2021 Oscars Review: The Father
Anthony (Anthony Hopkins, right) speaks with his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman, middle) and new caretaker Laura (Imogen Poots, left). Hopkins is nominated for Best Actor and Colman is nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the 93rd Academy Awards.
Just two more movies to go! This time, Tom writes about The Father, a film in which Anthony Hopkins plays an elderly man struggling to maintain his identity and autonomy as he battles dementia. Directed by Florian Zeller and based on Zeller’s own play Le Père, The Father is nominated for six Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actress, and Adapted Screenplay. It is currently available to rent, though it will hopefully be available on streaming services soon.
“Why do you keep looking as if there’s something wrong? Everything is fine.”
Have you ever watched a movie in which one of the characters has Alzheimer’s (not “old timers’!!!”) disease? Portrayals of people afflicted with the disease usually range from effective but crushingly sad (Julianne Moore in Still Alice) to hokey (John Lithgow in Rise of the Planet of the Apes) to “…what?” (Gena Rowlands in The Notebook). It’s really hard for a writer or an actor to strike the delicate balance of care needed to capture the difficulty of dealing with Alzheimer’s without it feeling fake, so it’s no surprise that it’s rare for a portrayal to really, truly land. Moore’s is an exception, as her performance in Still Alice is one of my favorites I’ve ever watched. She’s incredible.
Likewise, in The Father, Anthony Hopkins lives up to his reputation as one of the greatest actors who has ever lived. His character, also named Anthony (but pronounced “Antony”), begins the film at a crossroads, and the opening seen is a microcosm of the entire film. His daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) visits him after he had previously accused his latest in-home caretaker of stealing his watch, causing her to quit. Anne reminds Anthony that he puts his watch in the same place every day, in the bathroom, and she retrieves it for him. She then implores Anthony to trust the next caretaker because she is moving to France to be with her boyfriend. Anthony is taken aback by this; he reminds her that she is married to a man named James. Anxiously sighing, Anne reminds Anthony that she and James have been divorced for five years.
Once Anne leaves, Anthony walks into the other room of his flat and runs into a man named Paul (Mark Gatiss), whom he does not recognize. The men talk, and Paul explains that he lives with Anthony and Anne. But wait, isn’t this Anthony’s flat? Or is it Anne’s? Who is this guy? Shortly thereafter, a woman (Olivia Williams) returns home with a chicken to roast for dinner, and much to Anthony’s bewilderment, she says that she is Anne. But…but Olivia Williams and Olivia Colman are two different people! Olivia Williams was Bruce Willis’s wife in The Sixth Sense! She was in An Education with Carey Mulligan! Olivia Colman, on the other hand is a completely different actress: you know her from Broadchurch, The Favourite, Fleabag, and The Crown, among many other things. (Confusingly, though, they were both in Hyde Park on Hudson, so I get it, Anthony). I promise you, these are two different people who don’t even look much alike.
For the remainder of the movie, the mystery unfolds. I’m not going to spoil the entire plot, because you really have to see this one to truly appreciate it. But you get the idea. Throughout the film, Anthony does his best to show that he is still a self-sufficient, autonomous man. He even spins a yarn to his newest caretaker Laura (Imogen Poots) about how she looks like his other daughter, Anne’s sister Lucy, who he hasn’t seen in a while. He also attempts to convince Laura that he used to be a tap dancer, demonstrating his skills while wearing his morning robe. He does his best to show off, but it’s blatantly obvious to the viewer that Anthony is having trouble and he’s lashing out. Anne repeatedly tries to tell him that it’s okay that he’s having trouble and that she and Laura are there to help, but Anthony refuses any and all assistance, continuing to try to rationalize and normalize his situation.
There’s one thing that sets The Father apart from other films that have portrayed people with Alzheimer’s: it centers Anthony as the point-of-view character and allows the viewer to experience what he experiences as his dementia seemingly progresses. Since director Florian Zeller’s source material was his own play, it made for an effective transition to a film mostly set in the same room. The cast is very small, and Hopkins and Colman are clearly the two leads, and the film is better for it. As there aren’t very many characters to get to know, the viewer has the opportunity to explore Anthony’s psyche and feel the disorientation that he feels in a more acute way. Anthony’s confusion is the viewer’s confusion. His rationalizations sometimes make sense, although the dramatic irony is that the viewer understands and accepts Anthony’s mental state more than he does.
Centering the film around Anthony is a way of showing, not telling, the experience of a person suffering from dementia. Typically, portrayals of people with Alzheimer’s (and mental illnesses in general) involve an outsider observing the person with dementia acting irrationally in some way - forgetting certain rudimentary aspects of their lives, walking around in a state of dishevelment, speaking incoherently, etc. In The Father, though, Anthony seems to still possess much of his mental faculties. He is a proud, cultured man: he listens to opera in the mornings, he has nice watches and comfortable robes. He’s not always out of the loop. Although the viewer understands that Anthony isn’t coming back to his old self, Anthony and Anne experience some form of relief any time Anthony shows lucidity. As Colman put it in an interview with Town and Country Magazine:
I'd never seen that point of view. I'd seen programs and films made about dementia, and you were an onlooker watching. But to read it, to be as confused as the person, as Anthony Hopkins’s character, was an extraordinary point of view that I'd never considered. Suddenly it felt like like, “Oh God, of course that's how awful it feels.” I can't imagine anything that touches it in quite the same way, and quite so beautifully, as Florian's script.
