We all grapple with both grief and guilt at some point in our lives, but few movies attempt to tackle the complex dynamic between those two emotional states as directly as Shawn Ku's Beautiful Boy.
Married couple Bill (Michael Sheen) and Kate (Maria Bello) find they have less and less to say to each other after their only child, Sammy (Kyle Gallner), leaves for his freshman year at college. Kate attempts to organize a family vacation to get things on the right path, but one afternoon she and Bill learn that there's been a mass shooting at Sammy's school. As the news reports slowly release more and more information, Kate grows increasingly concerned that Sammy hasn't answered his phone all day. When police officers appear at the family's door, Kate learns that her worst fear -- as well as a fear so awful she'd never even considered it -- has come true: Sammy has died, and he was the shooter responsible for nearly two dozen deaths.
Sheen and Bello are quite good at handling this emotionally difficult material. They vacillate between wailing in agony and trying to keep composure with an honesty that will be recognizable to anyone who has gone through the grieving process. On top of that, the marital spats that flair up between them have the flavor of a couple who had regrets well before they were ever forced to contend with unspeakable tragedy. Little actions, like the authority with which Kate cleans a dirty sink and the forceful forehand with which Bill repetitively smacks a tennis ball, offer telling glimpses into how these two people are close to exploding with emotions that they've kept hidden from each other for far too long.
That steady buildup eventually gets released in the film's final act, and when these two finally let out their resentments, frustrations, and anger it's a blistering confrontation. A discussion like this either ends or strengthens a marriage, and the drama in Beautiful Boy is much more about the toll a crumbling marriage takes on a husband and wife than it is about the psychological makeup of a spree killer.
Choosing the marriage as the focal point of the story turns out to be the film's best and worst aspect because as a portrait of two people headed for an inevitable, heartbreaking implosion where hurtful truths are finally said aloud, the movie has an unerring sensitivity. However, by using a mass killing as the impetus to get these two people to finally have the smoke-clearing fight they so desperately need, the movie bites off more than it can chew. The mammoth weight of Bill and Kate's misery leads the film down a road so dark that, even though the story resolves itself, we're left with little assurance of what will actually happen between these two people.
The final scene occurs about a month after the shootings, and the movie's biggest flaw is that it doesn't extend the timeline of the narrative out a little farther -- everything is still so raw between the two of them that it's hard to shake the feeling we're being shortchanged on the story. Ambiguity is normally a welcome aspect to drama, but in this case we've been through so much torment that we need to see how Bill and Kate have picked up the pieces of their lives -- either alone or together -- a few years removed from this tragic event.
There's much to respect about Beautiful Boy's admirably restrained yet still direct approach. It doesn't wallow in suffering, and it certainly doesn't make its lead characters out to be noble in their tragedy, but if the screenplay had taken a longer view of grief and guilt rather than minutely examining it, Beautiful Boy would have been a major statement. And while there's certainly no requirement that every serious drama must strive to be a grand summation about life, this particular story is rooted in enough real-life pain that Ku and company should have given it a try.