Father and Son: On the Brutality of Parental Hate

A 7-minute drama of resentment and spite, Mitchell Lazar’s Father and Son features the rivalry between said pair, who also happen to be authors up for the same award. The father, a mask of cool contempt over bitter insecurity, has ensured that his son is also insecure, if robbed of the strength to be equally contemptuous. Cool is out of the question. 

The film feels like a surge of some suppressed emotion, with its abruptness, non-linearity, and a feeling of being only tip of a ghastly iceberg. That iceberg certainly exists and the characters are clearly doing their shifty dance around it, but where Thomas (Roger Rathburn) will barely look at his son if not to share a snide thought, Nathan (Chris Gouchoe) is left ragged. 

The narrative opens with the awards ceremony—a grand finale to a burning question that has nothing to do with literary prowess—but moves back to glimpse their recent past. It would be acrimonious had Thomas shown Nathan the courtesy to be openly hostile. Instead, Nathan and the viewer must make do with scorn passed off as polite fact. The editing makes excellent use of silence to create a tense pace, resentment quietly clashing with need for approval. Rathburn and Gouchoe’s compellingly ragged chemistry is one of the many strengths of this acute yet understated film. Even as it opens, the slow pulse of the score seems to telegraph Nathan’s character: hurtling towards painful disappointment and unable to stop himself. The push of Thomas’ unearned ire is lesser than the pull of weak hope of camaraderie. Even love, if Nathan is lucky. (He is not.)

Father and Son is a pleasure to watch, inasmuch as art is pleasurable despite (and for) its claws. The big reveal is not surprising, and perhaps, neither is the venom that comes after—only that it hurts. 

Watch Father and Son Short Film