Sweet dream
‘Honey Boy’ may be vanity project, but it’s brilliant
The zeitgeist movies of recent years — the ones that didn’t just make bank and win awards, but really struck a cultural nerve — have been milestones for inclusion. “Wonder Woman” broke the glass ceiling for big-screen superheroes, and “Black Panther” brought Afro-futurism to the mainstream. “Crazy Rich Asians” busted stereotypes for laughs, while “Get Out” transcended genre to find new metaphors for the horrors of racism. “Lady Bird” reminded us that socially awkward underdogs don’t have to be white and male to merit a quirky coming-of-age story.
In 2019, though, the most talked-about film is drawing more boos than huzzahs from the cultural left. That would be “Joker,” with its careerdefining performance from Joaquin Phoenix, the former child actor who once starred in a hoax documentary about his hoax hip-hop career, in a role seen as glorifying the “lone wolf ” narrative of white-male terrorism.
Which brings me to “Honey Boy” and another career-defining turn by a former child actor, Shia LaBeouf.
Also the screenwriter, he stars as a version of his own father in a bittersweet memoir about his dysfunctional Hollywood upbringing. It’s a terrific performance, the kind of fiercely specific, charismatically convincing character acting that might get Martin Scorsese waxing poetic about the difference between true cinema and the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“Honey Boy” may or may not be a zeitgeist movie, but at the very least it’s good fodder for the meme wars. While the reviews have mostly been raves, the unavoidable musk of narcissism inherent in the project was certain to generate dissenting opinions such as Rex Reed’s in the Observer (“an obnoxious, self-indulgent film about his own life designed to appeal to absolutely nobody except the arrogant subject himself”).
The film serves as an apologia for LaBoeuf ’s tabloid history of drunken brawling and resisting arrest, but even though it is yet another re
covery story — with Lucas Hedges playing the writer’s alter ego, Otis, in a courtordered stint in rehab — it is not exactly a searching and fearless moral inventory. Or rather, it is, but of the father, not the son. And thus LaBoeuf ’s deep dive into character creation could be seen as a cynical distraction, a mere magician’s trick.
Either as public relations or as therapy, it looks like a dodge. But as art, “Honey Boy” is kind of brilliant.
Israeli-American director Alma Har’el, in her first non-documentary feature, condenses the all-too-familiar narrative of an out-of-control celeb into a visceral montage, climaxing in a car crash and then relaxing into the equally familiar structure of rehab, where a therapist tells Otis he shows signs of post-traumatic stress.
“PTSD?” Hedges deadpans perfectly. “From what?”
Flashbacks tell the tale, although it is not the litany of abuse you might expect from, say, the defense in a murder trial. To a viewer who’s never read Entertainment Weekly, it might seem the start of a rags-to-riches story, with 12-year-old Otis living in trailer-park squalor with his dropout dad in Southern California.
With long stringy hair and extralarge John Lennon glasses, James Lort is four years sober and seething with macho resentments. A trained clown who has taught his son the tricks of holding a crowd’s attention, he is also a stage parent who makes Mama Rose look like a sensitive nurturer, punishing mistakes with pushups and barking orders and insults in equal measure.
The extent of the tension in this father-son dynamic comes into focus when we finally learn that Otis, who’s staying with his father while shooting a movie of the week, is paying James to be his legal chaperone — against the advice of his mom and his managers.
There’s a lot to dissect here, including the neighbor girl (FKA Twigs) who may or may not be trying to seduce the prepubescent actor. That’s part of what makes “Honey Boy” so good. LaBoeuf ’s script is intelligent, richly layered and sensitive to the cultural conflicts of the moment. But what makes this film more than just another behind-the-scenes melodrama is his fiercely empathetic embrace of the characters’ deepest flaws and contradictions.
For me, it doesn’t really matter if LaBeouf is letting himself off the hook, or if “Honey Boy” is the ultimate vanity project of a pampered narcissist. What matters is that he has plunged into the maelstrom of his own memories and emerged with a real work of art — something that feels real, feels true, even though we all know it isn’t.
A favorite line from the Spike Lee filmed musical “Passing Strange” comes to mind: “Life is a mistake that only art can correct.”