The Father

Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: February 26, 2021

8.6	USER SCORE Universal acclaim based on 272 Ratings

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jeffw38Mar 28, 2021

Frustrating, confusing movie. While the performances are good , especially Hopkins, it can’t carry this film. If you watch it, you will know what I mean.

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AJGo85Apr 20, 2021

An audience will generally accept whatever happens in the first 15 or 20 minutes of a movie to be true to the reality of the story no matter the genre or subject matter. This is when we are being introduced to the characters and their world.An audience will generally accept whatever happens in the first 15 or 20 minutes of a movie to be true to the reality of the story no matter the genre or subject matter. This is when we are being introduced to the characters and their world. Even if a movie begins with a dream or a fantasy, it has told us what is real and what is not. The Father takes full advantage of this to put the audience in the mindset of Anthony, an elderly man with dementia. As you might imagine given the subject matter, this makes for a heavy viewing experience. The Father is that kind of movie that is well made and well-acted but cannot exactly be described as entertainment. The film begins with Anne (Olvia Coleman) meeting her father, Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), at his large, posh London apartment to tell him that she has met a man and will be moving to Paris soon, so she will not be able to look after him anymore. In the next scene Anthony finds a man in his apartment who he (and we) has never seen before claiming to be Anne’s husband. Anne returns from the market but Anthony does not recognize her. Neither do we. Now Anne is played by Olivia Williams and says she is not and never was moving to Paris. Director Florian Zeller, who, along with Chistopher Hampton, adapted The Father from his play, has us share in Anthony’s disorientation and confusion with very effective but simple techniques.

Scenes repeat and loop back on themselves. It seems like this movie takes place over the same few days again and again. The Oscar nominated production design makes different apartments look the same but also different. The cinematography finds ways to shoot a room from different angles so we aren’t sure if we are in Anthony’s apartment or his daughter’s apartment. There is a general sense of a timeline (the editing also received an Oscar nomination), but we are never really sure where we are in the timeline. Anthony often points to a painting done by his other daughter, Lucy, but then one time it isn’t there anymore. We see the faint outline that something once hung there. Was the painting removed? Is he in a different apartment that never had the painting and hung something else there? It will come as no surprise that Anthony Hopkins gives not just a good or very good performance but a great one. His Best Actor Oscar nomination isn’t just a lifetime achievement placeholder. Anthony’s ever-changing mood and perspective requires Hopkins to be agitated, charming, confused, calm, lucid, frightened; often in the same scene. Yet, Hopkins does not use the role just to showcase his talents. Even in the most dramatic scenes his performance is still full of sympathy; we see Anthony the character first and the work of Anthony the actor later. Olivia Coleman is a great scene partner for Hopkins and does a great job conveying her emotions while trying to hold them back. The rest of the small cast is an impressive lineup of great performers: Olivia Williams, Rufus Sewell, Mark Gatiss, and Imogen Poots. The doubling and repetition of scenes and dialogue are indeed a clever approach to dramatizing the muddled perspective of a dementia sufferer. However, with this effect having been achieved so quickly and completely at the beginning of the film, after a while these techniques lose their power and even become annoying. The movie never gives us an objective reality even in scenes of Anne alone or with her husband. I understand the filmmaker wanting to keep us off kilter to fully convey Anthony’s perspective but there are moments where the film is not from his perspective, including Anne’s dream/nightmare.

The final scene is what we presume it will be and is emotionally powerful. While appreciating The Father from an artistic and technical view, I kept wondering who this movie is for. I cannot imagine people who have really had Anne’s experience wanting to relive such devastating experiences. It is not especially grim or dour or mawkish, but it would still be a difficult watch for a movie night (definitely have something light queued up to watch afterward). There are other works of fiction and non-fiction about the effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease and the emotional toll it has on everyone involved, but I suppose this is the only one with an incredible performance from Anthony Hopkins.… Expand

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QhasiNov 20, 2021

Firstly, Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for playing himself. This performance wasn't much of a stretch.

The story itself is intriguing in that you are left just as confused as the main character and the confusion is never resolved.

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Mauro_LanariApr 9, 2021

(Mauro Lanari)
Bastard son of "Memento" (Nolan 2000) and "Amour" (Haneke 2012), from the 1st it takes the cinematographic transposition of psychopathologies version 2.0, that is from a point of view no longer external to the patient. They(Mauro Lanari)
Bastard son of "Memento" (Nolan 2000) and "Amour" (Haneke 2012), from the 1st it takes the cinematographic transposition of psychopathologies version 2.0, that is from a point of view no longer external to the patient. They tell the lie that this would induce greater empathic understanding; actually it is often only an expedient for an unnecessarily different diegesis: style, not substance. From the 2nd it takes that sweetening so dear to the hypersensitive palates of the Academy, do not accustomed to the real routine of organic sewage well known to any carer not invented for artistic success purposes as in the case of this debut.… Expand

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AgentLviJul 7, 2023

not bad movie, but not good either. The story is really miss & match, visual is decent, and the voice is also decent

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CoolBRNov 22, 2022

Honestly, I was expecting more since it has such a high score. All the movie does it is to make you feel with demmencia. It is very confusing.

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