OVP: The Father (2020)

Film: The Father (2020)

Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Rufus Sewell, Imogen Poots, Mark Gatiss, Olivia Williams

Director: Florian Zeller

Oscar History: 6 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actor-Anthony Hopkins*, Supporting Actress-Olivia Colman, Film Editing, Production Design, Adapted Screenplay*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Movies are not reality.  This is true in obvious ways (you don't encounter dragons & aliens just randomly in real life), but it also is true in the sense that our approach to reality shifts when we're trying to decipher a movie compared to real-life.  I realized this shortly into Florian Zeller's debut film The Father, which is based on the Tony-winning play.  Despite the trailers being pretty clear about what I was getting into, in a movie about shifting narrative & direction, I kept expecting twists, confusion & more of a traditional thriller.  What I got, of course, was what was promised-a devastating look at aging, told in an almost fantastical way, and a jaw-dropping lead performance from Anthony Hopkins.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Father is not a movie that fits a traditional narrative-style, but essentially it's the story of Anthony (Hopkins), a well-to-do man who lives in an elegant London flat, and frequently gets visits from his daughter Anne (Colman), who is worried that he is getting too old to stay in his flat by herself.  She intends to go to Paris with her fiancé, and it seems wants to move him into a more manageable place since he's started having memory issues & she's worried about him being on his own. Initially we're meant to wonder just a little bit if Anne is telling the truth, as Anthony, though curmudgeonly, seems pretty lucid & together, if slightly forgetful, and he does have a beautiful apartment (and presumably wealth to go with it).

As the film unfolds, though, we find this isn't a thriller, and it isn't even clear what is reality.  Throughout the movie, we stay entirely in Anthony's purview, and as a result we don't know what's happening.  Anne, in some scenes, is moving to Paris whereas in other scenes she's not, and has been married for years to her previous husband-the actress who plays Anne shifts in select scenes to Olivia Williams, and time becomes a moving construct.  As we continue, we begin to lose our sense of self & position, we can no longer understand what is real in Anthony's world & what isn't...in much the same way that Anthony can't.  The film smartly decides not to tell us truly what happens until the very last scene, and even then, we wonder if the movie is landing on the truth, or if we will continue to spin past the credits.  

It's harrowing stuff, thinking about how this is what aging can do to you, and it's made better through Hopkins' work in the lead.  There's no hints of Hannibal Lecter, of Richard Nixon, of Robert Ford.  Hopkins creates his own man here, and pulls off a tricky part-this would be easy to milk for quick sympathy or trying to make his Anthony too cruel, but Hopkins gives him round edges & shows the unfairness for those around him of "good days and bad days" (as the cliche goes).  He's coupled with a terrific scene partner in Colman, who plays her Anne as the neglected child, the sister that lived (it's not always clear how, but her sister died years earlier & was obviously Anthony's favorite while Anne was favored by her mother).  You don't oftentimes see the effects of the relationship between "the non-favorite child & the non-favorite parent" onscreen without the comparison of the "favorite" being there, but both actors bring such a rich history to these parts that you can see it in the way that Colman's Anne, likely on the verge of a better happiness & with more of her life left to live, decides between duty & a (tested) love for her father, who never saw her as the daughter he cherished the most.

In general in 2020, I've been turned off by most stage-to-screen adaptations-they haven't adapted properly to the medium, and oftentimes feel too small or like they can't push their story to the big screen without growing pains, but The Father does it masterfully, to the point where you don't see the stage roots at all.  This is helped by excellent production design & in particular A+ editing, as we see little touches on the set move or bend so that we are always in the same, familiar apartment but things aren't quite right.  The effect is one where, like the early stages of dementia, things feel familiar but also off, and that prickly feeling stays with us as we rarely leave this apartment, giving us a true idea of the claustrophobia of Anthony's world.