Released 2020. Director: Uberto Pasolini
THE FOCUS OF NOWHERE SPECIAL IS A FOUR-YEAR-OLD BOY named Michael. He’s a quiet and sensitive child who loves his toy truck. He enjoys being read to and when he’s around adults he regards them with a degree of watchfulness. He doesn’t know it yet but his dad John is trying to give him away.
If you’re not careful, by the end of this modest and finely observant little drama, Michael would’ve stolen your heart as he looks up at you with those big, imploring eyes. Michael’s mum left him when the boy was still too young to remember. His dad John works as a window washer and raises Michael by himself, but not for much longer. John finds out he has an aggressive terminal disease and doesn’t have much time left.
Through an adoption agency, John begins to meet with various prospective parents for Michael. In what resembles a series of vignettes, Nowhere Special takes us through different expressions of the desire to foster or adopt a child and the motivations of the adults. We meet a wealthy childless couple ready to put Michael into private education, a regular suburban family with a backyard and rabbits, a single mum living in public housing, a mixed-race couple with multiple adopted children, and a couple with very specific house rules.
The movie also shows, mainly through John’s work as a lowly regarded blue-collar cleaner, how people treat others. Some are kind and understanding, while others are obnoxious and condescending. People’s attitudes come to the foreground when a father has to consider very carefully what kind of person he will eventually entrust his son to. Who are the best people to raise Michael after he’s gone?
The heart of the movie is the bond between father and son. Mealtimes, playing in the park, eating an ice-cream, bedtime reading, these simple moments of domesticity evoke poignancy because we’re aware of the inevitable separation.
James Norton brings a soulful presence as a father searching for his own replacement. John’s situation is bad, but the actor is wise not to belabour his lot in life or play the character as a victim. Apart from the social workers who help find suitable families, few people know of John’s plight, as his health slowly deteriorates. The saddest part of it all is John doesn’t wish for Michael to remember him, believing the boy should grow up in his new family without memory of his birth father. Eventually though, John relents and makes Michael a “memory box”.
Young Daniel Lamont shares a natural affinity with Norton, which helps enormously in establishing a credible relationship onscreen. His guileless interactions and unaffected behaviour belie the fact that the four-year-old is play-acting in front of a bunch of adults.
Although the straightforward premise of the movie is a sad one, director Pasolini never once allows a trace of tragedy or sentimentality to slip through or exploit a cheap shot to wring a tear. Pasolini takes us through John’s search as he meets and talks with prospective parents almost as a matter of fact and process. The journey is sensitively directed to elicit heartfelt performances from the leads without relying on grand gestures.
John brings Michael along to every meeting and slowly the boy catches on. He looks up at John one day and asks, “What is adopt, daddy?” Michael’s awareness, however vague, of an imminent separation adds to the quiet strength of Nowhere Special. The child’s vulnerability deepens our empathy towards a father’s struggle to make his most important decision.
Family is a unique place; no two are the same. In Nowhere Special we glimpse a few types and in the end, it shines a light on one in particular and gives tribute where it’s rarely acknowledged. While there’s no such thing as a perfect family, there is nothing “wrong, lacking or incomplete” about single-parenthood.
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