Meeting of minds
THE FATHER
‘‘
Hopkins gives an acting masterclass in a brutally authentic dementia film
Cert 12A ★★★★★
DIRECTOR Florian Zeller was so keen for Anthony Hopkins to play the title role in the film adaptation of his acclaimed stage play that he renamed the main character Anthony.
It worked. Not only did the 83-year-old actor agree to cram this modestly-budgeted film into his already hectic schedule but it made him the oldest-ever winner of a Best Actor Oscar.
Like Zeller, I can’t imagine anyone else playing the lead here, an elderly widower in the vicious grip of mid-to-late-stage dementia. To see him effortlessly shift from rage and confusion to despair is to watch a masterclass in screen acting.
But this film isn’t just about the performance. Zeller uses all the tools of the filmmaker in this brilliantly edited, powerfully shot and wonderfully designed debut feature.
Set mostly in a single location, the film begins with Anthony listening to classical music in his well-appointed London apartment. Or is he? As we meet two women who claim to be his daughter Anne (Olivia Williams and Olivia Colman) and two different versions of her husband Paul (Mark Gatiss and Rufus Sewell), the decor and the walls of the apartment appear to shift behind them.
This is the maze of dementia seen from inside the head of one of its victims. There are no solid facts to rely on as Anthony appears lost in both time and place.
But as faces and location begin to settle, the point of view subtly and very cleverly drifts towards Colman’s conscience-stricken Anne.
The two actors share some wonderful scenes that are touching, tense, disturbing and darkly amusing.
The Father isn’t the first film about dementia to win awards but it could be the most brutally authentic.