npr: What if you were trapped in the middle of a traditional addiction narrative forever?In a tradit
npr: What if you were trapped in the middle of a traditional addiction narrative forever?In a traditional fictional addiction narrative, the person with the addiction begins the story able to coexist with it, if indeed it even has emerged. The addiction deepens, loved ones discover it and there is a single lowest point. Then there is a surrender by the person suffering and a willingness to get help. Or, sometimes, there is not, or there is another fall and then there is death.But the new film Beautiful Boy, based on the memoirs of journalist David Sheff and his son, Nic, follows a different path — almost a path without a path. What it is about, what it is concerned with, is not the way addiction is lived through, but the way addiction is lived beside, by the person suffering and by the family.Steve Carell plays David, a loving father we meet as he searches for Nic, whose battles with drugs — crystal meth in particular — already have been an issue for some time. Nic, played with both charm and a maddening slipperiness by Timothée Chalamet, comes and goes from the house, terrifying his father and stepmother Karen (the reliably terrific Maura Tierney) and complicating their parenting of Nic’s younger brother and sister. Director Felix Van Groeningen assembles the film in a way that recalls Jean-Marc Vallée’s work on films such as Wild and TV projects such as Sharp Objects: Memory is nonlinear, so the story is too.Addiction Without An Ending In ‘Beautiful Boy’Photo: Francois Duhamel/Amazon Studios -- source link