STARRING ANTHONY HOPKINS, OLIVIA COLMAN, OLIVIA WILLIAMS, IMOGEN POOTS, RUFUS SEWELL AND MARK GATISS.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
Oh boy oh boy oh boy. Wowee-wow. Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for his portrayal of the titular father in this, and the film-makers won another one for Best Adapted Screenplay, and no wonder. This is a beautiful, flawless and agonisingly painful portrait of a man with dementia, a man whose once fine, needle-sharp brain is falling away from him piece by piece, leaving him devastated.
Anthony Hopkins is sublimely good in the lead role. He plays an old man, also called Anthony, who is living with his daughter, Anne. He finds life these days strange and confusing. He keeps losing or mis-placing things, forgetting things and people. Whenever he painfully adapts to one reality, the director immediately changes it up so that Anthony, but also the viewer, is left wondering, which reality is real?
Does Anthony live in his own flat with his daughter, or is he living with Anne in Anne’s flat? Is Anne married or divorced, and is her husband called Paul or James? Is this husband or is he not abusive to Anthony, because he’s fed up with all the sacrifices his wife has had to make to accommodate her ageing father? Is Anthony’s home carer the young blonde Laura, or the much older dark-haired woman? Did someone steal Anthony’s watch or has he just forgotten where he’s hidden it as usual?
The scenes segue-way seamlessly into each other as Anthony is confronted with different realities, whilst being unable to tell which is real, which is the past, which is the present and which simply may never have happened at all.
Anthony Hopkins, surely the greatest actor of his generation, runs the full gamut of emotions here, from angry and accusatory to sly and sarcastic to frightened and helpless, calling for his mother who would of course be long dead by now.
His performance is so immaculate he won the Oscar for it. They should have given him all the Oscars and just been done with it. You will bawl like a baby at the end, by the way, so be warned. The last scene, with the trees rustling in the breeze against a glorious English sky, is just stunning to look at and deeply moving, especially given what’s transpired just before.
I love Anthony Hopkins. I’ll be gutted when he eventually shuffles off his mortal coil, which hopefully won’t be for a long time yet. My favourite movies of his, in chronological order, would be THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980), ARCH OF TRIUMPH (1984), 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD (1987), THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991), HOWARD’S END (1992), THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (1993) and HANNIBAL (2001), the sequel to THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.
Hannibal Lecter, his character in these two superb films LAMBS and HANNIBAL, has some fantastic lines of dialogue:
‘I’m having an old friend for dinner…’
‘So, bowels in, or bowels out?… Bowels out it is then.’
‘I’m giving serious thought… to eating your wife…’
‘Well, hello, Clarice…’ This last one mightn’t sound like the sparkliest repartee ever recorded, but it’s the way he says it and the way he looks at Jodie Foster as FBI agent Clarice Starling, like he’s amused by her on the one hand and wants to eat her face off on the other.
They have a strange relationship, that pair. He’s fascinated by her and even respects her, and she, though repelled by what he’s done, still treats him like a human being. He likes her ‘shapely feet’ and buys her fabulous Gucci shoes and a matching designer dress, but I don’t think he’d want to have sex with her. I think he’d only want to look, and worship, and savour, but hey, I could be wrong. He could be as horny for her ‘cornpone country pussy’ as a toad in mating season, for all I know.
Anyway, THE FATHER is probably one of the best films on the subject of dementia you’ll ever watch. It covers such related topics as elder abuse (very upsetting to see) and the pressures and burdens placed on adult children who have to care for aged parents with the memory loss, difficulties with performing everyday tasks and emotional problems which all come under the umbrella of dementia.
I’m glad Anthony Hopkins won another Oscar late in his career. Not only did he thoroughly deserve it for this, but it’s also a bit like a nice bookend to it all. Although rumour has it that he will reprise his role of Anthony in Florian Zeller’s next film, THE SON. Hopefully we’ll all live to see that one.
(THE SON, THE MOTHER and this one, THE FATHER, initially formed a trilogy of plays written by Florian Zeller. See?)
Do watch THE FATHER anyway, streaming on Amazon Prime right now. Anthony Hopkins provides us with a masterclass in acting we’d have to be nuts to miss out on.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
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Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:
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sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris 
Part of a superb triology by Zeller
I must try to find the other two films and watch them, Harry!
You will be out of luck. The Father, The Mother & The Son were stage plays but were adapted for radio by the BBC. All superb.
Aw, thanks anyway, Harry!