Walking for My Dad and Aunt Alzheimers Clip Art
Critic's Choice
'The Father' Review: A Capricious Mind
Anthony Hopkins gives a scalding performance equally a man stricken past dementia in this clever drama.
- The Begetter
- NYT Critic'southward Pick
- Directed by Florian Zeller
- Drama
- PG-13
- 1h 37m
At once stupendously constructive and profoundly upsetting, "The Father" might exist the outset picture about dementia to requite me actual chills. On its face a elementary, uncomfortably familiar story about the heartbreaking mental refuse of a beloved parent, this showtime feature from the French novelist and playwright Florian Zeller plays with perspective and so cleverly that maintaining any kind of emotional distance is impossible.
The result is a picture that peers into corners many of us might prefer to leave unexplored. When we first meet Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), a hale octogenarian ensconced in an upscale London flat, we're primed to expect the kind of genteel entertainment Hopkins has long made his own. Merely Zeller, adapting (with Christopher Hampton) his acclaimed stage play, has zilch so cozy in mind; and when Anthony'southward center-aged girl, Anne (Olivia Colman), arrives to tell him she'southward moving to Paris to pursue a new relationship, his reaction escalates from bafflement to outright distress.
Anne is concerned. Anthony has just scared away his most recent caregiver later accusing her of theft, and a new one must be found. After Anne leaves, he hears a racket in the flat and discovers a strange human (Marking Gatiss) reading a newspaper. The man claims to exist Anne'due south husband, Paul, but isn't Anne divorced? And why is the man saying Anthony is their guest? Confused and upset, Anthony is relieved to hear Anne render — just now she's played past Olivia Williams and neither we nor Anthony recognize her. Afterwards still, Rufus Sewell appears as a very different, much angrier Paul, i who will nudge the moving picture's tone toward something more complicated and infinitely more dark.
Combining mystery and psychodrama, "The Father" is a majestic depiction of things falling away: People, environs and time itself are becoming ever more slippery. Every bit if to enforce gild on days that keep eluding him, Anthony clings obsessively to his watch. Morning turns to twilight in the space of a single breakfast exchange; conversation ceases whenever his second girl, Lucy, is mentioned. And while the audience will be able to slice together the plot'southward timeline, Zeller's relentlessly subjective approach places usa slap-bang in the eye of Anthony's distorted memories. It's a barbarous, terrifyingly simple technique, backed past a production design that manipulates the details of his surroundings just enough to make usa question where — and when — we are.
Whether every bit Lear or Lecter, Hopkins has never been an specially physical actor — virtually of the magic happens above the cervix — just here he pushes his capacity for small, telling gestures and stillness to distressing limits. For Anthony, senility doesn't pitter-patter, it pounces, and he responds by freezing until it retreats. When it doesn't, his disorientation manifests in means that require Hopkins to swerve, sometimes on a dime, from mischievous to enraged and from charming to laceratingly vicious. Information technology's an astonishing, devilish performance, one that turns a meeting with Anthony's new caregiver (a terrific Imogen Poots) into a principal class of manipulation.
At that place is honey in "The Father" — most of it radiating from Colman'southward wonderfully warm presence — but there's no sugarcoating: Compassionate nonetheless unsparing, the pic is more likely to requite you lot nightmares than warm fuzzies.
"Do you intend to go on ruining your daughter's life?" Sewell's Paul hisses to Anthony at 1 point, his resentment hanging thickly in the air. Sewell's screen time is limited, simply crucial, his wounded operation revealing a marriage fraying from the strain of Anthony's condition. That stress results in a couple of scenes that venture shockingly shut to horror, and peradventure that'south appropriate. In a recent interview, Hopkins confessed to becoming momentarily overwhelmed during filming by a reminder of his ain mortality. He probably won't be the only person to have that response.
The Father
Rated PG-13 for distressing language and themes. Running time: 1 60 minutes 37 minutes. In theaters. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/25/movies/the-father-review.html
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