Florian Zeller’s The Father (USA, 2020) is an ingeniously wrought puzzle-box of environments, memories and emotions. Anthony (Anthony Hopkins, astonishing again), a husband, father and long-retired working man, is slowly succumbing to senile dementia, and losing his grip on retaining or commanding any vestiges of self-possession or dignified self-control. His dedicated daughter Anne (Olivia Colman, riveting) tends to him lovingly, but the burden of Dad is wearing her down, and her own life needs to shift away from sacrifice back to sane practicality. But Zeller’s brilliant conception isn’t to tell the story to us objectively, from a safe remove, but to bring us along with Anthony’s unreliable state of mind, taking in information along with him, and combining his struggles and confusion with our own.
We first meet Anne when she rushes home to confront Dad about his dismissing her latest hire for a helper and caretaker, the third he’s chased off. Anne’s been divorced for a while now, but she’s met a terrific man who lives in Paris, and she’s going to join him there. Anthony senses abandonment, but Anne assures him she’ll come back to see him often.
So imagine his (and our) surprise when, the next day, with Anne out, Dad encounters a man claiming to be Anne’s husband having a glass of wine in the living room. She divorced James a while ago, but, no, this is Paul (Mark Gatiss), who claims they’ve been married for the last ten years. Paul also claims this is his and Anne’s flat, which they’ve had Anthony moved in to. Summoned by phone to deal with her now indignant Dad, Anne finally arrives – played here, at this moment, by a different actress (Olivia Williams). It is, of course, Anne, but… is it? And now that she’s here, where’d Paul go?
The next day, Anne (Olivia Colman’s back) introduces Dad to his next caretaker candidate, Laura (Imogen Poots). It’s a predictably surreal encounter, but Anne’s inclined to bring her on nonetheless – Laura was surprised, but not thrown, by Dad’s mercurial flourishes of vaudeville and venom, and Paul (wait, he’s back?) is encouraged by Anne’s optimism. (Yes, Paul’s back – here played by Rufus Sewell).
…and so it goes. The people closest to him are there until they’re not, and then they’re back, if its them. The apartment – his or theirs’ – slowly, subtly, changes and shifts; furniture moves, artwork switches around, doors and hallways expand and contract; other outside locales take on the apartment’s characteristics, and vice-versa. Time sometimes circles back on itself. Anthony’s life and surroundings are as fluid as his progressively-less-stable state of mind. Peter Francis’ production design is a knockout. And having just seen Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, I’m happy to assure you that theatrical origins can be effectively enhanced cinematically, and can actively enrich the filmed narrative.
If this work is any indication (and why wouldn’t be?), renowned French playwright Florian Zeller has the chops to become a terrific filmmaker, if he chooses. He has a talented cinematographer, Ben Smithard, (emerging from a television background with a few features after, this obviously the highlight so far), but Zeller clearly knows what to do with a camera, and how to artfully structure the results. And he can clearly write, although this theatrical product, thoroughly rehearsed and produced in many venues over time, is given far more homework and research than most standard filmmakers are afforded for their films. But, no matter – Zeller is the real deal.
This film shoots up to my top half of the Best Picture contenders. Intelligent, involving and, ultimately, very moving, the film has a good deal of humor woven into it (and a bit of Luis Buñuel as well), but still takes itself, and you, seriously enough to deliver some profound truths about where many of us, or our beloveds, may find ourselves eventually. Highly recommended.
Periscope In The Bathtub 