James McAvoy’s My Son is an interesting experiment that quickly fizzles out

The pandemic was always going to unleash bizarre experiments in the world of cinema. From holed-up, single location stories to films shot entirely with the help of gadgets and devices, we’ll seen a lot, often to middling effect. Our sense of personal and social spaces might have undergone change, but turns out our requirements from stories and narratives remains horizontally similar to the world that preceded the pandemic. It’s why Marvel has returned to the top of the pile, with effortless ease, and we are back to biting down on populist stories with the kind of appetite we came at cinema with before the pandemic began. James McAvoy’s My Son, is a curious little experiment that merges the uncertainty of realism with the craft of cinema. Unfortunately, it also becomes an exhibition for the reason cinema has script in the first place.

Directed by Christian Carion who remakes in English, his own previous film, My Son is an improvised thriller. i.e. The protagonist, Edmond, played by McAvoy is never given a script and hence he uncovers the mystery of his lost son, along with the audience. It’s an indigenous setup. The premise for the story is predictable, but the approach feels inspired, for it promises the uncertain and the unanticipated. The only problem is that shooting a film without a script diminishes control over the pace and the larger tone of the film. McAvoy must act like he is in it, but he also cannot emote about that which he does not know. It’s a humdrum approach in the end, where it’s hard to tell if Edmond seems half self-aware and half confused about the sequence of events.

There is then the question of purity. A film without a script would be a documentary, but here McAvoy must channel a character, to somehow crank up the tension where little exists otherwise. The problem with solving mysteries in real time, and with the pretence of obscurity is the fact that they have to be easy enough to be solved in the first place. The clues, hence, are too convenient. Edmond quickly uncovers the secrets, and sets on his way to rescue his child. It’s all a little too convenient, almost as if , the director understood that a mystery far too difficult to solve would maim the inventive construct of the film. There is hence, little to write about in terms of twists and turns because little exists in the film that you cannot see coming.

Shot in the hinterlands of Scotland, the film does effectively mine the location for eeriness and mood. Dingy alleys and corridors, oblique frames and some suggestive misdirection does try, and ably so for the most part, create a sense of wary uncertainty, but the film relinquishes all tension when it tries to settle into the sweet sport between unscripted documentary and improvised characterisation. McAvoy, despite the perplexing situation in front of him, is more than decent as a pained husband and father. As his wife, Claire Foy, is believably torn and short-changed by a difficult marriage. But beyond the cursory filling of the boots, the characters evidently seem bereft of energy. There is a sense of puzzled mooning in most scenes. In one, Edmond goes over pictures in his phone with his son, in what is an overstretched dramatization of a moment that neither fully fits the fiction or the documentary mode. It just languishes.

Experiments in cinema should be welcome, and from single-shot masterpieces like 1917 to first person perspectives like Son of Saul, cinema has often relied on visual trickery to rewrite age-old perspectives. In an age where OTT platforms are keen on producing interactive cinema like Bandersnatch, you can assume that experiments form will continue and the very foundation of the cinematic process will be queried for many a beguiling experiment. My Son, is only the latest, which feels kookier because it was shot at the height of the pandemic, and has now arrived in India, after the pandemic has somewhat receded in memory.

To give credit where it is due, My Son, is still a brave little experiment if somewhat directionless and ultimately confused by its own teased limitlessness. Turns out, cinema is in fact about controlled chaos, where even if paper bits can be seen flying in the frame, the sky on fire, the ground opening up beneath, there is still someone with a design, a pace and a vision behind the many cracks that make the seismic fracture stick. A lot in cinema can maybe chiselled into evolving but maybe a few things, like good writing and believable characters will continue to remain the foundation of a format that feels like it must rise to occasion of the age of streaming and therefore innovative making. My Son is a decent experiment, but it serves more as evidence of the things that are seemingly impossible to withdraw from cinema – starting with the script.

My Son is now streaming on Bookmyshow Stream

The author writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between. Views expressed are personal.

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