FILM: Being Flynn - Being Flynn is not, it appears, an easy job, whether you’re referring to Jonathan (De Niro) or Nick (Dano), who has the misfortune of being his son.

CAST: Paul Dano, Robert De Niro, Julianne Moore
DIRECTOR: Paul Weitz
CLASSIFICATION: 16LSN

RATING: 7/10

This is a morose film that explores how one man’s follies can poison the lives of those around him, and the bittersweet (in this case mainly bitter) relationship dynamics between parent and child. 

Nick, whose father was  an absent mythic figure he only ever heard about through his mother (Moore), who juggles two jobs to fend for them.

“Never become a writer,” Moore cautions Nick after his father is arrested for fraud. But Nick secretly harbours a love for scribbling poems and in fact his absent father provides ample inspiration.

When Nick gets a surprise call from his dad, Jonathan gruffly announces that he needs a truck to move his belongings after being thrown out of his apartment, but offers no explanation as to why he has been absent for 18 years, and certainly shows no remorse or desire to reconcile with his son.

As a viewer, one empathises with Nick’s conflicted emotions. On the one hand, he is aware of  Jonathan’s precarious mental state – a dead giveaway that not all is well is when Jonathan wraps himself in a sheet and does a rowdy impersonation of Caesar.  

On the other hand, he needs to understand why this man was never around for his formative years. With his mother deceased, Nick finds in Jonathan a semblance of a parental figure, albeit a deranged and narcissistic one.

It’s certainly a cautionary tale for would-be writers who, like the delusional Jonathan, believe they have the makings of the next great novelist, and are so single-minded as to ignore all other responsibilities.

Even when he is wandering the streets of Boston with nothing but his manuscript for a pillow, stuffing paper over his ears  against the bitter winter cold, Jonathan convinces himself that it is all great “research” for his book.

Nick, who is himself beleaguered by drug abuse is under threat of landing up in his alcoholic father’s quagmire.  

Do genes determine destiny or can we choose to be different from our parents? These are questions raised by this poignant film.

Despite the moodiness of the piece, there is the sense that both lost souls find some level of atonement in each other.