The Father

For some people, The Father will always be that film that robbed the family of Chadwick Boseman of their special evening at the Academy Awards. The year was 2021, and most people were betting that Chadwick was going to be posthumously awarded the Best Actor award for his intense performance in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. So sure of this were the writers of the Oscars that they rearranged the traditional schedule and put the Best Actor award at the very end of the show, after Best Director and Best Picture. When Anthony Hopkins won for The Father instead, it ended the already subdued evening on an awkward note, just one more misfire in an already compromised ceremony—this was the Covid-19 year where the ceremony was very scaled back, and most nominees were tuning in remotely. 

Those bitter over Boseman not winning view this as a slight, a slap to the face of an admittedly deserving performance by a highly liked actor who was taken in the prime of his life by cancer. When Heath Ledger won for The Dark Knight, it was a foregone conclusion that he was going to win because he had just died. The same was the case here, but Chadwick Boseman didn’t win, and people were upset. However, when you look at The Father, you can see why Anthony Hopkins won over Chadwick Boseman. This is a very difficult performance to get right, and it takes his character through a large array of emotions, often from minute to minute, and we have to be able to follow his thoughts, feelings, and situation even though it is the most unreliable of point-of-views imaginable. 

This is a film about a state of mind, not so much a plot-driven movie. Anthony Hopkins is playing Anthony, an older man who has been living in his flat in London with the assistance of a full-time caregiver. But he has recently driven her away, leaving his daughter, Anne (Olivia Colman), frustrated with him. He suffers from dementia, which has caused him to forget important events in his life, where things are in his flat, including his prized watch, which he claims was stolen by his caregiver. Anne tells him that she is moving to Paris to be with her man, which confuses him because he didn’t remember her being with anyone since the end of her marriage. They argue about the caregiver, and she tells him that if he keeps chasing them away, she will have to put him in a nursing home. 

The next day, Anthony is confused to find an unknown man, Paul, in his flat. Paul claims to be Anne’s husband and that Anthony is living in their flat, not in his own. Anne returns home but appears to him like a different woman. With her return home, Paul disappears, and Anne insists that she isn’t married and that there is no Paul living there. A new caregiver, Laura, shows up for an interview, and Anthony lays on the charm, insisting that he doesn’t need someone to care for him. He later says that Laura reminds him of his other daughter, Lucy, whom he hasn’t seen in a long time. We get the sense that Lucy may have died, something that is later confirmed, but that he no longer remembers this.

Things continue on like this with Anthony growing confused with the changing of the flat, the appearance of Paul again, this time played by a different actor, Rufus Sewell; Laura returning, also played by a different actress; and the changing story on whether or not Anne is planning on moving to Paris. All of this is confusing to Anthony, as it is to us trying to follow the through-line of it all. Eventually, though, the constant care Anthony needs cannot be provided by his daughter anymore, and he has to be moved to a nursing home. The film closes on a scene between Anthony and a nurse as he tries to make sense of where he is, why he is alone, and has a breakdown, feeling the loneliness and fear of a world that he cannot make sense of anymore. He is at first angry, then confused, finally reduced to tears, wanting his mother and seemingly unaware that she has long since passed away.

It is a basic fear that we, as humans, deal with that someday our brains will fail us and we will be trapped in a world where we are otherwise healthy but cannot properly function cognitively anymore. That is a scary reality for many people, equally scary to those who see their loved ones going through it, slowly forgetting those around them and even who they are, themselves. We grow up thinking our parents are this rock, this solid foundation in our lives, and then a condition like Alzheimer’s or Dementia starts to rob us of that foundation. It’s painful to watch it slowly chisel away at the person who was such an important presence in our lives, especially knowing that there may come a time when they look at us and don’t even recognize who we are. 

What’s even more scary, though, is picturing what the world must look like to someone who has this condition, seeing a world around them where faces, names, even memories don’t make perfect sense anymore. This has been visualized through a combination of authentic writing by Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton—based on Zeller’s own play Le Père—and the absolutely heartbreaking performance by Anthony Hopkins, who is in his 80s here. It may not be an authentic translation of how the brain comprehends things with dementia, but we may never know how that is for sure. It does articulate the mindset in a way that we get a grasp of how confusing it must be, though. This makes large parts of this movie confusing to watch because we never know for sure what is real, what is imagined, and if we can trust anything we are watching. This may seem like a negative, but it actually isn’t. It creates empathy for Anthony because we are confused right alongside him. 

And we don’t just emphasize with him, either. We also emphasize with his daughter, Anne. Whether or not we have experienced a loved one with dementia, we feel what she is feeling because we see how hard it is for her to take care of him, to understand what’s going on in his mind, and to take care of herself, too. She has a job and a life and cannot just drop all of that to take care of him full time. That’s a reality many are faced with in life, especially in the modern world where people are living longer than ever before. The realities of having to put a parent in a nursing home and just how difficult that kind of decision is are dramatized here perfectly by Olivia Colman. This is not a decision made lightly, and we feel that weight bearing down on her throughout this film.

This is a movie that everyone should see at some point in their lives. We never know if a parent or other loved one might be struck with dementia, and this film can help people gain a little insight into what it’s like to deal with someone with this condition. We take so much for granted in this life, and a diagnosis like this one can be scary and emotionally exhausting. The greatest thing we can do is have empathy and a bit of understanding in the face of it, and this film can help us with that. It’s a hard watch at times, especially in the final scene when Anthony is having his breakdown, reduced to tears and a desire for his mother, a comfort to him when he was a child. It’s a glimpse into a harsh reality for so many people worldwide that will reduce you to tears in the end. This started out as a play but has managed to hold on to all that raw power in its translation to the big screen. It’s such a powerful film, backed by an even more powerful performance by Anthony Hopkins that is well deserving of the Oscar he won for it. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: David Parfitt, Jean-Louis Livi, and Philippe Carcassonne

Best Actor: Anthony Hopkins (won)

Best Supporting Actress: Olivia Colman

Best Adapted Screenplay: Florian Zeller and Christopher Hampton (won)

Best Film Editing: Yorgos Lamprinos

Best Production Design: Peter Francis and Cathy Featherstone

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Release Date: June 11, 2021

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, and Olivia Williams

Directed by: Florian Zeller