hold up tho -- i was too busy being mad about everything else, but as a certified Cat Stevens Enjoyer (inherited dad music taste ppl rise up) now that i'm stopping to think about it even using 'father and son' in the final context is itself an empty symbol???? it's like they took the name of the song and the lyrics 'i have to go away' and were like oh yeah nice 1!
but like the song? is about? intergenerational conflict??? specifically the conflict btw a father advocating for a conservative, settled, traditional and pleasant life and a headstrong son resenting that repressive upbringing and making the decision to break away towards his passions? it's not meant to be one person singing throughout the whole thing, it's a really compassionate and heartbreaking dialogue between the idea of settling for the well-trodden road, and the need to leave it behind: the son not convinced by the comforts of the expected, and the father in some ways advocating settling for the traditional because he just doesn't want his son to leave him.
like in that context, it's the avatar of traditional singing 'find a girl, settle down - if you want you can marry. look at me i am old but i'm happy' over ted's car pulling up to michelle's house.
it's the avatar of the need to break from the repression of that life who frankly wails out (mr stevens i owe you my life) 'all the times that i've cried keeping all the things i felt inside, it's hard - but it's harder to ignore it. if they were right, i'd agree -- but it's them they know not me. there's a way and i know i have to go away'
using that song there is a whole ass choice but it's uhhhhhh at the very least a deeply complicated one, which doesn't really seem to click with this supposedly uncomplicated and 'unambiguously happy ending' they were apparently going for:. again like i said, feels like they just were like 'oh yeah father and son. people cry to this song right? bingo ringo!'
again, like with barbecue sauce and the pinball machine, it's borrowing those emotions from symbols instead of actually building them up in the story, and whoooo baby this song is just another case of those symbols not really matching up with the empty narrative they're being asked to prop up.
(anyway fun fact: the song was originally written for a proposed musical about the russian revolution and the son is actually singing about wanting to join the bolsheviks ✊🚩)