Film Review of The Father
By Geoff Carter
Florian Zelllner’s film version of his play, The Father, is not only a harrowing chronicle detailing a man’s struggle to deal with dementia, but deftly places the audience squarely into the puzzle box of memory, hallucination, and disorientation that resides at the core of this disease. Like a boat adrift at sea, the main character Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) is trying to navigate his way through a reality that is constantly shifting through a fog of time and memory.
As the film opens, Anthony’s daughter Anne, (Olivia Colman) is dropping in to visit and to look after him. She—in what soon becomes apparent as a continuing conversation—tries to persuade him to hire someone to look after him. He denies he needs the help. Anne then reveals she will be moving. The scene eventually shifts to another day in his flat when he encounters a man (Mark Gatiss) he has never seen before—a man who insists he is Anthony’s son-in-law. Anne comes in but neither Anthony nor the audience recognizes her. This Anne—played by Olivia Williams—acts identically to the Anne we’ve met previously.
At this point, viewer expectations have been turned on their head; it’s impossible to be sure which Anne is the real Anne, which son-in-law Paul (as another [the sublimely nasty Rufus Sewell] eventually appears) is real, or exactly when any of the action is taking place. Like Anthony, the audience drifts along on an empty sea with no compass and few landmarks.
Anthony constantly asks about his second daughter, Lucy, of whom no one else speaks. Their silence implies something horrible has happened to the girl, something which Anthony cannot remember or consciously acknowledge. One aide, Laura (Imogen Poots) who does come in to meet him bears—according to Anthony—a striking resemblance to Lucy. In a tour de force performance, Hopkins’ Anthony reacts to her, pivoting smoothly from charming to flirtatious to silly to solicitous to duplicitous, and, finally, to being cruel. In this dialogue with Laura, all the bravado, brassiness, and wit do not conceal his fear that he is losing it. Anthony’s desperation is evidenced by his constant search for his watch, his landmark, his lighthouse, his reassurance that his mind is still based in the here and now.
The narrative structure is nothing short of brilliant. While simultaneously revealing the plight of a man helpless to control his fate, Zellner has constructed a sort of perverse mystery in which the viewer is bound to determine what is happening to Anthony. On a very basic level, the audience understands he has some form of dementia and is clinging to whatever reality he can, but whether that reality is trapped within Anthony’s memories, is a figment of his imagination, or is merely delusional is impossible to say. At least at first.
The kitchen changes suddenly; the view outside the window is different. It becomes apparent we’re in another flat, but whose? Who was the second mystery Anne? What happened to Lucy? The constants in Anthony’s life like his watch, Anne preparing dinner in the kitchen, and Anthony’s opera CDs are the crossover points linking his memories.
At one point, as Anne (Olivia Colman) and her husband Paul (Rufus Sewell) argue over Anthony, it becomes apparent her father has moved in with them. In a devastatingly cruel scene, Paul violently demands that Anthony tell him why he insists on making his daughter’s life a living hell. All Anthony’s self-assurance and sense of control are smashed.
Zellner’s purpose is not to lead the audience to Anthony’s final fate. It is to include the viewer in the process of mental disintegration, of watching the tapestry of a life unravel one thread at a time. We share Anthony’s bewilderment, his anger, and his terror as he flounders in a world growingly increasingly alien to him. As Zellner changes from one setting to another, transposes strange faces on familiar characters, and turns time itself inside out, we begin to see the same unruly and untrustworthy world that Anthony does. The ending of the movie a traumatic tour de force, satisfactory but not satisfying because of the knowledge that our journey with Anthony will someday be scheduled on our own agendas.
The film itself is a taut and well-written psychological study. The acting is impeccable. As Anthony, Anthony Hopkins swings seamlessly from petulant and cruel to charming and urbane. Like many dementia patients, his mood swings are sudden and unpredictable. As depicted in the movie, however, they become a bit more understandable. For this role, Hopkins has to mix vulnerability, bravado, and bewilderment. It is one of his best performances.
As Anne, Colman embodies the essence of filial duty and unselfishness. She obviously loves her dad—even what he’s become—and is wracked with guilt by her decision to move to Paris with her new partner. The timing of this and her break-up with Paul is for us, as in Anthony’s mind, nebulous. Colman is an actress of incredible range and depth but also, as in this work, can show remarkable restraint. Her Anne is any of us in this situation: patient, guilt-ridden, angry, and—mostly—tired. That she carries this off in a seemingly effortless performance is a brilliant piece of acting.
Zellner’s direction is deceptively simple. He carries us smoothly from one location and or time to another, so smoothly, in fact, that the different realities appear to be seamless. There is no cinematic signal, no fade-in or dissolve or pan to communicate a flashback or a psychological fugue. And that is the point. The film’s reality is Anthony’s. And when the viewer finally sees that, sees the tear in the continuum of reality, Anthony’s terror and despair also become our own.
The Father is not an easy film to watch. It is, however, a necessary movie to see. For two hours, Zellner guides the audience in Anthony’s footsteps along a path we may very well be taking ourselves—and sooner than we may think.
