“Beautiful Boy” is a movie telling a plain story. The few preview shots
already give a sketchy summary of what it is all about. In his interview by Los Angeles Times, David Sheff, a veteran journalist, relates his long struggle
to get Nic, his son, out of the abyss of misery into which he has fallen as a
result of his drug addiction. However, by no means is the movie weakly plotted.
Though without an interesting dramatic story to captivate the viewers with, the
movie serves well to draw attention to long established facts in relation to teen
drug abuse problems. And, to achieve this aim, the director has used very
impressive filming and editing techniques.
To show David’s repeated attempts at helping his son stop drug
taking, the editing uses a number of “jump-cuts”, in which a continuous shot is
suddenly broken and the image jumps to another background or even the same
background but at a different time. At one shot David is reporting the loss of his
son to the police and the next moment finds him talking with the latter at a
different scene. Similarly, Nic, who is the sweet innocent teenage boy, suddenly
becomes the drug addict that he has later turned out to be. This may be the director’s
intention to show the father’s unfailing love for his son since
his childhood. Hence, the temporal continuity of the scene is broken up from
time to time, sometimes even in a rather confused fashion.
Good sound effects are also used to keep the audience engaged
emotionally. Very heavy rock music accompanies the boy driving a car in a
heightened mood under the influence of a drug. Jazz music shows that the father
is high on meth when he tries its effect for the purpose of research. And there
are repeated multimusical beats getting louder and louder as the worried father
is waiting in the hospital for news about his son. There is dead silence when
the couple is watching their kids singing and dancing on stage, signifying David’s
obsession with Nic’s critical condition. In addition, the appropriate use of
canned music to punctuate a scene enhances the mood to be created. A few
classical songs such as “Sunrise, Sunset”, “Heart of Gold” are an occasional
welcome relief from the sadness of the family. And John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy”,
the theme song, is undoubtedly the most soothing piece. Sounds, on the whole,
are carefully constructed and manipulated with more satisfactory effects than
what dialogues could have achieved otherwise.
We are all aware of incessant efforts to raise public concern about the
serious harm done to the drug addicts and their families. And, in this aspect, “Beautiful
Boy” is doing a good job. And, viewers are advised to stay till the end of the closing
credits and be prepared for an amazing presentation.
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