AFI FEST film review: 'The Father'
On paper, 'The Father' (screening during AFI FEST 2020) is a straightforward family drama - but this heartbreaking descent into dementia plays out like a low-key psychological horror, anchored by arguably the single best performance of 2020.
In short: As Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) approaches 80, he struggles with a failing memory, frustrating his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman). Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots and Olivia Williams also star.
Dementia is not new territory for cinema. Movies like 'The Savages' or 'What They Had' chronicle the effects dementia inflicts upon an entire family, detailing how the deterioration of one affects all. But what makes 'The Father' a true gut punch is how absolutely certain Anthony is of his memories - and how the film seems to contradict him at almost ever turn. What should be a linear plot unfolds like a knotted up, twisted strand of uncertain memories. The gap between what Anthony knows for certain and what he's unsure of widens, and the film lives in his increasing frustration and desperation.
Anthony is an irascibly charming and fiercely independent man, in a losing battle with memory loss. The film puts the audience in the shoes of a man whose mind is cruelly betraying him. Like Anthony, the audience is almost always off balance - the film itself establishes the simple facts of one scene, only for the very next scene to completely contradict Anthony's memory. It's as if 'The Father' is a maze that Anthony is trying to navigate - with the film finding disturbing new ways to keep him lost in the maze. It becomes increasingly difficult not just know exactly what is happening in any one scene, but when each scene takes place ... and even who the characters are in each scene. Time itself, filled with more and more gaps and blank spaces, twists on Anthony. If 'The Father' even remotely approximates the experience of living with senility, then this film's legacy is its horrifying depiction of what slipping certitude feels like.
Give Anthony Hopkins his Academy Award for Best Actor right now. Go ahead and engrave his name into the statuette. Even if the Academy Awards are outright canceled, then just award one award and only one award to Hopkins. His performance is painful to watch on a multitude of levels. It's agonizing to watch him slowly lose more and more of his memories, and even the memories he has are corrupted. While 'The Father' keeps his plight front and center, the film still allows his more incorrigible aspects to outline his frustration - making it painfully clear how life with Anthony's erratic mood swings becomes challenging and exhausting for Anne. The film empathizes with Anne as much as it does with her father.
Final verdict: 'The Father' is a towering, stunning and truly distressing experiential journey into the nightmare of dementia.
Score: 5/5
'The Father' screens at AFI FEST. This drama is rated PG-13 for some strong language, and thematic material and has a run time of 97 minutes.
