The Father | Little White Lies

The Father

09 Jun 2021 / Released: 11 Jun 2021

Elderly man with grey hair and beard sitting in a chair, wearing a dark green jumper.
Elderly man with grey hair and beard sitting in a chair, wearing a dark green jumper.
3

Anticipation.

Looks a bit stuffy, as stage-to-screen adaptations often are.

4

Enjoyment.

Hopkins and Colman are superb in this claustrophobic chamber piece.

5

In Retrospect.

Haunting and credible, powered by some unshakable performances.

Antho­ny Hop­kins is at the peak of his act­ing pow­ers in this mov­ing dra­ma about the banal­i­ty of ageing.

Sta­tis­tics from Alzeimer’s Research UK state that one in five peo­ple over the age of 85 have demen­tia, which means that almost every per­son dur­ing their life­time will either expe­ri­ence the dis­ease them­selves or by proxy. There is no known cure, and lit­tle is under­stood about how to pre­vent the onset of this con­di­tion which caus­es suf­fer­ers to under­go pro­gres­sive cog­ni­tive decline.

In a 2019 study, 42 per cent of UK adults said that demen­tia was the health con­di­tion they feared devel­op­ing the most, ris­ing to 51 per cent in those over 65. But if we’re all so afraid of demen­tia, why can’t we talk about it? Why are patients resigned to care homes, and why do fam­i­lies have to shoul­der so much of the respon­si­bil­i­ty and pain for car­ing for loved ones under­go­ing such a fright­en­ing and painful experience?

Flo­ri­an Zeller’s direc­to­r­i­al debut doesn’t answer these ques­tions, but it does open the door to a world of tor­ment that will be all too famil­iar to those who have wit­nessed the impact of demen­tia. Based on Zeller’s play of the same name (pre­vi­ous­ly adapt­ed into French com­e­dy-dra­ma Floride in 2015) The Father takes place almost entire­ly inside a West Lon­don flat and com­pris­es of con­ver­sa­tions between retired engi­neer Antho­ny (Antho­ny Hop­kins) and his daugh­ter Anne (Olivia Col­man). It becomes clear ear­ly on that Antho­ny is suf­fer­ing from demen­tia, and Anne is strug­gling to help him come to terms with the illness.

A person speaking on a mobile phone in a supermarket aisle, surrounded by shelves of packaged goods.

Although sto­ries about demen­tia have become more com­mon in recent years (Richard Glatzer’s Still Alice was warm­ly received, as was Har­ry Macqueen’s forth­com­ing Super­no­va which is a sim­i­lar­ly thought­ful and ten­der por­tray­al of grief asso­ci­at­ed with the ill­ness), it’s proven dif­fi­cult for any film­mak­er to tru­ly pro­vide an insight into what it’s like to live with the con­fu­sion, anger and fear that demen­tia gen­er­ates in patients.

Where most sto­ries of demen­tia view it from the per­spec­tive of a loved one, The Father feels rad­i­cal in that it tells the sto­ry from the van­tage of the suf­fer­er. Through clever use of nar­ra­tive fram­ing and set design, we are com­plete­ly immersed in Anthony’s view­point, often as wrong-foot­ed as he is, strug­gling to make sense of changes in appear­ance or even what time of day it is.

Not since Michael Haneke’s Amour has a dra­ma felt so acute­ly dev­as­tat­ing in this man­ner, and as much as Haneke’s film relied on pow­er­ful work by Jean-Louis Trintig­nant and Emmanuelle Riva, Hop­kins and Col­man pro­duce some of their best work as a father and daugh­ter strug­gling to under­stand each oth­er. Antho­ny is a volatile, some­times crotch­ety, some­times charm­ing fig­ure, who thinks his daugh­ter is wor­ry­ing too much about him.

He insists he’s more than capa­ble of tak­ing care of him­self, although there’s mount­ing evi­dence to the con­trary. Anne attempts to pro­vide help in the form of Lau­ra (Imo­gen Poots), a vis­it­ing nurse, but Antho­ny reacts poor­ly to the offer of assis­tance and his symp­toms begin to wors­en. It’s a per­for­mance which requires remark­able nuance and Hop­kins has that in spades, flash­ing from objec­tion­able and acer­bic to child­like and vul­ner­a­ble on a dime. It’s a stark, unglam­orous turn from a mas­ter of his craft, cap­tur­ing the sense of a per­son being slow­ly erased by their ill­ness, and just how con­fus­ing, frus­trat­ing and fright­en­ing that must be.

Elderly man in red robe standing in room with bookcases.

The film also avoids tip­ping into mawk­ish ter­ri­to­ry through its spare use of music and aus­tere cin­e­matog­ra­phy, which keep the tem­per­a­ture cool through­out. Although Anne clear­ly cares for her father, it’s obvi­ous that she’s been put in an impos­si­ble posi­tion. A sense of pro­found lone­li­ness haunts the film, afflict­ing both father and daugh­ter, as they watch their old lives slip away.

Plac­ing us so square­ly in the posi­tion of some­one los­ing their mind makes The Father one of the most heart­break­ing films in recent mem­o­ry, all the more so for how famil­iar its sub­ject mat­ter is. There’s some­thing pro­found­ly sad about the fact that this sto­ry is far from unique; so many of us will recog­nise it in our own lives, or come to do so in time.

Yet art is a lens through which to process and under­stand our expe­ri­ences, and as such The Father feels like a land­mark for demen­tia rep­re­sen­ta­tion on screen, and may well encour­age con­ver­sa­tions around this uncom­fort­able top­ic. It may also evoke empa­thy at a time when demen­tia patients and their car­ers are more iso­lat­ed than ever before.

By no means is this creep­ing, some­times trou­bling dra­ma an easy watch, but it is an essen­tial one. The Father is an impact­ful and empa­thet­ic por­trait of the banal­i­ty of age­ing, and although it high­lights the deeply upset­ting ele­ments of demen­tia, it’s only through com­ing to terms with these that we can work towards a world where treat­ment for both patients and their fam­i­lies needn’t be.

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