conveys is contrary to the film’s emotional epicenter, and sounds as if it was written by the icy Dyer himself.
So it is that while the film treads very-well trodden emotional territory, Trapero’s direction injects sly humor and a certain irreverence that keeps the story buoyant, while Polley’s adaptation skillfully balances moments of absurdity with genuine pain, refusing to let the film slip into melodrama. As the characters all founder repeatedly, Diego Trussel’s cinematography reflects the isolation and longing that haunts the Dyer family through lingering shots.
What sets “& Sons” apart from so many others (think, for example recently, “His Three Daughters“) is its willingness to confront the messiness of forgiveness and the futility of seeking closure from someone incapable of giving it, while adding a complex layer of the very meaning of self to complicate all these matters. The cast – especially Staunton and Jupe – deliver nuanced and visibly sincere performances that elevate the film, their complicated interactions filled with tension and fleeting moments of tenderness. Nighy is mostly okay, though the aging, bitter patriarch with a whip for a tongue has been seen too many times on screen, and Nighy is never able to leave his own mark on the character. The film’s central twist, both outrageous and plausible in its emotional logic, propels the fractured family toward a reckoning, yet leaves them – and the audience – wrestling with the sadness muddled with hope that the story offers.
“& Sons” then becomes something a bit more (if not a lot more) than just a tome on the effects of isolation and abandonment. It’s almost as if it’s a story about different kinds of survival. Physical survival, sure, but even more poignantly, about how each member of the Dyer family navigates the wreckage of a lifetime ruled by a brilliant yet distant patriarch, whether love can truly endure when hope has run dry, and what, after all, makes us who we are: the choices we make, or the nature we carry.