Similarly, Zeller described the film as a “labyrinth” and explained that he sought to disorient the audience and make them “question everything they are witnessing.” He describes his purpose, though, as something more positive and concrete: despite highlighting the viewer’s fear of aging and deteriorating, Zeller stated that the film’s message “was also to highlight the fact that we are alive, and we have to enjoy it as much as possible.”
To his point, the way the movie plays out is phenomenal, and that’s because it’s largely not as crushing or depressing as others like Still Alice. It comes off almost as a mystery or a psychological thriller, and once the curtain is pulled back, the viewer doesn’t feel as if the structure of the film is a gimmick. It could have been corny, melodramatic, or even disrespectful, but Hopkins and Colman (both Best Actor/Actress winners, it should be noted) are such great performers that every emotion, every moment, every thought feels so real. It takes a particular type of counterpart to stand toe-to-toe with the giant that is Hopkins, and Colman is predictably up to the task. Throughout the ebbs and flows of Anthony’s battle, Colman’s facial expressions and tone appropriately change with him, and her sharp, quick-witted delivery matches his. You look at the two of them and feel like Anthony is Anne’s father. You might not think that’s an incredible thing to say about a movie since that’s what actors are supposed to feel like, but when the movie is literally based around a father-daughter relationship and one of them is onscreen for almost all, if not the entirety of the movie, the two characters have to have perfect chemistry. These two do.
As you might have inferred, while Anthony is the eyes of the viewer, Anne is the heart. You see her break as the film continues on. After Anthony embarrasses her in front of Laura with knifelike sideswipes, including saying that Anne is “not very bright or intelligent,” and that she got that from her mother, Anne continues to push forward as any loving daughter would, understanding the scenario. And she even holds it together when Anthony proclaims that he is going to outlive her. She knows he doesn’t mean it. She knows he’s a prideful man desperately clinging to autonomy. But that doesn’t make it any easier for her, of course - she has conversations with multiple people in which the viewer sees a bit more inside her psyche as well. She knows what’s happening. And for anyone who has older parents, you get it. They can be stubborn as hell! Aging is hard! Aging is hard without the ravenous disease that is Alzheimer’s. I can’t imagine having not only all of your physical faculties decline, but losing control of your mental state too. It’s just horrible. And Colman portrays what I imagine it might be like to have a parent like this.
In fact, Zeller relayed to Deadline his firsthand experience with his grandmother’s dementia in his mid-teens. He further explained to NPR that it was "a painful process . . . to suddenly be impotent . . . . You know, you can love someone and you discover that love is not enough." This is a crushing thought, but one that all of us have dealt with or likely will deal with at some point in the future. And that’s where his inspiration for his Tony-winning play, and now his Oscar-nominated film, came from.
And Hopkins understood what was needed from him as well, and he related to and embraced the challenge. “I am 83 now, so I’m at that dangerous age,” he said. “It felt very second-nature to me. I don’t know why—maybe because I’ve been [in this business] a long time. It was such a wonderful part to play, but it was so easy because I guess I’m closer to it now.” He candidly told NPR about his view on life which is simultaneously nihilistic and inspiring:
I remember standing at my father's bedside after he died . . . my mother was with him, with his body . . . . And I remember thinking to myself: Yeah, you're not so hot either, because one day it'll happen to you. This is life. And when death presents itself to you in those moments . . . well, we have no control and we don't know what's coming. We have no means of predicting anything. And there's a great freedom in that — in realizing that we are inadequate, really. So, for me to play this — part of it was easy and in a way, yes, life-changing. It's made me think even deeper.
It reminds me of a song by one of my favorite artists, Hozier, called “No Plan.” The song essentially is about finding love and comfort despite the fact that it’s all going to end one day. In the chorus, he croons: “There’s no plan, there’s no race to be run/The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun/There’s no plan, there’s no kingdom to come/I’ll be your man if you got love to get done.” Hozier’s take is a bit more apocalyptic, but the general analogy also sums up Hopkins’ view on The Father and on life in general. You don’t have control, and you’ll never know what’s going to happen next. But once you find your way into submitting to that inevitability, it’s truly freeing and will allow you to live the rest of your life to the fullest. Understanding what’s at the end of the road and how small we are in the grand scheme of things is key to freedom and individualism. And that’s what The Father is all about. It’s there to help us understand that no matter what, you should live as autonomously as you can, because one day, you won’t be able to anymore. So do it now!
To finally bring this review to a close: when you bring together a group of greats at the top of their game, you get The Father. I can’t recommend it enough - despite the subject matter, the movie is…weirdly fun? It’s amazing to watch Hopkins and Colman cook. I promise you that you won’t walk away from this movie feeling like the life was sucked out of you. You’ll walk away with appreciation for Hopkins, Colman, all of those involved in creating The Father, and for life itself. Plus, it’s only an hour and a half long! Watch this instead of three reruns of the same Office episodes you’ve seen 15 billion times. As for the awards it’s nominated for, I think it actually has a chance at Best Actor for Hopkins, though that award category had been seen as a lock for Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) until somewhat recently. But man, what I wouldn’t do for another Olivia Colman speech like at the 2019 Oscars. I think I liked Yuh-jung Youn (Minari) a little bit more in the Best Supporting Actress category, but if Colman ends up with the statue, it would be well-deserved. And if it happens, you better buckle your seatbelt.
Rating: 9/10