I am worried. It’s very worrying.
I really dislike the title of this movie. I mean, the main character of the movie is a father and the main relationship of the movie is between him and his daughter, but it’s just such a generic, uninteresting title. And if all you’ve heard about the movie is the basic premise, the movie itself sounds equally generic. It’s about an old man falling into dementia and the strain that puts on both himself and his daughter. I mean, sounds like a tear jerker, but not one we haven’t already seen before.
But the movie is anything but generic. I think it’s that basic screenplay, adapted from Zeller’s original play, that really sets this movie apart. It’s dedicated to really putting the audience into the experience the main character is having as he slowly loses his grip on reality and certainty. It’s really smart about how it does this. Sometimes it uses more than one actor in a role; in one early scene, Anthony, the main character, is desperate for his daughter to return from shopping, but when she does, it’s not Olivia Colman, who we’ve already seen as his daughter Anne; it’s another woman, like the “real” Anne, but . . . not quite right and certainly not her. The script is also purposely contradictory in the details and there’s a really masterful scene at one point that revolves around a dinner being shared by Anthony, Anne & Anne’s husband, Paul, that I won’t spoil, but the writing there is just top-notch. Creating this lived reality is this movie’s greatest achievement, I think, and I was genuinely still unpacking some of those scenes days later, realizing what might have “really” happened in some of those scenes and seeing new resonances and meanings in the tricks that Anthony’s mind played on him and on me.
Of course, the performances are getting a lot of praise and all of it is richly deserved in my opinion. The script is also very good on a character level; it isn’t just purely an intellectual exercise in creating confusion and dislocation. And the cast just sinks their teeth into the roles here with brilliance. Anthony Hopkins is . . . and I know this is going to sound weird being said about somebody that I’ve been watching act for decades now, but . . . he’s revelatory. He’s just kind of amazing and I went in expecting really good work. He really does just disappear into this part; he still has some of his vocal rhythms and such. I don’t mean that it’s a transformative performance exactly, but I really did just kind of forget I was watching Anthony Hopkins. It’s probably his best performance and he’s given a lot of extremely great ones. And I loved that the movie didn’t try to make Anthony out to be a saint, just because he’s suffering. Anthony is a frustrating character and, you get the feeling, he already was before the dementia started. There’s an astonishing long scene of him pretending to be very nice and very charming and then just lowering the boom on a couple of characters with a torrent of verbal abuse and he is, shockingly, fully lucid in that scene, not lost at all, painfully precise in his hurtful language.
Olivia Colman is, as usual, note perfect. It’s difficult to talk about Olivia Colman as a performer because I just don’t know that I’ve ever seen her make a wrong choice on screen and she’s always absolutely right in terms of the character and the character’s role in the story. That’s why she is capable of dominating a movie by giving the kind of absolutely epic performance she gave in The Favourite and yet also capable of settling perfectly into a supporting role here, landing every moment with grace and perfect emotional truth, but never stealing focus. The rest of the cast is also very good. Rufus Sewell is a guy I haven’t seen in forever, but he’s absolutely perfect as Anne’s jerk of a husband, communicating frustration and irritation without saying a word. Imogen Poots is great in her small, but significant, role. Olivia Williams & Mark Gatiss have the most thankless parts as the performers that show up when Anthony’s grip on reality is slipping and they’re both absolutely brilliant.
This movie really did knock me out. I’d love to see a theatrical presentation of this play; it mostly all takes place in the one central location, so I could see it working quite well. The best scenes here are the long ones, where you really get to see the characters rubbing against each other. But this isn’t at all a static film; it has a lot of life and it isn’t just a filmed play. Zeller has a good eye. And a good script and a good cast, as I’ve said. With those components, the end result is one anybody could see coming: a great movie. 4 stars.
tl;dr – emotionally draining, incredibly well-written and impeccably acted, The Father puts you right in the experience of a man losing his grip on reality; a knock-out of a movie. 4 stars.