Beautiful Boy is a close-up study of a married couple working through an almost unimaginable catastrophe: their only son was the perpetrator of a college campus shooting in which more than a dozen students were killed, including the boy, who took his own life. The stress and pain of the even begins to wear on the parents’ marriage as they both progress through various emotional and psychological responses to the ordeal.
Starring Michael Sheen and Maria Bello, director Shawn Ku’s camera rarely takes its steady gaze off the lead protagonists’ faces, creating a claustrophobic experience of raw emotional energy. Hard to bear at times, Beautiful Boy succeeds at using an extreme situation to approach something more universally common: the way the actions of those we love affect our own meaning and purpose in life.
