Beautiful Boy tells a riveting and heartbreaking tale of a father and son duo, living out the tortures that come along with drug addiction. The film is based on two separate books written by David and Nic Sheff, detailing their lives while battling addiction and the struggles that come along with it.

David Sheff, played by Steve Carell, is a journalist in San Francisco. Divorced from his first wife, and the mother of his son Nic, David maintains custody of his son, played by Timothee Chalamet. The film begins as we see David seeking out help to better understand what his son is going through as a crystal meth addict. The story then embarks on a journey detailing the seemingly unbreakable bond between the father and son. Nic’s mother lives in Los Angeles while he lives with his father, step-mother, and two younger siblings from his fathers second marriage in San Francisco. We see flashbacks of Nic and David throughout the year, chronicling Nic’s childhood and the impending destruction of his relationship with his father, and have a front row seat to watch David try to grapple with the fact that he didn’t know his son as well as he previously believed.

We watch the relationship between David and Nic fall apart as Nic falls deeper into the throes of his addiction. David and his wife Karen play the loving caretakers, looking out for Nic’s best interest when he is admitted to rehab for the first time. Nic, with a history of running away from his problems rather than facing them, quickly enters the first of many relapses that will continue to test the boundaries of his father’s support.

As David reminisces on his time raising Nic, and tries to understand where he went wrong, or what lead to his son turning toward drugs, there seems to be no evidence as to why this has happened. David struggles to come to terms with the fact that his son has put himself into this dangerous situation and seems to want to try to understand why Nic continues to regress. Emotions are high and each time David tries to break new ground he is met with anger and opposition from Nic.

David goes as far as reaching out to doctors and continuously doing research on addiction to try to maintain hope, or find a way to better help his son, but each time we think Nic is finally in a position to pull himself out of the depths of addiction, he relapses, turning up again in worse shape than ever before.

Nic says the drugs have allowed him to feel a way nothing else ever has; saying it took his life “from black and white to technicolor.” Like many people, it takes Nic hitting his absolute lowest, and his father finally conceding that there is nothing else he can do for his son, to realize he has to make a change for himself to beat his addiction to drugs. After breaking into his fathers home, and promptly running away to avoid facing his father and the disappointment that he feels, Nic’s girlfriend overdoses and nearly loses her life. Nic calls his father begging to come home, saying that he’s ready to face and overcome his addiction, but that he can only do so on his own terms, at home, with the strength of his father, step-mom, and siblings by his side. David tells Nic that he loves him, but that would be impossible. He has decided that he can’t help him and that he can no longer handle the outbursts, relapses, and struggles that Nic continues to put him through. He tells him he loves him, wishes him the best and hangs up the phone.

The one thing missing from this film is the dark truth of how drugs and alcohol ravish the bodies of addicts. This story focuses on the mental and emotional pain and suffering of Nic and the people closest to him, while providing only a sprinkle of the imagery associated with the disease of drug addiction. Even after multiple instances of overdose, Nic appears as if he could easily hide the fact that he’s been addicted to crystal meth for years. There is only one scene in the film that even begins to show the severity of the toll that the drugs have taken on his body, in which we see him shooting up in the bathroom of the diner he often visited with his father as a child. The tracks on his arm are like an image straight out of Requiem for a Dream, but this imagery is really the only thing convincing the audience that Nic is a drug addict, rather than a feverishly ill teenager.

This film is a heartbreaking look into drug addiction and the effects that it has on not only the person suffering from addiction, but the people who care the most about them. It is a stark reminder of the seriousness of the condition, as well as the amount of work it takes to overcome. The film includes information about what drugs such as crystal meth do to the brain and how they damage the human body, and closes with information detailing Nic’s road to recovery over the last 8 years.

With striking and emotional performances by both Carell and Chalamet, it comes as no surprise that Chalamet received Golden Globe nods for his performance as Nic. Carell, seemingly out of his niche as a comedian, delves into his role in drama and gracefully delivers the emotion that conveys the pain that David Sheff felt as he watched his son slowly fall apart before his eyes.