
The kinetic opening sequence of ‘Honey Boy’ is an adrenaline rush and an undeniable hook into the remembered life of a child actor for whom fiction and reality have become intertwined. Based on a confessional screenplay written by Shia LaBoeuf, the film tells the harrowing yet tender tale of his own abusive father, played courageously by the actor himself. This is a potential landmine for overwrought sentimentality, but the self-aware writing is nuanced and director Alma Har’el skillfully avoids most Hollywood clichés to arrive at a telling that feels straight from the heart.
Lucas Hedges plays the adult version of the actor, grappling with his mental health in rehab following a car accident and a diagnosis of PTSD. Hedges is competent as a raging actor with no time for the platitudes of therapists: he scoffs at pool sessions in which participants are asked to hug themselves and attempts to fake his own recovery in a bid to get out sooner. While the actor is thus spending his days in denial, he is visited at night by traumatic memories of his childhood bursting their way to the surface.
Much of the screen time is thus taken up by Noah Jupe, who plays the 12-year old child actor and gives the most inspired child performance I have seen in years. He channels both the love and hatred he has for his father—the need to protect him yet stand up for himself—in every scene. We see a nascent acting talent honing itself for onscreen roles but even offscreen—acting is after all, a way to shield oneself from harsh reality. LaBoeuf playing his father appears almost comical in the beginning, with his mullet and beer belly, but the actor deftly avoids becoming a caricature, giving us a tempestuous man unable to control his rage but also revealing a deep love for the child underneath it all.
The grainy cinematography pictures LA and Hollywood not as a place of glam and glitz but of superficiality and drudgery. The dialogues are heartfelt but matter-of-fact, full of the expletives that one would normally be shocked at hearing from such a young actor, until we realize that this too is his world, an inescapable reality.
Above all, though, the film is a terrific and precise detailing of the process of recovering from PTSD: moving from denial to rage to grieving to forgiveness. The framing of this confessional as therapy and interspersing the narrative with his father’s tearful confessions at his Alcoholics Anonymous meetings brings home the intergenerational nature of trauma and alcoholism. By the end, we realize that playing his own father is not a gimmick but the last stage in this real-life process: embodying the one who hurt you is an exercise in extreme empathy.
Onscreen the young actor in rehab says “pain is the only thing of value my father has given me, and you are asking me to throw it away?” 'Honey Boy' honours the fact that we can never run away from our pain, while also showing us how we can sublimate it into art that has universal resonance. Catharsis has never been so engaging, and much as I tried to resist, I was moved to tears by the end.
Genre: Drama
Language: English
Runtime: 1h 34min
Year of release: 2019
Streaming Platform: Amazon Prime Video
Hot take is a series in which I offer my first impressions of films from India and around the world.
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