by Eric Blume
It's difficult to write reviews these days, because it feels like no film is ever actually "released", and all of us are scrambling to find what movies are even available, how they're available, if they're VOD, or on a streaming service, etc. Sony Pictures Classics might have made a fumble mostly holding back from view director Florian Zeller's The Father, taken from his own play, starring Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman: if more people could see it, everyone would be talking about it.
The Father is one of those Movies They Don't Make Anymore, i.e., a damn adult drama that challenges your mind and heart. This is a film where the entire creative team treats the audience with dignity and respect, trusting that you're listening and paying attention, and they will reward you with literate ideas, high drama, and an emotional experience. But The Father is more than just that: the storytelling and the visual conceit of the film are surprising and demanding, and it is not a passive undertaking for the viewer...
The less you know about this movie going in, the better, so without tackling plot, yes it is a story about an elderly person with dementia and his family. But unlike most of the stories on this theme, The Father tells it from the inside out rather than from the outside in, and the take is fleshed out in the most original and harrowing of ways.
Movies adapted from plays are harshly criticized for either not "opening them up" enough, or for opening them up TOO much. It's an unenviable situation for any filmmaker. But Zeller does something very tricky and smart with the movie version of his play. He both doubles-down on the "theatricality" of the piece, leaning into the heightened language and high drama inherent in the story, yet at the same time makes the movie supremely "cinematic" by using production design and editing in a way only the film medium can to situate it as a movie. Zeller's result is astonishing: you get the same raft of feelings you get when you're in a theater seeing a play (the intellectual challenge, the elevated acting, the heartstopping silences), but you're held in the hand of someone who has mapped out a cinematic vision for you. Zeller should be receiving all sorts of awards and huzzahs for his incredibly amibitious and gloriously finessed work on this film.
You watch The Father with the expectation that Anthony Hopkins will give a grand performance, and not only does he deliver in spades, but he does what is probably his finest career work outside of Hannibal Lecter. To discuss his performance at length would be to ruin both his moment-by-moment subtlety as well as the cumulatiave force of his work for anyone still to see the film. But suffice it to say that this is a meticulously-crafted piece of acting that is never about him or his acting...he's in complete service to the piece, and there were several moments where I felt a surge of cold blood run through my veins as I watched him.
Olivia Colman does formidable work in partnership with Hopkins. She has some quickly-shifting notes to play throughout, handled with expert technique, and her emotional transparency here feels fresh and new. The additional actors--Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, Mark Gatiss, and Olivia Williams--all contribute force and depth to this story, and they are all in perfect harmony on the difficult tone Zeller has them sustain.
For that production design and editing mentioned earlier, the film should receive Oscar nominations as well. We tend to think of both crafts in a limited way, mostly based on how flashy the contribution is. Here, the work of those artists (Peter Francis and Yorgos Lamprinos, respectively) is incredibly subtle, but absolutely instrumental in the storytelling and emotional nuance of the film. Again, to discuss it is to ruin the joy and propulsion of the film, but the craftsmanship on display in this film (as well as the warmly-caressed hues from cinematographer Ben Smithard) are of the highest artistry.
Who has had the good fortune of seeing The Father so far? Detail your thoughts in the comments below.