A Visit With "The Father"

Minor spoilers ahead.

Anthony (Anthony Hopkins) is an aging man developing severe cognitive and memory problems, who has just driven away his latest carer.  His daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) moves him into the flat that she shares with her husband (Rufus Sewell), and hires a new carer, Laura (Imogen Poots), to stay with him during the day.  However, the situation quickly becomes untenable.    

 Anthony can't keep straight whether he is in his own flat or Anne's, what time of day it is, or what order things are happening in.  Sometimes Anne and her husband look like Olivia Williams and Mark Gatiss, and he doesn't recognize them.   The film is so effective because it shows most things happening from Anthony's point of view, so the audience shares in his confusion and frustration.  He has no idea who the man played by Mark Gatiss is, and neither does the audience, until he's introduced to us.  Anthony can't keep the name of Anne's husband straight, because it keeps changing from scene to scene.  He keeps losing his watch, and suspects others of stealing it.  

Anthony struggles mightily to keep on top of the ever-shifting circumstances of his life, never quite grasping everything.  On some level he knows what's going on and comprehends all the information he's been given, but can't make all the pieces fit together correctly anymore.  He's very intelligent and strong-willed, and used to getting his own way, so he's very resistant to being helped.  Hopkins is wonderful in the role, not afraid to make Anthony unlikeable in some scenes, and deeply vulnerable in others.  He's able to be wonderfully charming and charismatic, but also menacing and possibly dangerous.  It's awful to watch him deteriorate from his first appearance, where he insists to Anne that he doesn't need a carer, to the ending, where he's totally lost control of his life and has had to part with nearly everything he's familiar with.

Likewise, the rest of the cast does a great job juggling tricky roles.  Multiple characters share actors, and the details of their lives are always in flux.  Olivia Colman has the most cohesive of the supporting parts, playing Anne as a woman who has to make very difficult, emotionally devastating decisions about her father's care. So much of the film's effectiveness comes from watching her reactions to Anthony at his best and worst.  They clearly haven't had the best relationship, and despite Anthony's growing incapacity, he still has the ability to hurt his daughter emotionally.  And Anne is smart enough and kind enough to understand that he both does and doesn't mean it.  I also like Rufus Sewell as her husband, because he plays him as so ambiguous - how much of his animosity is driven by selfishness, and how much by his desire to protect Anne?

This is the first film directed by Florian Zeller, based on his own play.  There are plenty of stylistic flourishes and cinematic tricks in play, such that this easily could have been a gimmicky exercise in form, but Zeller keeps it very grounded, with the emotional conflicts always at the forefront.  There are key moments when we don't see the action from Anthony's POV, when we get those vital glimpses of Anne's struggle to support her father, or how Anthony's condition appears to someone outside the family.  I like that we don't get all the answers, and that the puzzle pieces don't all fit together.  We never do learn if Anne's husband is named James or Paul or something else.   

And I like that ultimately, the film is so empathetic, all about getting the viewer into Anthony's fracturing world, and forced to confront so many aspects of loss and grief.  It reminds me of "Amour" more than any other film, in its quiet brutality and use of the cinematic language in such unnerving ways.  

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