A formal experiment in the mental unraveling genre that boasts a tour de force Anthony Hopkins performance, The Father explores the existential horror of memories gone to soup. Begging audiences to step into the shoes of those experiencing Alzheimer’s, the debut film from writer-director Florian Zeller is an experiment in witnessing first-hand the cruelty of a disease that strips one’s mental facilities down to the nub.
As transportive (and disorienting) as donning a virtual reality headset, The Father removes the voyeuristic boundary between the observer and the observed and chucks us into the thick of it. We are left to experience events as Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) does, in a carousel of memories that swirl and overlap and intersect, often to the increasing distress and confusion of the protagonist.
Structured like a skipping record and edited like a freeform Memento, Zeller’s feature plays a clever trick that makes us question our own experience of events, simulating a taste of Alzheimer’s nasty tricks. A refreshing – and needed – pivot away from your typical old man loses mind drama, The Father plays with perspective and time in a clever, exhausting manner.
Adapted with the aid of screenwriter Christopher Hampton from Zeller’s celebrated stage play’ Le Père’, the script does feel at times like a rejigged stage-to-screen production but Yorgos Lamprinos’ daft editing and Peter Francis’ minimal but labyrinthine production design help the translation make sense of the chaos and remain a purposeful treatise on the pain of memory loss.
Flanked by a robust supporting cast, Hopkins offers a powerhouse performance as the unraveling lead, a stubborn man who refuses his caring but frazzled daughter’s help. As good as he’s ever been, Hopkins’ Anthony is at once trying to assert himself as a powerful and intelligent man but is always one step behind, trying to play catch up, unsure of who is who and what is where. It’s a brilliant turn, tragic and potent but also bitingly raw and revealing and Hopkins will surely be awarded at least a good shake of Best Actor nominations come the award’s circuit.
The father experiences so much swift and sudden change, with no warning, that we have to reorient our understanding of story structure to begin to interpret his world. Anytime any character leaves the room, consistency is chucked out the window, and Hopkins’ mind (and our experience of events) is subject to a complete reboot, throttling between days, weeks, years without marking the transition of time.
Much to his chagrin, Anthony’s well-meaning and sobering daughter Anne (played with a heavy-hearted Olivia Colman) just wants to help, her own romantic and social life upended by his illness, greeted only with thanklessness and biting attacks. As Anthony refuses help of any sort, lashing out at the world around him, holding onto dignity long escaped, his circle of support shrinks in on itself with every confused outburst. And as that circle eats into itself, so does his prison of mental deterioration grow.
CONCLUSION: A devastatingly affecting vérité exploration of dementia, Florian Zeller’s ‘The Father’ sees Anthony Hopkins offer one of the very best performances of his career.
.A-
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