The Father

I was a little hesitant about The Father before going in. It looked austere, worthy, SERIOUS! These adjectives can often equate to dullness so I was chuffed to find that looks were pretty deceiving in this case. This is a tricksy little gem of a film. Sure, it has all those aspects mentioned above but it's handled more like a thriller to be unboxed, uncrinkled, smoothed out. Anthony Hopkins plays Anthony (bravely retaining the name), the father of the title, whose daughter, Anne, played by Olivia Colman, is struggling to deal with his creeping dementia. This manifests in Anthony falling out with carers, even accusing them of stealing and generally being a rude prick to everybody.

The genius of the story is the way it presents Anthony's mental disintegration from his perspective. Without going into detail, the audience is riding along with the father as he attempts to make sense of all the comings and goings in his flat. This unknowing perspective is unsettling and not a little frustrating, plonking us in the situation of someone who suffers thus. Hopkins is amazing, obstreperous one minute, pathetic and desperate the next. Colman matches him in intensity and in frailty. These are two barn-storming performances but the whole film is peppered with knife-edged acting - from Mark Gatiss to Olivia Williams to Imogen Poots and Rufus Sewell - they all nail it here.

The director is a French playwright called Florian Zeller and he has adapted The Father from his own hit play, with a little help from Christopher Hampton, who has a pretty enviable resume to his name. Coincidentally, Hampton penned the Mike Newell film The Good Father in 1985, also starring Anthony Hopkins. Howzabout that then? No word as yet on how any of this connects to the Roger Michell film of 2003, The Mother. I'd say not at all, but like Anthony says "I feel like I'm losing all my leaves".

The Father opens with advance screenings at the Luna on March 26th.

See also:

Another, more low-key pearl from Hokpins is in James Ivory's The Remains of the Day (1993) and on the theme of aging, Alexander Payne's Nebraska (2013) is pretty good.