The Father (2021)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Easily the most immersive movie to depict the inner life of someone with dementia, The Father is finally available for the masses to view. Critics hailed it as Anthony Hopkins's best work yet long before he won the highly contested Best Actor Oscar, and yet so few of us had been able to see it for ourselves. And, indeed, he does showcase some of the best acting of the year and of his lengthy career. With impossibly precise technique, he imbues his 80-something-year-old character (also named Anthony) with the vim and vigor of someone who will certainly not go gentle into his good night, whose charisma and charm match his toxic volatility. You get the distinct impression that he was a man of his time, and was never an easy man to be with, even before the dementia set in. And yet his wit and passion for life still seek outlets, and so he seems to crave the attention of various people passing through his London flat.

And while Hopkins is astonishing here, I can't help but feel the movie as a whole is being overlooked by critics and audiences with stars in their eyes. Writer/director Florian Zeller, in adapting his own play, fully puts us in Anthony's world. It must be said, he occasionally allows us moments of insight and pain by shifting our focus to Anthony's daughter (an awesome Olivia Colman), and various other characters played by Rufus Sewell, Mark Gatiss, Olivia Williams, and Imogen Poots; all are excellent here. But, locked as we are within Anthony's mind and flat, the film forces us to experience a world at once familiar and alien.

Production designer Peter Francis (The Children Act, King Lear) and editor Yorgos Lamprinos work hard to subtly change the flat in every scene, quietly shifting our sense of reality along with Anthony's. The tiles of the kitchen backsplash change colors; rooms will be messy or tidy in juxtaposed shots; the layout of rooms doesn't ever seem to make logical or architectural sense. In an inspired bit of casting, Olivia Williams sometimes enters and introduces herself as Anthony's daughter; she looks a bit like Colman, and the film never gives us certainty as to which is which. When Poots shows up as the new at-home caregiver, Anthony is almost randy with excitement before we learn that he was abusive and perhaps violent with the previous maid; after offering her an aperitif, his melancholia takes over and he muses about her resemblance to his other daughter.

As the scenes progress, Anthony (and the audience) isn't ever sure if his lived experience is real, or a memory, or perhaps a fantasy. Is it indeed his flat, or is he living with his troubled daughter? Is his daughter married to a weary and sour man, or did she recently fall in love with plans to move to Paris? Does he have a son-in-law, or did he? Or are there two now? As characters enter and exit, looking vaguely alike, usually irritated that Anthony cannot identify them, we never know who is who, or what is real, making each fleeting moment vital. The urgency of our attempting to understand it all comes from our desire for self-contained plots and YouTube videos to explain the connections; Zeller's film eschews that, and dares us to feel the pain of not having closure, or even comprehension.

Precious few movies are as complex and confusing as they are compelling and compassionate, and The Father gets it all right. It reminded me often of the rare movies that deal with these issues -- chief of which, Still Alice and Relic, would make an interesting (and depressing) triple feature -- and how effective they are when not dripping with sentiment. The sense of danger, of desperation, of fear make these movies all the more tragic; they also, I think, suggest hope and comfort in ways that are far more profound than you would find in a Hallmark special. But be sure to bring tissues to this one.