Freud’s Last Session

1hr 48mins (12A)

Based on a play by Mark St. Germain, Freud’s Last Session wonders what would have happened if “two of the greatest minds of the 20th century” – Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis – had met to thrash out the existence of God, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. “Thrash it out they do but, alas, they cannot thrash any life into this film. If you are planning to see it at the cinema, a few espressos beforehand may not go amiss.” The film is set over the course of 3 September 1939, the day that Chamberlain declared war in response to Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Freud (Anthony Hopkins), a staunch atheist, is dying of cancer and has invited Lewis (Matthew Goode), a man of deep Christian faith, to his Hampstead home. Unfortunately, “their discussions, although elegantly worded, don’t ever amount to much more than a classroom debate – if there is a God, why is there pain? (etc., etc.) – and nothing ever really goes anywhere”. To make matters worse Freud, to “counter the usual inertness of a two-hander”, is “kept on the move, going from this room to that”. I wanted to “shout at the screen: ‘For pity’s sake, let the poor old fella have a sit! Can’t you see he’s on his last legs?’”

This “dustily decorous” film didn’t charm me, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. “Every scene feels so quietly pleased with the tweedy prestige of its premise that the duo’s rhetorical moves never actually enlighten or surprise”; and many scenes are “blanketed in near-parodic levels of gloom”. With apologies to Freud, “sometimes a dud is just a dud”. Hopkins performs with “brio”, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. But alas, the film amounts to a pretty lifeless “academic parlour game that turns into a joint therapy session, raking over the tragedies in both men’s past”.

Treasure,”