The Son; Nicholas Nickleby

Nicholas Nickleby Directed by Douglas McGrath

So few movies are made from ethical practice that Belgium’s Dardenne brothers had to structure their latest film, The Son, as a mystery. That’s how far we’ve gotten from appreciating the human condition at the movies—even Euro-esthetes have to trick it up to be taken seriously. In The Son, Olivier (Olivier Gourmet) is a vocational-training instructor who displays an intense interest in teenage Francis (Morgan Marinne), a new student just arriving from a detention home. The way Olivier stalks Francis or keeps a sharper eye on him than on the other boys is not mystifying for Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne; it’s merely a marvel of human behavior that they initially present as a conundrum. By its end, The Son explores the toughest moral dilemma onscreen since Minority Report. Recall the shock on Tom Cruise’s face when he said, "I will kill this man!" It’s the same realization Olivier goes through—and fights—when meeting the boy who killed his son. The Dardennes simply restate Cruise’s caution as "I will save this boy!" The Son becomes an art-movie alarm for filmgoers who forget that expressing humanism is the greatest thing movies can do.

This unsentimental double character study means to combat years of accumulated frivolous movie-watching in order to win back the purity of human interaction. It’s ironic that the very different Dardenne brothers should prove to be Spielberg’s allies. Having first made documentaries, the Dardennes employ an emphatic rigor in their storytelling that will shake up even those people who want humanism scrubbed of glamour. Unsentimental, the Dardennes use a style that is almost off-puttingly brusque and opaque. The lighting is verite harsh; the compositions—mostly back-of-the-head shots, oblique angles on rooms and cramped views of cold, desolate city streets—are off-putting. But steadily, Olivier’s private determination and Francis’ remote introspection take hold. The familiarity of their emotional states—a battle of generational temperaments that implies the changed social conditioning of different eras—makes the film uniquely compelling. The Son turns suspicion of the older man’s motives against our expectations, against mawkishness and cynicism.

Sure enough, the Dardennes achieve pure fascination (and some irritation). While their preceding films La Promesse (1996) and Rosetta (1999) worked largely as political treatments—respectively exposing modern Europe’s problems with immigration and downsized employment—The Son details the personal impact of an apparently worldwide social horror: the aftereffect of a child’s death on his family and on the killer. Olivier’s marriage has fallen apart and no legal remedy has resolved his or his ex-wife’s unease. The Dardennes rekindle their distress asking, What do you do when confronted with a killer’s essential innocence?

An entire spiritually deranged world is implied by that question. The nightmare of bewildered adults, ruthless youth and general moral chaos can be felt in the Dardennes’ fragmented compositions as much as in Minority Report’s dystopian set design that pointed up the justice system’s futility. Thus, Olivier’s unarticulated motives loom large. Watching young Francis with strangely parental care, this grieving father’s concentration borders on providence. It sprouts an eerie protectiveness over the sullen kid that may well be Olivier’s only means of keeping sane—it’s almost certainly an expression of the Dardennes’ own political prescription. Their social view has developed even beyond the startlingly fine Rosetta. The Dardennes presume there’s an audience anxious to investigate human phenomena, ready to take social understanding past the banal representation of "social problems."

The Dardennes don’t abuse our despair over disaffected kids and the indifference they’ve inherited from a violent, heartless culture. Through Olivier and Francis The Son presents both sides’ shared isolation—their unspoken tension becomes a shy game of withdrawal and longing. This creates a different kind of suspense from such "gritty" films as Kids, Training Day or Narc. As you scrutinize the Dardennes’ documentary approach—waiting to spot a false move, wondering how far they will take the mysterious bond between Olivier and Francis—this hypothetical father and son turns into a prospectus of where we can go as humans. The effect is almost transcendental.

This comes from the Dardennes’ distrust of the sentiment that flows from the human face; that’s why they frame it so obtrusively in one-quarter profiles, behind Olivier’s thick-lensed eyeglasses, or in Francis’ truculent stare. Drama occurs in the way viewers reflect upon these two people, not simply in what is acted out on the screen. Its style is the exact opposite of the "father-son" communication between Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks in Catch Me If You Can but only a fool would think the humorless Dardenne method is superior. What’s important to realize is that the insight is the same, though rare. (That’s why Hanks’ look of astonishment is as miraculous as the chameleonic Olivier Gourmet’s.)

When Olivier teaches Francis to notice the different grains in a wooden board (like Hanratty rerouting Abagnale’s instincts), he is teaching him what he knows about the world. To provide the boy with a skill is to give him a handle on life. The Dardennes make this generosity plainer than Spielberg does, but as with a Spielberg film, you must work to perceive it. Where Olivier’s benevolence comes from is the film’s ultimate mystery. Olivier’s position as a carpenter (he has access to a mill and lumber, the means of production) allows him to do the work that a beneficent, forgiving society should but seldom does these days.

Is Olivier’s act of forgiveness Christian or just extraordinarily humane? The Dardennes’ unemotional style makes you wonder. From its title, The Son suggests Christian allegory but it avoids simple (or obvious) compassion. This may be exactly what contemporary intellectuals, atheists and agnostics prefer; purging movies of all mannerisms that suggest piety (or decadence). I admire The Son greatly, but I am also against the too-easy suggestion that this represents a better method than more richly crafted movies. It’s mere political snobbery to ignore that the Dardennes’ verite technique is also an artifice. And it’s cultural snobbery to pretend Olivier’s transforming struggle with vengeance is greater than the key moments in Minority Report. Spielberg imaginatively illustrates the scope of human behavior, the Dardennes are astute observers of human reticence—the two most ethical movie visions available today. When Francis says he only regrets the five years he spent locked up, his lack of remorse is believable and pitiable. It’s just not in this kid whose pale face with a slight flush to his cheeks personifies the closed-down youth of our modern world. And we swallow that tragic awareness as does Olivier. The Dardennes get away with being harsh and opaque because that style works for them—in mysterious ways. Their climax has no piety, just beauty.

Starting with one of last year’s great cinematic tropes—Nicholas and family arriving destitute in London with the camera fatally swooping down on them then tilting up to show gray smoke stacks rising above them, dwarfing their significance—Douglas McGrath’s Nicholas Nickleby becomes one of the best Charles Dickens adaptations since David Lean set the standard. Though far from Lean’s greatness, McGrath knows Dickens was a fount of low and high social art (he’s referenced in Antwone Fisher and The Color Purple). This film emphasizes Dicken’s reformist zeal without sacrificing his fictional ingenuity or his ethical integrity. Dickens understood the worldly oppression that is connected to oppression of the heart—so his melodrama is as piercing as the Dardennes’ realism.

With photographer Dick Pope (by way of Mike Leigh), McGrath brings insight to every shot. Charlie Hunnam plays the angelic hero who overcomes all social obstacles in 19th-century London. Blond, blue-eyed, with full red lips and a dashing mole (as good as a dimple), Hunnam’s Nicholas is so pretty and valiant he seems a put-on. Yet he grants this film a magical, silent-movie purity. Dickens provides the power with a story that reveals how a sense of security is dependent on work and money. Nicholas vows to "live with dignity" against greed, envy, arrogance. McGrath’s humor and clarity save him. An epigraph, "Tragedy is the only promise life gives thus happiness is a gift, delight in it," is McGrath’s motto and he provides delight through the pleasures of intricate but never pompous narrative.