Sons
(Canada, 70 min.)
Dir. Justin Simms
How does a boy grow up to become a seed and not a bullet? Director Justin Simms (Becoming Labrador) asks himself this question during the personal and reflective documentary, Sons. Simms, a new father himself, wonders what the world holds for his boy, Jude. But Simms also needs to look back at his own growth as a man—his upbringing and the values that men in his life instilled within him—to understand what it means to be a man in contemporary culture.
It’s a hot-button question, as Simms’ son, Jude, was born in early 2016. Simms can’t help but have questions of masculinity on his mind given that the measure of a man invites, if not demands, an international conversation with Donald Trump running for and, unfortunately, winning the presidency. If the world’s most powerful man is a cesspool for misogyny, what hope exists for boys of Jude’s generation?
Teaching a kid to be a polite and respectable boy isn’t the same as teaching him to ride a bike, though. Simms mines stories of violent young men who seemingly grew up on positive, nurturing households. It’s therefore a daunting task, as parents can seemingly do everything right, yet still raise boys who turn into violent men. Moreover, how boys view their worth is inevitably a reflection of their society and Simms’ mind races in voiceover as he considers the variables before him and Jude.
Simms knows that the question at the core of Sons poses a query too vast for one man to answer. He therefore looks to other dads, including his own, to understand how one raises boys to become men. The only real consistency he finds says that fatherhood takes different paths. Every dad hopes his son makes a better father than he did. Sons offers a touching, personal, and introspective work that uses one filmmaker’s vulnerability to mine a question many people need to answer. Especially with the final moments of the film revisiting the 2016 Trump election, the question of positive masculinity needs renewed consideration.
For example, Simms interviews his father, who reflects upon his own dad’s sad story. He tells Justin how his father had to leave home at 14 when his “an evil stepmother” didn’t want him. She told his father to pack up and leave. Her husband tacitly accepted the answer. The elder Simms therefore grew up quickly, Justin’s dad explains, with a certain distance filtering into his own relationship to parenting.
But Simms’ father relates to his dad’s situation. He was only 18 himself when he had Justin and acknowledges that his own parental skills were constantly a work-in-progress. But Simms’ still finds himself taken aback when his dad echoes the “I hope you do this better than I did” advice. Perhaps one measure of a man is his ability to recognize his shortcomings and inspire others to make personal gains.
Simms weaves between the stories of different fathers with a collage of archival material and introspective voiceover. He takes stock of many big ideas: the gender binary, prescribed roles, toxic masculinity, bullying, and male rage. Images of Jude’s infancy and early childhood appear alongside social media videos that saturate popular culture and shape boys’ perspectives of who they should be. That infamous clip of Trump, for example, advises the “pros” of sexual assault, while a TikTok by Candace Owens teaches boys that women prefer men who control them. This is not healthy, but Simms recognizes that no parent can shield his kid from the flood of toxic influences.
Masculinity is in crisis, Simms concludes, while assessing the vitriol of the Trump age. Willow, Jude’s mom, reminds Simms that masculinity can be beautiful. As Simms interviews his wife for perspectives on parenting, she shares that it’s important to nurture boys and girls alike in a healthy and open way. If parents tell their daughters that they can do anything they set their minds to, telling boys to do the same benefits everyone.
The other dads, meanwhile, emphasize being present, like embracing engagement with storytime and putting down the phone. These might not be new ideas, but they’re ones that connect with fathers one generation after another. Attitudes only change by sharing them and debating them in the way that the families do here. As Simms situates his family’s story amid perspectives of other dads, Sons looks back to the adage that it takes a village to raise a child. The film, which lovingly roots itself in the colourful neighbourhood character of St. John’s, Newfoundland, reminds fathers that their sons aren’t raised in isolation. They’re a product of a society, and it’s a shared responsibility to help the seeds grow.
