Director
Florian Zeller
Cast
Anthony Hopkins - Anthony
Olivia Colman - Anne
Rufus Sewell - Paul
Imogen Poots - Laura
Olivia Williams - Catherine
Mark Gatiss - The Man
Ayesha Dharker - Dr. Sarai
Roman Zeller - The Boy
After watching the recent film The Father starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman, I wanted to applaud, and then turn on my blog right away. So, that's what I did. I just didn't get to the movie in time to send it on the paper.
This drama, based on the 2012 play Le Pére by Florian Zeller, is Zeller's directorial debut. He co-wrote the film with fellow playwright, Christopher Hampton. It was released in March of this year.
In this movie, Anthony Hopkins, who never fails to impress, plays Anthony. He's an elderly father of two daughters, lives in a London apartment, and is suffering from dementia. It causes him to grow more and more confused about the people in his life, and the various events going on around him. Even small details of his life, such as where he put his watch, become a great source of uncertainty and stress.
His daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) often visits him. She hires a nurse to come and take care of him when she can't, but the nurse quits due to Anthony's stubbornness and insults. He's also accused the nurse of stealing his watch.
Anne tells her father she's moving to Paris to live with a man she met, and he needs a nurse to watch him while she's away.
Anthony doesn't recall Anne having a man in her life after she divorced her ex-husband, James.
But she tells him if he refuses to have a nurse stay with him, she'll be forced to go with her second plan.
The following day, Anthony sees a stranger in his apartment sitting in the living room reading a newspaper.
The man says his name is Paul, and Anthony demands to know why he's in his apartment.
Paul says he's Anne's husband and lives in the apartment with her.
Again, Anthony is confused.
Finally, Anne returns home but she looks different. Anthony doesn't recognize her.
She scheduled an interview for another nurse named Laura to come visit.
When she arrives, Anthony is cordial and says she reminds him of his daughter, Lucy.
He also claims he hasn't spoken with Lucy for quite a while. and inquires where she is.
Later, Anne takes him to see a doctor about his memory. He tells the doctor about Anne saying she's moving to Paris with a man she met, but Anne says she never said she was moving to Paris.
The doctor asks him a series of questions about his memory problems, but Anthony claims he doesn't have any problems with his memory.
Back in the apartment, Anthony talks to Laura about Lucy, telling her how proud he is that she's a painter.
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| Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins in The Father. |
Laura says she's sorry to hear of Lucy's accident. Anthony asks "what accident?"
The film slowly reveals Anthony has been living in Anne and Paul's flat for years, though Paul is a different person from when we saw him the first time.
Paul's patience is growing thin as Anthony continues to live with them. His presence forced them to cancel a holiday in Italy they had planned.
He asks Anthony how long he intends to stay in their apartment, which he thinks is his old apartment, before slapping him in the face.
Later that night, he wakes up and roams the apartment. But he finds himself in a hospital corridor as Lucy calls his name.
He walks into a room and sees Lucy on a hospital bed with her face covered in blood.
When Anthony wakes up, he finds himself in a different bedroom.
It's movies like The Father that make me such a lover of films. And I placed this one on my mental top shelf of favorite respectable movies.
Hopkins is one of the most natural actors in the field. So many of his characters, especially his role in this film, are so genuine.
Watching him in interviews, or in the videos of himself he posts on Facebook, he strikes me as a man who loves to entertain. He seems like he'd sit down and strike up a conversation with anybody. Hopkins is clearly a man who loves life. Just look at his Facebook page.
In a recent interview with Late Show host Stephen Colbert, he said, "I think what appeals to me now at this time in my life is that we come screaming into this world from darkness. We go through life and think what is it all about? Is there any purpose? What is the meaning of it?"
While watching Hopkins in The Father, it struck me that the range of different characters he has performed in his career, from a mentally unstable magician in Magic, to a determined and compassionate doctor in The Elephant Man, to a cannibalistic and severely demented serial killer in Silence of the Lambs certainly demonstrates this appeal.
The Father is such a genuine film. The way it was shot puts the audience in the world of Anthony while watching him react to the confusion around him. Rarely do we see the outside world except for short instances when he looks out his living room window to the street below. Small details slowly change around him. It's subtle but apparent.
Other films about mental deterioration, such as the 2014 movie Still Alice about a Columbia University Linguistics professor who becomes diagnosed with familial Alzheimer's disease, depict these sorts of conditions very well and accurately.
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Initially, at the end of the movie, I was left with a few questions about a few scenes. Some things didn't make sense. It dawned on me that in this meant to be the case, I'm supposed to be confused just as Anthony is. As he tries to make sense of what's happening around him and can't because of his dementia, the audience is also meant to be as confused about various instances. Why is Anthony experiencing moments over again but with different people? Where did the chairs suddenly come from? Where exactly is he?
Surely we've met someone suffering from dementia, and watched how those people acted as this terrible condition eats at their mind. The movie certainly gave me as true an experience of what having dementia must be like as a movie can. I think this is one of the best films of 2021.
