by Mark Demetrius
Worth: $16.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Bill Nighy, Noah Jupe, George Mackay, Johnny Flynn, Imelda Staunton
Intro:
What might have amounted to mere melodrama — and it is undeniably over-the-top at times — is actually an involving and sometimes moving drama, its slow build-up vindicated by the subsequent dramatic impact.
& Sons is based on a novel by the ferociously intelligent author David Gilbert. Those adjectives could also be applied to Andrew Dyer (Bill Nighy), the fictional English novelist at the core of the story. Dyer is highly acclaimed and extremely successful in the career sense, though his personal life has been a train wreck — and that’s entirely his own fault. He’s living in palatial if higgledy-piggledy comfort but also abject alcoholic dissolution, supposedly hasn’t written anything in twenty years and is estranged from two of his three sons. One of them — Richard (Johnny Flynn) – lives in America. Now convinced that he’s about to die, Dyer “summons’” them (as Richard puts it) to his palatial residence.
So far so formulaic, or so one might presume. But what follows this premise is anything but predictable. Suffice to say that it revolves around a certain fact about Dyer’s youngest son, Andy (Noah Jupe), who lives with him. It’s an involving and intense story, with a great deal of psychological torment involved — and superbly evoked. The best performance of all is by Imelda Staunton as Isabel Platt, Dyer’s understandably bitter but impressively together former wife.
What might have amounted to mere melodrama — and it is undeniably over-the-top at times — is actually an involving and sometimes moving drama, its slow build-up vindicated by the subsequent dramatic impact. Living in the shadow of a celebrated parent must always be difficult, but that would be a massive understatement in this case. All the volatility and trauma aside, incidentally, there’s also a quorum of sharp and witty dialogue. (Dyer has the kind of sardonic wryness that makes him respond to someone overfilling his glass by saying “The ratio of scotch to air is faultless”.)
Definitely recommended.
