Lost in confusion
Anthony Hopkins takes on challenge of ‘The Father’
Anthony Hopkins is, of course, a titan of stage and screen. At 83, he’s lost none of his vigor, capacity for work or intuitive understanding of the complex men he plays.
In this week’s “The Father,” Hopkins triumphs with what is easily among the most challenging roles of his career. His character Anthony is an elderly Welshman whose continued loss of memory has prompted his daughter Anne (Oscar winner Olivia Colman, currently Queen Elizabeth in “The Crown”) to move into his flat to help care for him.
Instead of what might be expected in any portrait of a father and daughter trying to cope with Anthony’s diminishing capacities, “The Father” opts for something original and completely unexpected: It lets us see Anthony’s world from his often startling point of view.
Here, looming vividly large, are his confusion, misunderstandings, increasing fear and panic.
One moment Anne’s there, then Anthony finds himself talking to her “husband” (which she doesn’t have) or a care giver. Another woman, not Anne, says she’s his daughter.
Credit writer-director Florian Zeller for giving us an understanding of senility, a haunting portrait of a diminished mind from the inside.
Zeller, French and 41, is a Paris-based playwright whose 2012 theatrical version of “The Father” was hailed as a haunting portrait, one for the ages by a writer of exceptional ability.
With “The Father,” Zeller is making his film directing debut.
When “The Father” opened in 2014 in London’s West End, it had its first English-speaking success. Its 2016 arrival on Broadway won Frank Langella (“The Trial of the Chicago 7”) a best actor Tony award.
Zeller has subsequently scored with “The Son” in 2018 and “The Mother,” which ran off-Broadway with Isabelle Huppert (“Elle”) in 2019.
Hopkins’ last role, as Pope Benedict XVI in “The Two Popes” (2019), saw him Oscar-nominated for the fifth time as best supporting actor.
This film version of “The Father” has won multiple critics’ awards for Hopkins along with Golden Globe, Critics Choice and SAG nominations.
Oscar and BAFTA nominations aren’t announced yet but “The Father” remains an apparent front-runner in all the major categories.
Married three times, Hopkins has spoken about being a recovering alcoholic — he stopped drinking in 1975. He revealed in a 2017 interview he was diagnosed with “high end” Asperger’s Syndrome.
He is estranged from Abigail Hopkins, his only daughter.