Review of Being Flynn (2012) by Manny C — 11 May 2012

A writer dealing addiction meets his estranged, drunken and delusional father at the homeless shelter he volunteers for.That's the premise of Being Flynn, an uneven but emotionally hard hitting film from writer-director Paul Weitz.

Taken from Nick Flynn's 2004 memoir Another Bullshit Night In Suck City, Being Flynn is saturated in deep sadness. The excellent Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, There Will Be Blood) is Nick, a struggling writer, poet and playwright drifting through his twenties and then takes a job working at a New York City shelter where his girlfriend, Denise, works (lovely Olivia Thirlby). When he sees his father, Jonathan (Robert De Niro) he's floored. Jonathan too is a writer, one who thinks he's on the same level as Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway and J.D. Salinger and talks constantly of his opus Memoirs of a Moron, and also reveals truths about Nick's childhood and his mother (Julianne Moore) who has her own troubles.

The film plays as an emotional face off between the father and son, with narration provided by Nick who hopes to better understand his troubled father. Dano displays amazing subtlety and nuance, a perfect foil to De Niro's often flamboyant performance. Weitz first directed De Niro in Little Fockers, but here he employs the actor's too often forgotten skills, one that recalls his emotionally charged performance in Awakenings. It's a marvelous performance from an old master.