Movie review
November 10, 2022 · 123 min · PG-13
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
A successful New York lawyer agrees to care for his depressed teenage son from a previous marriage while navigating his new family and career pressures, resulting in a raw exploration of parental guilt, mental illness, and family breakdown. The narrative treats depression as a destructive personal force and examines how divorce, absence, and miscommunication devastate relationships, with no overlay of identity politics or social messaging. No audience-visible woke elements—such as activist dialogue, forced representation emphasis, institutional critiques, or identity-driven themes—appear in the story, casting, marketing, or creator statements.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for The Son.
Woke representation / casting
Natural casting for the story’s upper-middle-class New York family setting; lead roles filled by white actors with no forced diversity, audience-visible identity signaling, race/gender swaps, or mismatches to character logic or premise.
Woke political dialogue
All dialogue centers on personal guilt, depression symptoms, family reconciliation, and parental failure with zero activist language, identity arguments, or social-justice framing.
Identity-driven story themes
Themes of depression, suicide, divorce guilt, and intergenerational trauma are presented strictly as individual and familial struggles, with no race, gender, sexuality, or identity politics as drivers or reframing elements.
Western institutional / cultural critique
No modern activist framing of capitalism, patriarchy, toxic masculinity, or Western institutions as systemic villains; the father’s career focus is portrayed as a personal flaw rooted in his own childhood, not broader ideological critique.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant — original story adapted directly from Zeller’s 2018 play with no canon alterations, historical reinterpretations, or legacy material.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Complete absence of any backlash claiming woke messaging, forced diversity, girlboss elements, anti-male messaging, or activist propaganda; all criticism targets artistic execution and sensitive-topic handling only.
Creator track record context
Florian Zeller maintains an explicit rejection of political theater and has no record of activist statements, diversity-driven projects, or identity-focused work across his plays and films, including the prior Oscar-winning The Father.
Production
