Review: Timothée Chalamet Gives Another Star Turn in Beautiful Boy

Beautiful Boy moves slowly, heavy with despondent gloom, full of dread and regret. But the somber mass of the film, directed by Felix Van Groeningen and out in New York and Los Angeles on October 12, eventually gathers into a fine and piercing point. A drama, based on two memoirs about a young man in the intense grip of drug addiction while his family tends to him helplessly, Beautiful Boy is a bit of a wallow. But it needs to be, in order to so vividly capture the grinding realities of addiction.

The film comes at a fraught time in Americas drug narrative, with the opioid crisis waking up wealthier white people to the human side of a narcotic plague now that its lapped up on their shores. In that way, the stammering, frustrated disbelief shown by David Sheff (Steve Carell) as his beloved, troubled son, Nic (Timothée Chalamet), starts slipping into addiction (his drug of choice is meth) may be, well, frustrating to some people: oh, now it matters, now that the son of a wealthy white writer living in a gorgeous home in Marin County is the one afflicted?

Which is a reasonable complaint. The bitter difference in how drug addiction and policy are spoken about now versus the dialogue during the tough-on-drugs crack years is appalling. And Beautiful Boy could neatly stand as an emblem of that injustice. But in all its personal detail, Beautiful Boy—based on separate books by David and Nic—avoids becoming a privilege-blind hand-wringing. The Sheffs are real and, at least in Chalamets hands, entirely tangible people. Yes, it is grimly unsurprising that theirs is the story that gets told so sensitively, but that sensitivity is still of some value.

What works best about Van Groeningens deliberate film (he co-wrote the script with Luke Davies) is the expanse he gives himself to tell the story. The movie is just two hours, but it feels much longer (in a good way), tracing, in looping chronology, Nics triumphs and setbacks, and Davids earnest, overly optimistic, impatient attempts to fix him. (Amy Ryan and Maura Tierney, both strong as Nics mother and step-mother, are there to help, too.) The film is solemnly aware of how complex and tenuous recovery can be, and is thus instructively wary of offering up any of simple solutions or definitive ends. In following its story past the expected Hollywood closure, Beautiful Boy arrives at a sorrowful honesty, a tentative hope ringed with a resigned sort of fear.

In odd, but not unsuccessful, contrast to that grave disposition is Van Groeningens ample aesthetic. He fills Beautiful Boy with light; he stages slo-mo montages that bring to mind Xavier Dolan at his most flowery. And his music choices—everything from Perry Comos version of “Sunrise, Sunset” to a snippet of Góreckis Symphony No. 3—are bold and, it must be said, a little bonkers. Its almost distracting, but Van Groeningen maintains steady control of his golden, lachrymose world. Out of all that borderline turgid style he manages to build something modest, a lovely and sympathetic home for the particular story hes been entrusted with.

Offsetting that strange harmony is Carell, doing his noble best to tamp down the innate Michael Scott–ness of voice and bearing. He comes close, delivering his most credible dramatic performance to date. But, ack, there is still something inherently goofy about his tone and delivery, especially at heightened moments when David is frantic and spinning out. Its just hard to take him this seriously. Its a design of the film that David is, at first, so stubbornly “not my son” when early warning signs arrive, a sort of snobbish bluster that the film has interrogated some by the end. But in Carells hands, that mixture of pain and fussiness is maybe too acutely rendered—he takes us past seeing Davids ignorance and self-importance and turns him into kind of a dope.

Carells best moments in the film—particularly one aching scene set in a diner—come when hes with Chalamet, who gives a radiant, preternaturally wise performance. The loose but confident command of craft that Chalamet showed in Miss Stevens and Call Me by Your Name is here further deepened and clarified. He thoroughly embodies a young man ailing in so many imperceptible ways, whose hurt is both concrete object and utter mystery. In the rare good times, when Nic is clean and has re-united with his increasingly cautious family, Chalamet still keeps us cognizant of a constant itch, a dark charge within Nic that can take over at any second.

Which isnt meant to anthropomorphize addiction, or to shroud it in some sort of sinister mystique. In Van Groeningen and Chalamets careful portraiture, Nic is decidedly human, and his illness (or illnesses) are treated with the measured frankness theyre owed. The actual source of what pushes Nic to destructive behavior may not be distinctly known, something to be found and rooted out, but Beautiful Boy still finds a crucial specificity in his struggle to tread water.

Davids long trek toward actually seeing his son—toward recognizing Nics problems as part of the fullness of his being—is also the journey of the film. Trite as it may sound, we gradually accept that the beautiful boy of the title is not some innocent child, lost to the past, but rather the real and imperfect young man hunched before us. Its Chalamets great accomplishment, and the films, that we feel that so keenly.

Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Richard LawsonRichard Lawson is the chief critic for Vanity Fair, reviewing film, television, and theatre. He lives in New York City.