The Father: Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman in a multi-layered masterpiece about aging

By Thom Ernst

Rating: A 

In the Oscar-nominated The Father, Florian Zeller directs a film adaption of his award-winning play, La Pere. He cast Sir Anthony Hopkins and the venerable Olivia Colman in roles that originated as French-speaking. (Zeller has said that if Hopkins weren't involved, the film would have remained French).  

Screenwriter Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons, Atonement) came on board to translate the stage play into an English language screenplay.  The result is a stage-to-screen drama that declines to operate along a traditional timeline. The Father is a compelling, illusionary story about aging's disorienting symptoms. It is a masterpiece of structure, narrative, editing, and performance. 

Olivia Colman plays a daughter struggling to keep up with the decline of her father (Anthony Hopkins)

For those who tremble in the presence of outstanding performances, The Father will hit like an earthquake. Hopkins and Colman are unspeakably good in their roles. Hopkins is too recognizable to forget who he is, and Colman has reached a level of unavoidable familiarity. 

But, as if having access to a magical elixir offered only to the greats, their egos (which I imagine to be huge to achieve what they do) vanish within performances that walk the invisible divide between acting and being. And through it all, one watches Hopkins with astonishment. 

In a film about aging, it's important to acknowledge our ageist tendencies. That Hopkins commands the screen should be of no surprise to anyone, and yet we are acutely aware that the actor is as old as the man he plays. In a scene in a doctor's office, Anthony is asked to confirm his birthdate. "December 31, 1937," he answers. It is Hopkins's actual birthdate. 

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

In Zeller's film, Hopkins plays Anthony, an aging patriarch struggling to hang on to his last thread of independence. Colman is Anne, his daughter, who fears her father needs more care than she can provide. 

In that way, The Father is itself, a familiar yarn; an older man full of grit and fight combats ageism and the assumption of helplessness. Hang around movies enough, and you learn that art, like history, has a way of repeating itself. 

But Zeller shakes up the familiar and gives it back to us in a disjointed mosaic that loops around and comes back to the beginning before starting all over again. Neither Zeller nor Hampton waste time informing the viewer on what is already understood, that aging is a shit-show and denial a lousy stall-tactic.  

But just as there is no turning back, there is no moving forward either. Anthony repeatedly searches for, then finds, his watch, insisting on his need for knowing the time. It's a quirk and character trait the underlines our confusion as the story unfolds. 

The Father steers clear of folksy rhetoric that favors the spirited senior full of wisdom and charm. It tells a different story; a rigorous alternative to On Golden Pond (1981) and (for those who care to look it up) Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow (1937). And though Zeller doesn't exactly turn the aging narrative on its head, he does disorient the viewer enough so that we are never sure where we are on Anthony's sliding scale of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.  

It plays like a mystery that would comfortably fit in the same wheelhouse as the works from directors Brad Anderson, Christopher Nolan, and (if you tilt your head and squint your eyes) a distant relation to M. Night Shyamalan. 

As the father grows suspicious of his caregivers—some he chases away with accusations and threats, and others (family members) have no way out—his paranoia and confusion reach Hitchcockian levels, stirring up memories of films like Gaslight (1944).  Not that The Father has any twists or surprise reveals, it merely unwinds, settling into its reality, which Zeller determines, is at the heart of a man in decline. 

The Father is one of the few genuinely deserving titles in this year's Oscar run, earning its recent nominations for Best Picture, Adapted Screenplay, a Best Actor nod for Hopkins, and Best Supporting for Colman. 

The Father is directed by Florian Zeller and stars Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Imogen Poots, and Rufus Sewell. It opens in select theatres on Friday, March 16 and on various VOD platforms on Friday, March 26.