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Beautiful Boy — The Crushing Weight of Great Expectations
Imposter Syndrome in Felix de Groeningen’s Beautiful Boy?
When addiction is depicted in the arts, it’s often accompanied by an unstable home environment, bullying, abuse, or just simply an insufficiency of love. I say simply, though it most certainly isn’t. So many tender souls are lost in the absence of much deserved, much needed love and care.
Beautiful Boy is an addiction movie that turns that on its head. Felix van Groeningen’s 2018 masterful film follows the intricate relationship of a father and son wracked and torn apart by addiction.
“Do you know how much I love you? If you could take all the words in the language, it still wouldn’t describe how much I love you. And if you could gather all those words together, it still wouldn’t describe what I feel for you. What I feel for you is everything. I love you more than everything.”
Often, when we hear tales of young people in messed up situations, we rapidly seek to pin the blame on the parent. Oh, there must have been something there that pushed this fragile young person off the ledge. We imagine, even though of course we can not know or comprehend the subtleties of that one family’s particular situation.
