The Father

By: Jennifer Verzuh

Watching The Father is a particularly frustrating experience. The narrative is far from straightforward, the timeline is jumbled, and the characters, performances and set are often inconsistent. However, these observations aren’t a complaint here. In fact, far from it.  The disorienting nature of The Father is its greatest accomplishment.

The film seeks to showcase the horrifying nature of dementia and the impact on an individual and those close to them. It accomplishes this through the story of Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), an aging man who is reluctant to admit his increasing memory issues, leave his flat and accept help from his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) or caretakers. Adapting his own 2012 play, director and co-writer Florian Zeller took a unique approach in examining this disease. He puts the audience in Anthony’s shoes. Viewers experience his confusion, anger, sadness and joys. His memory loss and inability to recognize individuals or locations properly become directly apparent to us visually thanks to specific directing and design choices from Zeller and his team. The result is heartbreaking, frightening and incredibly effective. Not only do we relate to his daughter’s hurt at watching her father begin to lose himself, but we come to understand his pain as well.

The film wouldn’t work without the committed, emotional performance at its center though. Hopkins does some of the very best work of his long and acclaimed career. Such deep vulnerability is required of him here and he fully delivers. The subtle shifts in his face as he turns from anger to confusion to sadness are palpable and devastating. It’s difficult to watch him in many scenes given how raw and painfully tragic they are. Yet, it would be near impossible to turn the film off halfway through given how easy he makes it to invest his character and struggles.

He also manages to connect thoroughly with his co-star Colman in each of their scenes together. Although there is clearly love between them, there is also a certain degree of resentment and dependence present. The two actors are able to pick up on all the nuances necessary for their characters to present a very honest, imperfect and complex father-daughter relationship.

How The Father works on stage I can’t say. But as a film it truly is something special and deeply felt. Zeller’s intelligent and insightful direction and script and Hopkins and Colman’s performances create a remarkably empathetic portrait of dementia worth watching.