The Father (2020)
dir. Florian Zeller
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2020 Sony Pictures Classics
A great amount of ink has already been spilled about the incredible performances from Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman in The Father. There’s good reason for that. Hopkins received his sixth Oscar nomination, including one win for the iconic rendering of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, for his portrayal as an octogenarian battling dementia. This is Colman’s second nomination after winning an Oscar in 2019 for her work in The Favourite. Both nominations are richly deserved. But what struck me about The Father, the debut film from director Florian Zeller, based on his own 2012 stage play, is the audacious storytelling.
The Father is about Anthony, an 80-year-old who is defiantly living alone in his own apartment in London despite having serious trouble with his memory and mental state. His daughter, Anne, is at her wits’ end with Anthony, who has run off several care-givers with his dementia-caused cruel behavior. Anne struggles to find a workable living arrangement for Anthony; she wants her father to move into her apartment, but a nursing home might be best when Anthony’s decline worsens.
At least, that’s what the first ten minutes or so of The Father would have you believe. The longer the film played, the more uncertain I was about what was actually happening, and what Anthony thinks is happening as processed through his rapidly deteriorating cognitive abilities. This isn’t the first film I’ve seen about the devastating effects of dementia – two other standouts on the topic are Amore and Still Alice – but this one dares to tie the movie’s point-of-view to the character suffering the illness. This technique from Zeller makes identifying and empathizing with Anthony unavoidable. It’s emotionally pulverizing to experience the confusion that Anthony suffers almost minute to minute.
The first hint we get that things aren’t what they seem comes when Anne arrives home after a trip to the market to get chicken for dinner. Anthony is already in an agitated state because a man he doesn’t know is in his apartment. This man, Paul, claims to be Anne’s husband and tells Anthony that he lives in the apartment. Because we haven’t met Paul yet, and in the opening scenes Anne tells her father that she is moving to Paris to live with someone she’s recently started a relationship with, we are just as confused as Anthony. The situation becomes more surreal when “Anne” walks through the door as a completely different person. In this one scene, Olivia Colman is replaced as Anne by actress Olivia Williams.
It’s my understanding – I’ve never been a primary care-giver to someone with dementia – that one of the most frustrating aspects of the illness is the anger and sudden lashing-out that is born of the sufferer’s confusion about the world around them. Zeller makes this confusion real for his audience through the use of repetition of events and actions in the story. The chicken dinner that Anne prepares and that she, Paul, and Anthony eat is revisited again and again throughout the picture. However, Anthony is never quite sure what’s going on around him and the circumstances of the meal seem to shift each time, causing the old man to become unmoored from what’s happening.
Zeller’s masterstroke of the movie comes during one of these iterations of the dinner in which the scene begins and ends with the exact same conversation between Anne and Paul. Anthony’s failing mind turns this event into an indecipherable Möbius strip, and Zeller’s masterful direction leaves us as bewildered as Anthony.
A stylistic choice by the filmmakers also puts into stark contrast the world as most of us experience it and Anthony’s increasingly disordered relationship with reality. Ben Smithard’s crisp, bright cinematography stands in opposition to Anthony’s fuzzy view of things.
Anthony Hopkins’s bracing performance as Anthony – the two men share much more than a name, as a recent Washington Post profile of Hopkins explains – is tragic, by turns quiet and explosive. I recently heard an anecdote about the legendary actor as described by another actor who once worked with him (it was Ben Kingsley, if memory serves). The actor described working with Hopkins as like working with an active volcano. That’s a perfect description of Hopkins’s crushing work in The Father. As Anthony’s agitation, caused by his confusion, builds, Hopkins explodes with the ferocity of a man half his age. His character’s rage-filled edict that “I am not leaving my flat!” is genuinely frightening. Hopkins’s quieter, hopeless moments, as Anthony slips deeper into the grasp of his illness, made me feel my own sense of hopelessness at the utter cruelty of his condition.
Olivia Colman also gives a shattering performance as Anthony’s daughter, Anne. So much of what Colman does here depends on the interiority of her character’s emotions. Anne tries to put on a brave face when dealing with her father, but we can see the struggle that is roiling just below the surface, because Colman has it written all over her face. Colman doesn’t have to say a word, but we see Anne’s heart breaking whenever Anthony mentions his other daughter, Lucy, and how disappointed he is that Lucy hasn’t visited him in so long.
Dementia removes the filters we employ in our interactions with other people. Because of that, Anthony has no compunction about making it clear to Anne that he has always preferred Lucy over her. Colman lets Anne’s devastation over these remarks, and countless other slights that the dementia forces Anthony to commit against her, silently wash over her face again and again over the course of the film.
Losing one’s mind to dementia is one of the most unfair and cruel realities of the human condition, both for the sufferer and the loved ones who are forced to watch it happen. Most movies that tackle the subject focus on the latter’s helplessness. Through his novel storytelling approach, Florian Zeller has put his audience into the mind of someone who is losing his. It’s a devastatingly effective technique, made all the more powerful by Anthony Hopkins’s tour de force performance as Anthony and Olivia Colman’s wrenching turn as Anne. Their characters are both victims. Through their story, we are confronted with an unimaginable situation that millions of people experience.
Why it got 4 stars:
- The Father tells a wrenching, heartbreaking story from a novel vantage point. Zeller’s technique is revelatory and the performances from Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman are superb.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- I mentioned in the review that the movie is based on Florian Zeller’s play. I can’t think of any other movie based on a play that made me come away thinking I would be really interested to see the stage version. I am very curious to know how it pulls off a few very specific plot points.
- I think it’s safe to say that the character Anthony is the ultimate unreliable narrator.
- I didn’t mention them in the review, but both Mark Gatiss and Rufus Sewell turn in strong supporting performances here.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- I saw The Father via a studio screener link, but it is currently available to rent on most streaming services at a premium $19.99 price point.