‘The Father’ REVIEW: Sacrificial love is the strongest
‘The Father’ REVIEW: Sacrificial love is the strongest
Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) cries to Catherine (Olivia Williams).
This review contains minor spoilers on The Father.
Time is fleeting. It does not stop, it does not yield from its ever-constant course. With that said, humans are evolutionary beings insofar as we are able to cope with the changes brought upon by this natural force. Things of the distant past are catching up rapidly, and as they grow and develop, we do as well. But like it’s always been, no matter how hard we try our best to go further than the finish line, death, catalyzed by senescence, awaits at the end. What once was strong, relentless, and independent among other positive adjectives is now generalized into one: old.
This is one of the many lessons we can learn from Anthony Hopkins’ character Anthony—yes, you heard that right—in Florian Zeller’s directorial debut The Father, a heartbreaking drama film released in 2020. Now as you can see, this review contains minor spoilers as the author suggests for everyone who wishes to see the movie to go in blindly like he did. The following sentence contains the major plot point of the movie, but it is revealed in a way that is so sudden, it feels like a plot twist when it’s actually not. Are you ready? Okay, so the protagonist of the movie, which is obviously the father Anthony, suffers from dementia. His gradual loss of memory is shown throughout the movie.
Anthony talks to his daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman).
The Father is one of those “put-yourselves-in-their-shoes” movies where viewers can witness the life of Anthony who struggles with his dementia and old age. He’s got his daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman), by his side, as his companion. Their relationship seems to be a little complicated from the start as we can learn from their many conversations that Anthony favors his other, younger daughter Lucy. Now their bond is put to the test when Anne tells her father that she plans on moving to Paris with her new partner, Paul. Nine minutes in and Anthony bares his emotional character to the audience with his response to Anne, “You’re leaving me... you’re abandoning me.”
That scene alone is enough to make a person cry a river, but there are more dramatic events to come as Anthony’s world is changed by his progressing memory loss. He mistakes this for that and has a hard time identifying what’s real and what’s not. There are even times where he pictures Anne and his husband with a different face. When people deem a movie as mind-bending, most of the time, we think of Nolan, Noé, Kaufman, Lynch, and Jodorowsky among others. The Father isn’t necessarily such a movie as it is more of a drama, although it does feature an 80-year old man suffering from dementia, and we and everyone close to him are as confused as he is.
Like Inception, the movie has its own totem—something to assure the person that what he is seeing is indeed true and not a dream or in this case, a memory distortion of his creation. Anne takes the form of this symbol and becomes her father’s anchor, a literal and metaphorical one as Anne is also his emotional sponsor. Although there is one scene in the hospital where Anne says that she’s not going to Paris that contradicts what she says in the beginning, it’s still resolved in the end as she still pursued a new life with Paul. She probably just denied it or was still having doubts when her father brought it up again, but it does not change the fact that she is the one who tethers him to reality.
Anne drinks a cup of herbal tea at night in this picture perfect shot.
There is a crisis in Anthony’s mind—he thinks that everyone is making him feel as if his body isn’t his by being manipulative and controlling when in fact, they just want to help. This personality can be a symptom of dementia where the person in question is irritated by the people around him, but it can also simply be a sign of aging which makes the film more relatable as everyone has that grandparent who acts the same. Old people are so used to being the ones in charge that when they are stripped off those privileges, they revolt. This can be seen from Anthony’s frustration towards the different caregivers that Anne hires for him.
The film also does an excellent job in painting the portrait of a loving child through Anne who gives up a lot of opportunities for her father. She obviously gives up a large amount of her time with all her daily visits to her father as she tends to his needs. In addition to this, one can assume that her divorce with James might be due to her giving too much attention to her father and too little to her husband. We can safely jump to that conclusion as she has a fight similar to this with Paul, her current partner. Alongside this, she offers bits of her sanity every time she is treated to a rhubarb with her father that she even thinks of killing him at one point. On top of this, her father has been vocal about her younger sister being his favorite. But her heart prevails as it is the center of this movie, that sacrificial love is the strongest, and that it does not really feel like you are sacrificing when you do it for the ones that you love.
In Anthony’s hallucinations, we are introduced to a character who calls himself Paul and is one of the confusing things you’ll get to witness in the film as he also claims he is Anne’s husband for ten years. Well, he’s got the name right, but we later learn that he’s just another figment of Anthony’s condition. But his role is actually a representation of Anthony’s introspection and self-criticism. The impostor guilt-trips Anthony in every scene he’s in, frankly stating, “Do you intend to go on ruining your daughter’s life?” and then slaps Anthony until he cries—an opportunity for Hopkins to grace us with his talent.
This is one of the toughest things a person can ever feel in his life: the feeling of being a burden to others. To quote from Mark Rutherford’s essay Talking About Our Troubles, “...and what an agony it is to know that we are tended simply as a duty by those who are nearest to us, and that they will really be relieved when we have departed!” On top of his stifling illness, he has this battle in his mind that his daughter is just waiting for him to die, and that she is better off without him. Saccharine and personal, Zeller’s The Father is a movie that will tug at your heartstrings and will make you appreciate your parents more.
Mark Gatiss plays the impostor Paul who represents Anthony’s self-loathing.
The technical aspect of the movie shines too due in no small part to Ben Smithard (cinematographer), Peter Francis (production designer), and Ludovico Einaudi (composer). The cinematography is heavy on intimacy with frames that imitate the feeling of a warm hug. The production design also goes hand in hand with the former to give us a raw filmic product reminiscent of Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels. And last but not the least, as it’s the one that stands out, is the music that does not only fill one with sadness, but is also firm on making one anxious.
The Father is based on the director’s 2012 play Le Père; it is a devastating autobiography of sorts as Florian Zeller said that it was inspired by his grandmother who, when he was 15, began to suffer from dementia. These two reasons are what make up the film’s personal core. The movie works out like a play as one can observe from the smooth transitions. Zeller’s struggles resonate with Anne’s and everyone else who has been in their position, feeling distraught and helpless as your loved one is hurting. The Father might not be the best family drama there is, but it sure is a good one and deserving of its Best Picture nomination.
The Father is out in select theaters and is now available on Amazon Prime Video, FandangoNOW, Apple TV, Vudu, and more.
