Regular readers know I am a SAG member and it is award season which means that I get a slew of "For Your Consideration" films in my mail box, with nary enough time to watch them all. But I made a point of starting my award season viewing with this film, "The Father."
And regular readers also know that when I write about a film I have seen or a book I have read, I don't like to give any spoilers. I believe that such pieces of art should be experienced how the artist (screenwriter, director, author, actor) intended it to be. The story, whether filmed or written, unfolds as it does for a reason. Information comes when it should, and the narrative happens to recreate an idea or emotion in us, the audience. But I simply can't write anything about "The Father" without spoilers. So if you have not seen the film yet, and you wish to, please do not read on.
The film in its whole is astonishing. In all aspects. But if we break it down, the foundation is clearly the miraculous script. Not only is the writing stellar, but it is the structure of the script that is, dare I say it, revolutionary. As you probably know, the story is about a daughter dealing with the challenge of her ageing father's progressing dementia. But instead of placing our point of view with the daughter, or even an objective, remote point of view, we are placed inside the father...completely subjectively seeing and experiencing the events of the story. And this is the astonishing part of the film: we are allowed to feel the confusion, the fear of, and anger at the shifting, surreal, dreamlike world around us. The father's view point is our solid starting point and all we can do, like him, is watch with suspicion and confusion as people and locations change around us without any explanation.
It's easy to watch someone suffer from dementia (I say that from the point of view of a film of course...I know it is not easy at all to watch a loved one suffer from dementia), from the outside. We can look at the petulant behavior, the stubbornness, the outbursts, and think that, on some level, they are simply acting childish, or perhaps even spiteful. But this film allows us to see that, of course, one would think one is being tricked, duped, cheated...to have someone stand in front of you and claim they are your daughter or son or wife or husband when you know for a fact they are not is disorienting. I can see how someone with dementia could be driven to a rage with such perceived, unexplained treachery.
And because of this, we feel this betrayal, confusion, anger, and eventually sadness at not being able to control all the lies being told. The script shows this story in a not-quite-linear progression: we begin in the father's flat, but after he drives away anyone who is hired by his daughter to care for him, he is moved to his daughter's flat. But in a stroke of genius on the part of the filmmakers (Florian Zeller directed this film adaptation, co-written by Sir Christopher Hampton, from his original stage play), the daughter's flat is laid out exactly like the father's, a doppelgänger, a replica, only with a few small changes: the furniture is slightly different, the wall colors are different. In some scenes, the contents of the flat are packed up and ready to move. But then, confusingly, we return to the father's or daughter's flat. We are introduced to a man who may or not be the daughter's current or ex-husband, and another man who may or may not be the daughter's current love interest with whom his daughter may or may not be moving to Paris. Locations and faces and identities shift until we end up, heartbreakingly, at a place where the father is disconnected and broken.
And none of this would pack the emotional and psychogenic punch it does without the mastery and breathtaking skill of Sir Anthony Hopkins who never plays the situation, and Olivia Colman who plays the emotional tightrope walk of living with so much instability. It is an extraordinary film.
Recommend? Absolutely.
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